WVSports.com continues with our popular feature: The 3-2-1. We’ll break down three things we learned that week, two questions we have and give one prediction.
Here is the next installment of the 3-2-1 looking at the West Virginia football program, the latest on basketball, and what’s happening in recruiting.
3 things I learned:
1–West Virginia was shockingly left out of the NCAA Field. Despite being listed in every available bracketologist’s projected field, the Mountaineers were the first team left out of the NCAA Tournament when the bracket was released Sunday.
West Virginia boasted a strong resume going 6-10 in quadrant one games and 4-3 in quadrant two games while not suffering a quadrant three or four loss all season. Essentially, the Mountaineers beat a lot of good basketball teams and didn’t have what would be considered a bad loss all season but it apparently wasn’t good enough.
It’s a frustrating development in large part because Head of the NCAA Selection Committee Bubba Cunningham discussed the injury to Tucker DeVries and how they discuss player availability all the time. That’s fine, but what does it have to do with this current West Virginia basketball team which has four quadrant one wins since DeVries was injured just eight games into the season.
The Mountaineers had a resume with six quadrant one wins in total which is more than North Carolina (1-12), Xavier (1-9) and San Diego State (3-6) combined. If you even took out the two wins that West Virginia had with DeVries on the floor, then those three teams only have one more win than the Mountaineers in that category.
The Mountaineers can’t do anything now and it’s fair to wonder if the loss to Colorado on a neutral floor was the nail in coffin. But it doesn’t seem that these conference tournaments did much to adjust other team’s seeds so who knows?
West Virginia was not only projected into the field by those that release brackets but were in every single one and listed as a solid No. 10 seed. To say that they didn’t make it in the end is quite the surprise even for the most pessimistic.
2–Another coach needs replaced. West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez made the decision to rehire two of the coaches from the previous regime in running backs coach Chad Scott and inside wide receivers coach Blaine Stewart.
And now both of those coaches have exited the program after Scott took the same job at Texas and then Stewart took a position in the NFL with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Stewart, the son of former head coach Bill, spent two seasons with the Mountaineers football program where he served as the tight ends coach under Neal Brown before moving to inside wide receivers once Rodriguez took over the program.
It’s a decision that makes a lot of sense on the surface as the chance to coach at the professional level offers more security as well as less hassle with the current state of college athletics and the uncertainty surrounding it. Stewart had strong ties to Morgantown but now will be trying his hand again at the NFL level.
Stewart was set to make $225,000 this year with one season left on his contract but now Rodriguez will have to make a decision on how to proceed at that spot. Given the fact that West Virginia already has a full-time wide receivers coach in place, the program could decide to roll with that along with Travis Trickett for a season or make the choice to add another coach to fill the vacancy left behind by Stewart.
Rodriguez has made it clear that the second option is the likely option with the eventual hire needing to be an asset on the recruiting front.
An off-season of change is set to continue for West Virginia as the coaching staff has yet to be formally set for any significant amount of time and Rodriguez now must again weigh his options when it comes to what’s next on the staff.
