By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — You know it is going to be a bad night when maybe the best play you make on defense ruins your chance to turn a game around, but so it went for West Virginia last Friday night in South Florida.
With less than a minute left in the first half, South Florida was leading, 17-12, and on the move. They hadn’t scored a touchdown only because Robert Sands, playing spectacularly out of his safety position, had brought quarterback B.J. Daniels down after a 10-yard run and then gotten there just in time to tackle A.J. Love after a 45-yard completion.
Now Daniels was on the move again, spotting Dontavia Bogan loose inside the WVU 10. As he threw the ball, Sands again made a play on it, reaching as far as his 6-foot, 5-inch body would allow him to reach, the ball ticking off his fingers and falling incomplete.
It was a spectacular play, except for that fact that cornerback Brandon Hogan was in position to make an interception.
“You need to drop those long arms down sometime,” a smiling Hogan told him after the play.”
South Florida didn’t get a touchdown but did get a field goal out of it and went into halftime ahead by eight points at 20-12 instead of five, changing the complexion of the game.
“It’s a game of inches,” Sands said on Tuesday night as he looked back on that play. “I barely got my fingers on the ball.”
In a way it was coming out game for Sands, who had spent the early part of the season not starting, even though his ability is unchallenged and his physical presence intimidating. He had not, however, practiced as Coach Bill Stewart wanted him to, so he would sit the first two series while Eain Smith played.
But against South Florida, in a forgettable game, Sands made six tackles, five of them solo, and broke up two passes.
“He played better,” Stewart admitted. “He had a good game and was picked by our staff as defensive player of the game and it was well deserved. Robert needs to play and practice like that every day. Some sophomores do that, some wait until their senior year.”
The Mountaineers cannot wait for Sands to become a senior, because this season’s defense, quite frankly, has been disappointing.
WVU is allowing 22.4 points a game, which ranks sixth in the eight-team Big East Conference, only Syracuse this Saturday’s noon home opponent, Louisville, behind them.
And while the Mountaineers 3-3-5 stack has been difficult to run on, holding opponents to just 99.1 yards rushing a game, second in the conference, the pass defense ranks seventh, giving up 235.8 yards, 11 more yards than even Louisville is allowing in seventh place.
Against South Florida, the pass defense broke down, especially corner Keith Tandy, who suffered through a dismal evening, one where now his teammates are trying to pick him up.
“Coach Stew doesn’t want us to come down on each other. We all know how Tandy felt. It wasn’t his fault. If the quarterback got sacked, that wouldn’t have happened,” Sands said.
But the fact is that things have not gone well on defense.
“We’re not the defense I thought we could be,” Sands said, “but we still can be that defense.”
Perhaps.
The road ahead isn’t an easy one. In fact, with Cincinnati and Pitt’s offenses still awaiting. They are the two top scoring teams in the conference, Cincinnati averaging 39.1 points and Pitt 34.2.
That is hardly good news, considering that WVU probably needs to run the table to reach the heights it had hoped to reach when the season started.
“We have to win out,” Sands said. “We have to dominate our opponents to get back into the BCS bowl picture. All our goals are still there.”
They may get some help this weekend as it appears Stewart is ready to reinstate defensive tackle Scooter Berry for the Louisville game. Berry was arrested outside Bent Wiley’s nightclub on Oct. 18 and charged with misdemeanor public intoxication and disorderly conduct. He has been suspended since.
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NOTES: Senior linebacker Reed Willliams and placekicker Josh Lider, along with junior offensive lineman Eric Jobe, have been named to ESPN The Magazine's Academic All-District Two first team. Williams has a 3.86 GPA in finance and marketing, Lider a 4.0 in exercise physiology and Job a 3.46 in industrial engineering.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
