Posts Tagged ‘Pat White’

LIVE BLOG: WVU-Colorado

11:56 p.m. – Aric Goodman boots the game-winning field goal to complete a stunner. This one has to be even more difficult to swallow than the East Carolina loss. 17-14, Buffaloes, in overtime.

It will be interesting to hear what the team has to say again this week in post-game.

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Filed under College Football : Comments (1) : Sep 18th, 2008

LIVE BLOG: September 6 NCAA Football

1:28 p.m. — As the noon kickoffs reach halftime, there are surely some raised eyebrows among college football fans around the country.

Ohio U. takes that 7-6 lead over Ohio State into the locker room in Columbus.

Wisconsin scores a late touchdown to take a 17-14 lead over Marshall into the locker room. It’s been 17 unanswered for the Badgers to end the half after the Herd jumped out to a two touchdown lead.

Auburn is only up 7-0 on Southern Miss around halfway through the second quarter.

It appears a lot of these “big name” teams have come into their games today a little listless. Tough tasks remain for any team hoping to pull a big early-season upset, however. 

An update on the defending Big East co-champions: Mighty Temple has a 6-0 lead on Connecticut at the half.

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Filed under College Football, The Blog : Comments (0) : Sep 6th, 2008

Post-Game Comments: WVU-Villanova

Our first venture into live blogging here at 20/20 was not without incident (a call to the company that made my laptop is forthcoming tomorrow to find out why it won’t even start now) but all in all, we’d like to think it was a success. Thanks to those who followed it and an even bigger thanks to those who commented and asked questions. 

While I’m not going to transcribe quotes from my recorder yet (I’m going to take what I feel is a much-deserved break after this post), I am happy to share my views on WVU’s 48-21 victory over the Wildcats.

We’ll start with the good and move on to the not-so-good, at least from the Mountaineers’ perspective.

The Good:

  • Pat White: 25-of-33, 208 yards passing, 5 TDs, 1 INT; 9 carries, 63 yards

Do you think this guy might have answered some of those who doubted his ability to pass?

Career-highs in passing attempts and passes completed. A stadium record for passing touchdowns in a game. Breaking the program record for total yardage in a career. Incredibly efficient and accurate. Made the opponent pay for stacking the box defensively.

As I said in the live blog, any enthusiasm must be tempered — after all, this was just one game against an overmatched opponent from a lower division. But if we are to glean anything from this performance, it is that the modified Mountaineer offense (specifically, White and his receivers) is ready, able and willing to throw and throw often. Opposing defensive coordinators should take notice.

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Filed under College Football : Comments (4) : Aug 30th, 2008

Keys to the Game: WVU-Villanova

“Keys to the Game” typically are used to describe what needs to happen for each team to win. While the outcome of this game shouldn’t be in doubt, West Virginia will have a few secondary goals beyond winning the game. Villanova will be looking to make the game as competitive as possible for as long as possible.

West Virginia:

Put the game out of reach early.

This is of particular importance to the Mountaineers in this game on multiple fronts. Of course, they want to squash any hope Villanova has of actually trying to win the game. But more importantly, the team needs a solid early performance on both sides of the ball just for confidence’s sake.

The team has struggled on offense this fall, and the young players on defense have been hearing about their inexperience for the better part of a month now. Jumping out on the Wildcats with a few early scores and quick defensive stops would do wonders for a team that will need to carve out its own identity under the new coaching staff.

From a schematic standpoint, this will be important for different reasons. If WVU pulls away early, they can put in the backups and let them get some valuable experience in a game. Furthermore, offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen could go to a very “vanilla” playbook to avoid showing East Carolina any more of the modified offense than they have to.

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Filed under College Football : Comments (0) : Aug 30th, 2008

West Virginia happy to have Stewart

This article from Rivals.com has to be, without a doubt, the most insightful article I’ve read on the coaching change in the eight months since Rich Rodriguez left Morgantown.

As someone who has interviewed several of the players quoted in this story, I have no clue how the writer (Jason King of Yahoo! Sports) got some of these players to be so unbelievably open. You expect Pat McAfee to be real and honest, but Pat White is normally a brick wall in interviews. Yet Mr. King somehow got this nugget out him:

A few weeks before Coach Rodriguez left, Coach Stewart and one of the former assistants (who ended up leaving for Michigan) got into (it) at practice.

He and the other coach were really going at it. The main thing I remember is that all of the players gathered around Coach Stew. We had his back and not the other coach.

That said a lot about what this team thinks of him.

Wow.

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Filed under College Football : Comments (1) : Aug 29th, 2008