Mountaineers Work on Timing
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CAMPUS CONNECTION
By John Antonik for WVUsports.com
October 13, 2011 09:43 AM
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| Dana Holgorsen has the Mountaineers off to a 5-1 start and ranked 13th in the country this week. |
| Dan Friend photo |
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Dana Holgorsen wants to make sure the timing of his team’s off-week doesn’t affect his team’s timing. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
Holgorsen’s pass happy offense thrives when everyone is on the same page and the timing is precise - something Holgorsen says a precision offense can lose pretty quickly with inactivity.
“If you take a couple of weeks off you’re back to where you started,” he explained. “That’s the reality of throwing the ball and maintaining how fast you run your routes and knowing when the ball needs to come out of your hands. Timing from an offensive perspective is critical, and if you do take too many days off, then you’re going to lose it.”
That’s why Holgorsen said the team has devoted the vast majority of their time this week improving what they are doing instead of spending more time scrimmaging the younger guys.
“There’s still not ample time to do that,” Holgorsen said. “You only have four hours a day. Those young guys are so vital to our scout team look that we still use them for that. Their time is going to come.
“The majority of our time right now is to continue to get better at what we’re doing in all three phases,” he said. “It’s more important for us offensively to keep timing in practice instead of working against specific looks.
“It’s more important for our defense to practice against specific looks to where we can’t give each other that,” he said. “That is what our scout squad is for.”
Holgorsen says the coaches’ job is to make sure the players are continually improving from week one through week 12.
“It takes time,” he said. “It’s not a snap of your fingers. It’s not like you can just show it to them on tape and say go do it.”
Holgorsen said the coaches have taken time doing some self-scouting this week to make sure they eliminate any tendencies the team has shown through the first six games of the season. That is an on-going process, says the coach.
“Heading into game three we look at the accumulation of the first two,” he said. “After six and heading into game seven, we’ll look at the accumulation of the first six.”
And while the players will also get some extra time to devote to academics and healing old wounds, Holgorsen said most of his coaching staff will utilize the weekend to catch up on recruiting.
“We’re focusing on areas right now,” he said. “This one week we’ve designated as our off-week and we’ll send all 10 coaches out, me included. Everyone is focusing on their area.”
As for the conference shuffling taking place right now and the threat of additional movement in the future, Holgorsen said some of those questions are beginning to come up with recruits.
“We get a few questions,” he said. “We get questions from recruits about absolutely everything. That’s called recruiting. Every time you talk to a recruit you ask, do you have any questions? They usually have questions and you usually answer them.”
With Pitt and Syracuse leaving the Big East for the ACC at some point in the future, and TCU changing course and heading to the Big 12, Holgorsen says West Virginia’s recruiting approach really doesn’t change that much.
“I think the product that we put out there is very appealing to a lot of people,” he said. “People want to come to West Virginia because of what you see – the atmosphere, the excitement, what you’re putting out there on the field, what the athletic department brings to the table – perennial top 20 programs in football, men’s and women’s basketball, why wouldn’t you want to be a part of it?”
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