The big news in WVU athletics didn’t happen on the field this week, it happened in a press conference. Wren Baker announced that WVU was adding 140 scholarships, effective for next year. The total number of athletic scholarships at WVU will jump from 260 to 400. This is across all sports, including the Olympic sports. This is huge news for the athletic program. We have seen the Olympic sports on the upswing at WVU: the rifle team is national champion again, the track and field/cross country team is ranked highly, both soccer teams are in the national rankings, golf made it to the NCAA Championships recently, volleyball is on the way up, etc. This will help all of those sports attract more high quality competitors, and should allow success to beget more success.
UCF and WVU are two teams with similar stories this year. Both teams are starting over with coaches that had brought them past success. With WVU, it’s Rich Rodriguez, of course, and for UCF, it is Scott Frost. It’s been a similar story for the Golden Knights, too. They are 3-3, but 0-3 in Big 12 play. They have beaten the bad teams, and lost to the good teams. WVU appears to be somewhere in between, so it could be an interesting game. The Mountaineers will head to Orlando after a much needed bye week, while UCF is coming off a 20-11 loss to Cincinnati.
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