West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez addressed the media on Tuesday ahead of the beginning of spring practice and WVSports.com provides a summary of what was said.
–The team has made a lot of improvements. Four guys are out with injuries Ashton Woods has the shoulder surgery he’s recovering from, Emory Snyder hip surgery, Peter Notaro has a foot that had to get fixed and Antoine Sharp had a knee that has to get fixed. Everybody else should be good to go for practice on Saturday. Going to try to get four practices in before spring break. West Virginia should have 101 players for spring. The Mountaineers have some new staff members and recruiting is something they’ve done every day. From an athletic standpoint, he likes where the roster is at. In the 15 practices, what they have to try to do is get these guys experience so they feel more comfortable.
–Rodriguez said there is so much more true competition at all positions. They truly have that from a player standpoint. Really good transfer, high school class and some of the junior college guys could help.
–Rodriguez said there is 101 here now but there will be 13 more graduating junior college or high school join the team later. He thought they would be a little deeper than they were last year, but they weren’t but until they start practicing he won’t be sure.
—Michael Hawkins is somebody that they knew about from watching him and having some guys that were at Oklahoma and knew who he was as an athlete. They wanted to have somebody compete with Scotty Fox and Max Brown. He is really smart. They want at least two guys they can win with at every position.
–Rodriguez said they could play both quarterbacks. All good players want to be the guy but if you’re good enough to win with you’re going to play. Inevitably somebody could surge to the front but practice will tell that part. They targeted Hawkins and he has all the things he wanted so far.
–Rodriguez said they lost nine of the top ten guys last year and we’re starting all over again last year. They’ve had some that have played and some of the guys that were young guys have gotten better. They signed a rally good freshman class and signed some really good transfers on the offensive line. They got some portal guys that have experience as starters. They have a couple freshmen that should have great careers and all of those guys have gotten bigger and stronger and should be much better up front.
–Rodriguez said the first year is always the hardest. You’ll go through four phases, lose big, lose close, win close and then win big is something that Bobby Bowden told him when he first started coaching. It’s different challenges now and you still have to establish the culture. This year they intentionally took a big high school class and they won’t have 40 seniors this off-season. They should get better every year. In ways you can correct some mistakes in a hurry but it takes a lot of money. West Virginia had some but they don’t have that mess around money where guys can make mistakes and correct it immediately.
–Rodriguez has always thought that coaches that just rely on experience are not sending the right message. You should be getting better as a coach every year this is his 29th year as a coach and he is going to try to make sure he does his job better. He challenges himself and the staff to be better every year and wants his players to be the same way. There are different challenges now with the NIL era but you have to learn how to navigate it. If you like winning enough, you’re going to figure out how to win the challenges.
–Schematic stuff it’s just 11 guys. Rodriguez said if they have no turnovers or negative yardage plays they’ll win every time so that’s the goal. You have to be good fundamentally, schematically and there is a lot that goes into how they study other people and how they can get better.
–Rodriguez hired Chance Trickett because he wanted some NFL scouting experience. He has done that for 12-years and his experience has already helped and with revamping how they scout and evaluate. Rick Trickett is the preeminent offensive line coach in college football and they have worked a lot together.
—Larry Knight got offered by Georgia and he’s from there. Deke Adams is somebody that Rodriguez didn’t know but he did know people that know him and he’s worked with some coaches he knew in the past. They were fortunate that he was out there.
—Amare Grayson and Cameron Griffin know the system and the offense as well as the techniques that Coach Trickett wants up front. They are great program guys and he would have liked to have them last year.
–The running back room is new and it’s hard to mention one group with how many new faces there are at all the different positions. They don’t want to do this every year, bringing in 70 or 80 new guys. In the future, they want to have around 21 or 22 seniors but you can’t predict it.
–Rodriguez said that they had a little more time to evaluate the guys they wanted to bring in compared to a year ago. Last year it wasn’t all bad, they had some guys that played some really good football and helped to establish the culture they wanted. Rodriguez said last year his team gave them good effort but there are some things they’d like to do better. That group helped them even the six-month guys to establish the culture and now there is enough returning players that have been in the program that is helping the move forward.
–Rodriguez said they were trying to find the best players that fit what they were trying to do and they wanted guys that loved football and wanted to be at West Virginia as well as the skill set to win games. It’s so transactional with recruiting now and a lot of times it comes down to how much money you have. If they took them out of the junior college.
–Rodriguez said they have two-three spots that are still open that they intentionally waited to see there might be a junior college guy graduating in May. What you have is what you have this year, outside of guys unenrolling and enrolling somewhere else but the NCAA is trying to address that.
–A fullback is rare and they wanted a guy that could run the ball a little bit and stick his face in the fan. They will use their tight ends in that role, but they wanted somebody that has played that in Kayden Luke.
–Rodriguez said they’re calling it a spring festival and they’ll do some competitive things and some one-on-ones and things to close the spring. They’ll come up with a format that is family-friendly.
–Rodriguez said they tried to get more guys on multi-year deals because the retention part is key. You will always lose a couple and they lost a couple they didn’t want to lose but they were able to retain a lot of guys too so you need guys that want to be here.
–The coaching staff has always been an issue to retain because sometimes they get offered a lot of money and go somewhere. His staff is happy to be here and the happiness is based on winning.
–Rodriguez said that the Big 12 is better and he wants to watch the combine with a handful of Mountaineers next year. He said they’re going to work as hard as they can to bring a championship to West Virginia he isn’t backing down from that. He still thinks they can win the Big 12.
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