MORGANTOWN — West Virginia University had just scored its first touchdown of the 2010 season and now Corey Smith, the new kickoff specialist who had transferred in from Alabama, brought his right hand down and began to approach the football.

As it did the crowd of 57,862 seemed to suck the air right out of the stadium as they each took a deep breath, knowing WVU’s history covering kickoffs over the last few years has put the Mountaineers at the base of an erupting volcano.

This time the football soared through the air to the Coastal 9, where a returner gathered it and began upfield, only to run into a talented young defensive back named Pat Miller, who dumped him on his posterior at the 19.

This team that ranked 107th in kickoff coverage last year had held the return to 10 yards and the opponent was starting inside its 20.

Times, apparently, had changed.

Steve Dunlap, the veteran assistant in charge of safeties, had taken over the return team and had spent the off-season digging through everything from Rockne to Saban trying to find the right answer for his team. He had watched film, talked with other coaches, talked with his own coaches.

“We spent quite a bit of time developing a new concept,” he said as he prepared for this week’s battle against Marshall. “It’s not just the concept, though. It’s the teaching aspect as well. We broke it up in parts, then put all the little pieces together.

“We coach it like a defense. Who’s going to block you? What kind of block will they use? How do you beat that block?”

Dunlap found everyone willing to pitch in, from coaches to players.

“No one likes to be told how bad you are and that included me, too,” he said, referring to the remarks that they earned last year. “I helped coach that team. We’re all part of the fix and kind of proud of the kids.”

It is, Dunlap admitted, the players who make the difference. This year he had volunteers from many of the team’s best athletes.

“I did get a little greedy and took a group of good players,” Dunlap said. “It’s all about the players; you know that. The amazing thing about it is that a lot of our good players came and volunteered. They said, ‘Hey, we don’t want to start at the 50 this year.’ That’s a compliment to our seniors and that leadership Coach (Bill) Stewart is talking about.”

It starts, however, with the kickoff, even before you worry about coverage. Last year the Mountaineers had no one who could get the ball deep with hang time, forcing them to often “pooch” kick, the football coming down at the 30 to begin the return. Field position was completely lost.

Smith, however, is able to reach the end zone unless the conditions are bad. He hit two into the end zone on Saturday and another to the goal line, averaging almost four seconds of hang time.

The hang time allowed the coverage group, made up mostly of linebackers and safeties and including such stars as Robert Sands and J.T. Thomas, to get downfield and make the tackle.

“I told the kickoff team they did a great job,” Smith said. “I have to give a ton of credit to the cover guys. They were flying around. They looked like a bunch of missiles going down there.”

The fact of the matter is that the Mountaineers put the game away right at the start of the second half with a touchdown that was a gift from the coverage team, Smith hitting the ball to goal line and Sands making a huge hit to jar the ball loose, where Darwin Cook could recover it on the 19 – again, inside the 20.

“I told them right after the start of the second half, we pretty much got about half that touchdown for the offense, recovering that fumble,” Smith said.

While Smith wasn’t part of it last year as he sat out, he saw the train wreck that was the coverage team.

“It was something that I think everyone looked at and said, ‘We want to change it,’” he said. “It was embarrassing seeing where we were ranked. Everyone took a lot of pride in changing it and making it what it needed to be.”

With all this said, it wasn’t perfect, and Dunlap was fiddling with it this week as he prepared to face a dangerous return team in Marshall that last year ran one kickoff back to the WVU 25.

Even Smith mishit one kickoff, which is costly.

“You know, everyone misses the driver once in a while. I miss about one out of two. He missed one out of six. That’s not too bad,” Dunlap said.

But Smith was kicking himself over it, although not as hard as he was kicking the football.

Kicking off, he explained, is not as easy as it may look.

“There’s a lot more to it than people see from the outside. They want hang time as well as distance. It’s pretty taxing on your body. I have to know how well to warm up. I was sort of getting tired because you never know when you might kick off. It could come at any time,” he said.

“You need to know what part of the field you want to put it in, the proper hang time they want. It’s really putting everything into it. If you miss, even a half inch on the ball, that could be 20 yards on the field.”

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.