Before the season, I said that this might be considered a “Year Zero” situation for Rich Rodriguez and the WVU football team. Seven games in, that seems very much the case.
If you don’t know what a “Year Zero” is, it is basically when a new coach comes in, but the program requires such an overhaul, that you can’t really judge the first season. So the second season becomes “Year One.” When RichRod was hired, the early signing day for high school recruits had already happened. So many of the best potential high school recruits weren’t available.
In this day and age, rebuilding through the portal is a possibility, but WVU faced a couple of difficult challenges with that. First, the overall talent wasn’t as much as it had been previously. Teams saw Michigan and Ohio State win national championships with a similar formula: retain your talented players, and fill in a few gaps with the portal. Also, it was harder to get the top talent that was available: more teams had stepped up their portal game, and WVU doesn’t have the money to compete with some of the other schools.
The result so far: a 2-5 record, with a 2-10 final record a real possibility. The five teams left: TCU, at 6-1 Houston, vs Colorado, at Arizona State, and Texas Tech. Of those, WVU might be a slight favorite against Colorado. The others, WVU will be decided underdogs.
This past game was maybe the worst performance of the year. It was close through halftime against UCF, but then things collapsed in the second half, and UCF routed WVU, 45-13.
A lot of the offensive woes can be traced to the offensive line, which gave up eight sacks to the Golden Knights. It makes it hard to get a ground game or a passing game going when the defensive line is continuously winning the line of scrimmage. WVU started Scotty Fox, who became the fourth player to start at QB for the Mountaineers. It was a curious decision, because Khalil Wilkins hadn’t played that poorly in his start against BYU last game. Wilkins did enter the game late in the first quarter after WVU couldn’t generate any offense.
The defense seems to kind of hold up for a while, but then the dam breaks, and they have trouble stopping anyone. The pass defense was particularly troubling against UCF, which is continuing a bad trend.
The rest of the year, which starts with TCU on Saturday, is basically hoping to find some sparks, especially those who can play next year. I doubt the TCU game will be competitive for all four quarters, but you want to see the team play hard and stay healthy.
The potential good news is that basketball is just around the corner. WVU beat Maryland in a closed scrimmage, with Honor Huff making 10 three pointers to lead the Mountaineers. There is optimism surrounding Ross Hodge’s first year, so fans can hope it isn’t fool’s gold.
The women’s basketball team should also be good this year, despite several new faces.
They have been consistently entertaining to watch under Mark Kellogg, so there is good optimism there as well.
Notes: Kickoff for the TCU game is at 6:00, and the game will be streamed by ESPN Plus.
It is also the Homecoming game for WVU…The women’s soccer team wrapped up their away schedule for the regular season with games at Kansas and Kansas State. They have three home games to round out October before starting the postseason…The volleyball team continues to show improvement, even in losses. They took #24 Colorado to a full five sets before falling on the road. That type of result simply did not happen last year – they got swept by every ranked team they faced.
