By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — Bill Stewart will tell you that he’s not a superstitious sort of guy.
He doesn’t believe he’ll have seven years of bad luck if he breaks a mirror and doesn’t think a black cat crossing his path will bring bad fortune unless he happens to step in a mess that cat leaves behind.
But expect him to be wearing that blue sweater vest he’s worn the past two weeks.
Just in case.
Two weeks ago the Mountaineers were to play Colorado and the marketing department, bless their souls, declared the game a Gold Rush, asking fans to wear gold.
Well, seeing that, Stewart felt he, too, should wear gold. Declining to ask basketball coach Bob Huggins to borrow his gold suit, Stewart pulled out a gold shirt to go with the all gold uniforms his team would wear.
“I felt if we asked the fans to wear gold, why not me?” he said at his weekly press conference on Tuesday.
But he also realized that with the players in gold, the sideline would look rather strange.
“I didn’t want us all to look like mustard seeds there on the sidelines,” he said.
So, he grabbed this Nike blue sweater vest to wear over the top, making him look like a poor man’s Jim Tressel, the professorial Ohio State coach who has turned the scarlet sweater vest into a fashion statement for coaches.
“He looks a lot younger than I do,” Stewart said.
Wearing the sweater vest produced a victory for the Mountaineers, so this past week at Syracuse he had it on again.
Another victory.
He says he’ll wear it this week … but he’s not superstitious.
Or is he?
He pointed out that each week receivers coach Lonnie Galloway, at the coach’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes gathering on Friday night, selects where the coaches sit, and it is always where they sat the week before when the team won.
Not that Stewart’s superstitious, but he did report this.
“He missed the meeting before the Auburn game because he was home with his sick mother,” Stewart said.
You know how that Auburn game came out, right?
o o o o o o
By now you’ve seen the video of your old friend, West Virginia fullback Owen Schmitt, getting ready for last weekend’s Seattle game, banging his head with his helmet, creating a gash that had his face covered with blood.
Stewart laughed when it was brought up during his press conference.
“That was an emotional display, but not a temper tantrum,” Stewart noted. “That was just Owen. He’s awesome. You want to have players like that.”
Stewart remembered the one other time that he slammed his head with a helmet. That came in his junior year when he was asked to pooch punt and got off absolutely the worst punt in WVU history, one that may have traveled 6 yards.
Walking off the field, he slammed himself in the head with his helmet.
“That,” said Stewart, “was a temper tantrum.”
o o o o o o
Defensive tackle Scooter Berry is still progressing from his shoulder injury that caused him to miss two games and play sparingly last week at Syracuse.
“He’s progressing adequately to OK,” Stewart said. “Not great, but good.”
One would suspect that would place Mr. Berry on the bench this week as Josh Taylor starts against Marshall. Taylor, of course, made the key interception of a screen pass against Syracuse.
“I’d like to see him get one a game,” joked Stewart.
One of the reasons the Mountaineers haven’t suffered in Berry’s absence is the play of nose tackle Chris Nield, according to Stewart.
“He is having the banner year of all interior defensive linemen,” Stewart said.
o o o o o o
Tight end Will Johnson finally got the public’s attention this week with a 33-yard reception at Syracuse, but the coaching staff has seen him improve immensely over the past year.
“He outgrew being a wide receiver,” Stewart noticed.
Johnson realized he had to be bigger, stronger and faster to play and worked hard during the off season.
“I don’t know if he was ready to play tight end last year,” Stewart admitted, having moved him there. “Now he’s leaps and bounds better than he was then.”
He gives WVU a really good situation as they run different packages, because he can play on the field with the other tight end Tyler Urban or be there with fullback Ryan Clarke, who also can play some tight end in certain packages.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
