MORGANTOWN — West Virginia has a short week and long odds as it readies itself to play against Cincinnati, considered the best team in the Big East, on Friday in Cincinnati.
They go in banged up.
“We got a lot of players banged up, beat up, don’t know if they are going to play, don’t know when they are going to play. I don’t need any questions on injuries right now,” Coach Bill Stewart said.
Running back Noel Divine missed virtually the entire second half against Louisville with an ankle sprain.
Trainer Dave Kerns said he is day-to-day.
“The kid’s been playing hard,” Stewart said of Devine, who finished with just 56 yards on 13 carries. “He’s been hurt for two weeks. I did not want to say anything after South Florida because everyone would say I was whining. The guy got the heck beat out of him today.”
Stewart did not want to be second-guessed on the way he has been using Devine.
“I know what I‘m doing. I’ve coached some of the greatest tailbacks in the country. I’m not an ‘I’ guy. You know me better than that. I’ve always been ‘we’ and ‘us.’ I’ve been on the field with Kelvin Bryant, Famous Amos Lawrence, Nappy McCallum at Navy and Tommy Haskins, the 1-AA rusher of all time.
“You cannot run a 5-foot-8, 175 pound man 30 and 35 times a game. Cannot! Sooner or later, he’s going to get hurt. That’s why I’ve been running him like I have.”
And he’s hurt.
Quarterback Jarrett Brown, who has not been the same since suffering a concussion three weeks ago, missed one play in this game with an ankle sprain, but did return and is expected to play next week.
Brown passed for only 100 yards during the game.
There are some defensive injuries to worry about.
Nose guard Chris Neild missed most of the game with a shoulder problem and defensive tackle Josh Taylor had back spasms. Scooter Berry, back from a suspension, played but also was banged up on his left knee and right shoulder.
Safety Sidney Glover also is suffering from a shoulder injury.
o o o o o o
Despite the injury, Devine surpassed 1,000 yards rushing for the second straight season. He now has 1,010 yards on 167 carries.
Other milestones:
• Quarterback Jarrett Brown ran for 43 yards and now has more than 1,000 rushing yards, the fourth quarterback in school history to surpass that mark. Patrick White leads, followed by Major Harris and Rasheed Marshall.
• Devine is the fifth Mountaineer to have 4,000 career all-purpose running yards, passing Arthur Ownes. Avon Cobourne is the all-time leader with 5,623 yards,
• Julian Miller’s 3 sacks give him 8.5 for the year and 12 for his career.
• Jock Sanders 63 rushing yards was a career high for him, breaking his mark of 58 against UConn in 2007.
• Defensive end Larry Ford made his first start, but wound up spending most of the day filling in at nose guard for Neild.
o o o o o o
It had been a long time coming, but Louisville finally intercepted a pass against WVU. The Cardinals had last intercepted one thrown by Major Harris in 1989. WVU had thrown 226 consecutive passes against the Cardinals without an interception.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
Bob Herzel
Mountaineers battling injury bug
Devine, Neild among those hurt
- Bob Herzel
-
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Patrone finally gets his due
Lee Patrone says he remembers it vividly, even though more than 50 years have passed, and while it was the greatest accomplishment in his life it has nothing to do with the West Virginia University basketball career that has lifted him into the Class of 2012 that will be inducted into the Mountaineer Sports Hall of Fame in September.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: No doubt WVU made out well
There was a cold, ill wind blowing in from the north on Friday.
It was the kind of wind that blows whenever a Pitt man opens his mouth, as the Pittsburgh athletic director Steve Pederson did. -
Tears and memories: VIDEO
It was mid-Thursday afternoon at the Morgantown Event Center and the crowd stood mostly silently in line that wound out of the Events Hall and into the hallway toward the staircase.
A young lady was there holding a singular golden rose
“I wish,” Rebecca Durst said, “it could be gold and blue.” -
HERTZEL COLUMN: Stew fondly remembered by players
The tributes have poured in all week for Bill Stewart, the former West Virginia University football coach whose sudden and unexpected death from a heart attack at age 59 on Monday stunned the state, but it wasn’t the administrators or executives or politicians who really knew him.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: White right there with Hall of Famers
Back on New Year’s Eve, 2008, shortly after West Virginia University had edged North Carolina, 31-30, to win the Meineke Car Care Bowl, an attempt was made to put Mountaineer quarterback Patrick White into his proper historical perspective.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Pat Beilein follows in father’s path
In a day filled with the sorrow of former West Virginia University football coach Bill Stewart’s sudden and unexpected death, there was a ray of sunshine that managed to slip through, a happening that shows us all that even in death there is life and as one son grieves, as does Stewart’s son, Blaine, somewhere else a father basks in pride over his son.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN - Stewart’s gift was giving
It was the kind of cosmic happening that defies description. We all come across them from time to time, leaving us in a state of disbelief.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: This ‘Maniac’ makes music with Kilicli
Mike Martin wasn’t long removed from his New York roots, a somewhat rare import in these parts compared to the migration of New Jerseyites who matriculate at West Virginia University.
-
Van Zant fired as WVU baseball coach
West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck believes with a new coach and a new stadium the Mountaineers can compete with the likes of Texas and Oklahoma for the Big 12 baseball championship but understands it will not come easily or quickly.
-
SEC, Big 12 team up for bowl
Even before the full impact of West Virginia University’s 2014 season-opening meeting with Alabama in Atlanta has been grasped, the opportunity presented itself for the two to meet again later in that season or future ones in a bowl agreement between the Big 12 and SEC that is much like the Rose Bowl agreement between the Big Ten and the Pac-12.
- More Bob Herzel Headlines
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Patrone finally gets his due
