The night Bruce broke Twitter

Former WVU defensive end Bruce Irvin in today's Seattle Times

It didn’t take a genius to realize that former West Virginia defensive end Bruce Irvin was going to be the first Mountaineer drafted in this year’s NFL draft. He’s got all the tools athletically to have what it takes to be extremely successful at the next level (although he’ll probably be best suited to make a move to outside linebacker instead of defensive end due to his size issues).But some of the problems he had in his past before coming to WVU, as well as an underwhelming senior season in which he underachieved a little bit, many thought that Irvin would be selected in the early second or maybe even sneak into the later picks of the first round.That’s why a little surprise happened when NFL commissioner Roger Goodell took the podium to announce the Seattle Seahawks’ first-round pick, the 15th overall.  

And that’s when Twitter (or at least the WVU hashtag) broke. Every second there seemed to be about 25 new tweets popping up, congratulating Irvin and talking about the newest member of Pete Carroll’s team.

Some, as you might expect from Mountaineer fans, were happy to see Irvin have his dream of playing in the NFL realized. To see all he’s gone through and knowing how much he’s had to work, he deserves a chance. He’s a rags to riches story in every sense of that phrase. Now, the Seahawks just have to hope he doesn’t turn out like WVU’s last first rounder, Pacman Jones.

Others weren’t thrilled with the pick and called it a bit of a reach, considering how early it was.

 

But there were a couple of good stories published today about Irvin. NFL.com had a piece about how Irvin wants to reward Seattle for taking a risk on him that early.

The Seattle Times also had a very good column about Irvin that deserves a read.

Former WVU DE Miller flying under radar heading into draft

Former WVU defensive end Julian Miller

If you had to guess what player in this year’s NFL draft has the most sacks in his college career, there’s a very good chance you’d be wrong.

Well, you’d be wrong if you based your selection solely on the draft projections made by the draft experts.

The correct answer would be a defensive end from West Virginia. And he’s NOT Bruce Irvin.

Former Mountaineer Julian Miller and his 29.5 career sacks is more than anybody in this year’s draft class.

While that stat alone is pretty impressive, the fact that Miller wasn’t just somebody who had a really good senior or anything like that. Every season he played in a West Virginia uniform, he produced.

As he got older and was expected to get better, he did. His production on the field was as good as anyone in the nation, and off the field he became a leader for the Mountaineer defense.

He did all of that with an unselfish, team-first attitude.

“I’m so proud of those guys and the way we went out and fought,” Miller said last season. “All year we’ve been kind of a second half team, but just the way we went out and played in that second half was just lights out. I’m just glad we could do it tonight.”

Still, Miller is projected to be anywhere from a sixth-round selection to an undrafted free agent.

Admittedly, I’m not an NFL, football or NFL draft expert (I’m more of a basketball guy), but if Julian Miller lasts this long in this season’s draft, he will be the guy that people look at as one of the biggest steals of the draft.

Sure, he might not be as big as your prototypical NFL defensive end. He’s not a freak athlete like Bruce Irvin.

But it just seems like players with intangibles seem to have a lot of success at the next level.

Not everyone has it.

Miller does.

And if any NFL general manager happens to be reading this right now, you should take him. You won’t regret it.

Thompson ready to showcase his talents in Spring Game

WVU freshman receiver Jordan Thompson. (Photo: Matt Sunday/The Daily Athenaeum)

Since he started playing sports, Jordan Thompson has had his fair share of obstacles he’s had to overcome.

People have told him he’s too short, not big enough, not good enough, but he’s never listened to it and it’s paying dividends now that he’s finishing his first spring with the West Virginia football team.

But throughout it all, he’s found a way to keep his head down and continue working. Thompson said it comes from the way he grew up. His father also told him that, in order to be successful, you have to be tough and stay confident in what you can do.

“I’ve always been the younger person on the field, always the smallest in all sports. You can’t just keep being hard on yourself. Just push, keep driving and things will get better and success will follow with that. Confidence just came naturally from the way I grew up,” Thompson said.

 As for the toughness that he’s shown, the 5-foot-9 receiver had an interesting story to tell.

“My first time putting shoulder pads on was nine years old – my parents wouldn’t let me play flag, so I went straight to tackle,” Thompson said. “My dad said that flag wasn’t for men. He said you can just play that in the backyard, so you might as well go straight to tackle. I didn’t have any say in it.”

He’s embracing the chance he’s getting as a freshman at WVU. And he knew that he’d get that chance, that’s all he needed.

Thompson said he saw guys like Dustin Garrison (who he played against in high school back in Texas), who was undersized and underrecruited like he was, get a chance to show what he can do, and thrived while earning a starting job. Note: The only other BCS school to show any interest in Thompson was Texas Tech. He attended their camp but “they didn’t hit me back, though.”

“I knew that Dustin could play, but no one really gave him the opportunity – West Virginia did. The first time I saw Dustin and realized he was going to start, I knew West Virginia didn’t care (what class you were), if you deserved to play, you were going to be on the field. That was definitely a benefit in the recruiting process,” Thompson said.

 At West Virginia, he’s also getting the chance to learn under arguably the most electric player in the nation in  inside receiver Tavon Austin. The senior only has one year left and, after this year, someone will have to fill his shoes.

Thompson thinks he can be that guy.

“If they can’t catch you, then you can’t get hit. Me and (Tavon) both are small, but Tavon plays beyond his size. He’s a big-time player,” Thompson said. “I could see myself doing what he’s doing, it’s just going to take time and determination just to get there. I definitely saw myself in his shoes.”

High expectations bring national spotlight to Morgantown

Since WVU's win in the Orange Bowl in January, the Mountaineers have been getting a lot more attention from national media outlets like ESPN leading up to the Gold-Blue Spring Game. (Screenshot via ESPN.com)

It was just last year that West Virginia’s 15 spring practices went by without too much attention from national media outlets, even though the team was going through an interesting situation with then-head coach-in-waiting Dana Holgorsen and former head coach Bill Stewart.

Crazy what scoring 70 points in the Orange Bowl can do for your program, huh?

With one of the most interesting, young head coaches in the country and a handful of the nation’s best playmakers, including quarterback Geno Smith (STORY PLUG ALERT: who will be the third QB to start for two years under Dana Holgorsen) and receivers Stedman Bailey and Tavon Austin, ESPN and CBS Sports are making trips to Morgantown this spring.

Last week, it started with ESPN’s Big 12 blogger David Ubben stopping by for a few days to catch practice. On a side note, DA’s newly appointed Managing Editor Cody Schuler and I got to meet Ubben at Oliverio’s last week, and he’s a pretty cool guy … Excited to work with him this year.

In the couple of days Ubben was in Morgantown, he got a little more than he had bargained for I assume, doing more interviews than Dana Holgorsen did. Here he is with WVIllustrated’s Scott Grayson …

This week some more ESPN guys are in town. Joe Schad, Chris Spielman, Jesse Palmer and (more famously) the ESPN College GameDay bus are in Morgantown to tape interviews with Holgorsen.

CBS Sports’ Bruce Feldman, who wrote an awesome piece on Holgorsen last year leading up to the LSU game, is back in town as well.

It’s easy to see people are more excited for this season than any in recent memory, and definitely since I’ve been covering the team.

How does Dana describe the Mountaineers?

After 11 practices, West Virginia’s got one week before its spring game.

Head coach Dana Holgorsen has met with the media four times now over the course of spring practice, and he’s had plenty of time to talk about what his team is (and sometimes isn’t) doing well.

That got me to thinking, how has he described his team the most? Well, using the transcripts provided to us following each press conference, I made a word cloud to look at what words the second-year head coach has used the most.

Looking at that, here were the words he’s said the most: Guys, back, got, get, lot, better.

As in, “The guys coming back got (a) lot better.”

That should strike a lot of fear into every single defensive coordinator who sees West Virginia on his schedule.

The Mountaineers broke 17 records last season, and have nine returning starters back from a team that set a bowl record for most points in a game.

It’s kind of hard to believe that guys who were already that good can get even better, but it seems like they have up to this point in the spring. If they’re as good as advertised, some really big things can happen.

But it’s going to end up depending on the defense. If West Virginia can find some guys to lead the way on that side of the ball, it should have a solid defensive unit to complement the dangerous Mountaineer offense.

Truck to play in Portsmouth

West Virginia guard Truck Bryant will play his first game of the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament today.

Since 1953, the Portsmouth Invitational has invited 64 of the best seniors in college basketball to take part in the four-day event.

Bryant will look to have a good showing in the tournament this year, much like his former teammate Casey Mitchell did last season when he was named to the all-tournament team. The senior averaged 16.9 points and 3.1 rebounds per game this season and shot better than 30 percent from three-point range.

The K&D Rounds Landscaping team that Bryant will be playing on features Penn’s Zack Rosen, who averaged 18.5 points and 5.2 assists per game, and Cameron Moore from UAB (16.1 points and 10.5 rebounds).

Wednesday’s game will put Truck up against Wisconsin Jordan Taylor – one of the best point guards in the nation – and Georgetown shooting guard Jason Clark (who Bryant guarded when the Mountaineers played the Hoyas this season). Bryant will also likely get the opportunity to defend the nation’s leading scorer in Oakland’s Reggie Hamilton (25.7 ppg).

A total of nine players will be participating in the tournament this season:

• Truck Bryant, West Virginia
• Jason Clark, Georgetown
• Henry Sims, Georgetown
• Ashton Gibbs, Pittsburgh
• Kyle Kuric, Louisville
• Augustus Gilchrist, South Florida
• Yancy Gates, Cincinnati
• Jordan Theodore, Seton Hall
• Herb Pope, Seton Hall

The only Big 12 players playing in Portsmouth this week will be Missouri’s Kim English and Ricardo Ratliffe.

Bryant’s team will play its first game is tonight at 9 p.m.

WVU defense looking for depth

The Big 12 Conference is home to some of the fastest and most explosive offenses in the nation.

West Virginia co-defensive coordinator Joe DeForest, who spent 11 seasons with Oklahoma State before heading to Morgantown this season, said it wasn’t uncommon for some teams to take 100 snaps in a game.

And, because of that, the Mountaineers are looking for some depth that they can rotate in and out on the defensive side of the football this season.

“We are only really a spot or two shy from getting what we want,” DeForest said. “This isn’t a rebuilding year for our defense … You have to have depth where a kid can spell a guy for 10 plays in the first half and 10 plays in the second half. We have to develop that depth in order to play in the Big 12 since there are so many fast-tempo, spread offenses.”

One of those positions still evaluating what kind of depth it has is the linebacker corps, coached by former Pitt defensive coordinator Keith Patterson. With the switch the a 3-4 scheme, the Mountaineers are not only trying to evaluate the young linebackers who haven’t gotten to play much (or at all) at the college level but they’ve also converted some former safeties to fill spots at linebacker this season.

But Patterson says they aren’t a hard time doing it so far.

“The linebackers have the easiest adjustment,” Patterson said. “The linebackers have to read and react because the defensive front has changed … The linemen will probably have the biggest transition.

“We do have young guys. We will try to keep it simplisitic for those guys and not try to do too much. We want to try and build something with those guys, and we are working toward that with each practice.”

As Patterson said, the defensive linemen could have the most difficult transition.

This could be especially true with the loss of Julian Miller and Bruce Irvin. They return a few guys who played significant time last season in Will Clarke and Jorge Wright, but defensive line coach Erik Slaughter said it will be a team effort to find those replacements.

“I’ve never looked at the d-line where you have one guy that does it,” Slaughter said. “You have to work together, not only in the run game but especially rushing the quarterback. You can’t put replacing those guys all on one guy, it’s all of our job.

“It may be nine guys that replace those two guys.”