Rodriguez settles down after victory
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) – It took a few days for West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez to settle down. Rodriguez appeared calmer Monday after a weekend tirade in which he ripped his defense for “not playing smart” in a sloppy 42-14 win that dropped the No. 5 Mountaineers one spot in The Associated Press poll.
Despite an inability to put away opponents until the fourth quarter in recent weeks, West Virginia survived a two-game road trip and is 5-0 heading into its Big East opener Saturday against Syracuse (3-3, 0-1).
“We’re finally back home after a month and we’re ready to go,” Rodriguez said.
The game is the first at Mountaineer Field since Sept. 14 and West Virginia’s last until facing Cincinnati on Nov. 11.
Rodriguez declared Monday the beginning of the Mountaineers’ defense of their Big East championship.
That meant trying to correct glaring problems from last week, including 11 penalties for 132 yards, failing to pressure the quarterback and not stopping Mississippi State’s offense until it got close to the end zone.
“We gave (up) seven first downs because of penalties. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a game where we gave a team that many first downs,” Rodriguez said. “Those are, to me, like seven turnovers.”
Mississippi State also had six of 13 third-down conversions.
Asked how he expected to fix the errors, the coach laughed and said, “scream and yell a lot.”
“I wasn’t happy after the game. I think everybody knew that. We’ll talk it over again with the team today just to get it corrected,” Rodriguez said. “I just want us to play what we call West Virginia football, which is fast, hard, smart and physical. We’ve been playing (that way) most of the time, but we didn’t play very smart Saturday.”
West Virginia is still trying to get the kinks out on a defense that lost four of five starters from the secondary from a year ago. But Syracuse coach Greg Robinson doesn’t believe the Mountaineers are as bad off as Rodriguez had indicated.
“They’ve played the run very well all year. In the Mississippi State game, there might have been a little bit here and a little bit there, but I think they’ve played very well,” Robinson said. “I think a lot of people were expecting to see a falloff because of the fine players that left last year’s team.”
As much as Rodriguez likes to pay attention to detail, he is overlooking some things this week.
He refuses to pay attention to his team’s drop in the AP poll despite winning, next week’s debut of the BCS rankings or the possibility that even a one-loss team eventually could leapfrog the Mountaineers, who are the only Top 10 team that hasn’t faced a ranked opponent this season.
“Not worried about it at all. I’m worried about playing Syracuse. That may have sounded like coachspeak, but really. Who cares?” Rodriguez said. “Let’s worry about it at the end of the year.
“Our first goal each and every year since I was hired six years ago is to win the Big East Conference. We take a lot of pride in that in trying to defend our championship.”
That starts Saturday against Syracuse. West Virginia has been dominant at home so far this season, outscoring three opponents 139-37, while Steve Slaton’s two best rushing efforts of the season – 203 and 195 yards – have come at Mountaineer Field.
“You would have to mention that,” Robinson said.