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.
The men’s soccer team has climbed into the top 5 of the national rankings, and were able to win their first game as a Top 5 team with a 2-1 victory at Coastal Carolina. The women are back into the top 25 of the coaches poll, and celebrated that with a 3-2 come-from-behind win over Houston.
The women’s basketball team was picked fifth in the preseason Big 12 poll, and Jordan Harrison was tabbed All-Big 12. Mark Kellogg has more newcomers than returnees this year, but he has established WVU as a consistently good team, so it should be another fun year for the women’s team.
The men’s team faced pretty much a complete rebuild with Ross Hodge as the new coach, but things seem optimistic for the team. This year’s squad has some intriguing potential, but we will see how well they meld, and how well they work their way through an incredibly tough Big 12 conference. But Hodge seems like a very good coach, and WVU has already gotten some excellent verbal commitments in recruiting.
Notes: Kickoff for the UCF game is at 1:00, and it will be televised by TNT, TruTV, and HBOmax…The cross country team is ranked #1 in the Mid-Atlantic region, and is in the top 10 nationally. Sophomore Joy Naukut broke the WVU record for the cross country 5k, with a 15:48.
The old record was held by multiple All-American Ceili McCabe, and with the history of star distance runners, the WVU school record is a pretty significant accomplishment.
