Big East Preview: West Virginia Mountaineers
August 12th, 2008 by Jason Collette
It is a new year in Morgantown with Rich Rodriguez finally leaving after saying he would not for the umpteenth time.
The team is now run by Bill Stewart who has the highest winning percentage of any coach in Mountaineer history a 1-0.
All kidding aside, nothing much is going to change in fantasy dreamland. In fact, it may even get better this year.
This place has always been a fantasy dreamland for rushing statistics and that will not change in 2008. In the past, the numbers have been split between Pat White, Steve Slaton, and Owen Schmidt. In 2007, Noel Devine (right, Icon SMI) was introduced to that mix which cut into Steve Slaton.
In 2008, both Schmidt and Slaton are gone leaving everything to White and Devine which makes both very attractive players this season – Devine moreso than White.
White has always put up his numbers when he is healthy or not playing against USF. If White goes down, athletic Jarrett Brown is back to back him up, but it gets dicey after that. Brown has missed time in camp this week and slotback Jock Sanders has been running the 2nd team offense.
As mentioned earlier, Noel Devine could be huge, at least statistically this year. He’s a midget at 5′8 and 175 but he is an explosive midget that few people can catch when he is in the open field. He averaged 8.6 ypc in part time duyty last year and scored six times. He will get the rock as often as White leaves it in his gut on the spread option play but is not much of a threat out of the backfield a a receiver. The depth chart behind Devine is not as explosive as it is Jock Sanders and a bunch of question marks. There is more of a dropoff at fullback where the loss of the freakish Owen Schmidt will be sorely missed. Terrence Kearns is a name to watch for this month as well in the backfield
The receiving corps will miss Darius Reynaud but everyone else comes back. Reynaud’s loss is huge because his 12 scores were 75% of the receiving touchdowns last season and his 733 yards receiving were more than the rest of the wide receivers, combined. The receiving corps has a lot of athletes but it is tough to imagine any of them stepping in to fill Reynaud’s shoes. Joining Dorrell Jalloh and Tito Gonzalez are power forward Wes Lyons, Brandon Hogan, and Jock Sanders fits in here too. Nobody here is worthy of WR1 or WR2 status just yet but Jalloh is the top pick for WR3 on a fantasy roster as he has the most experience in the offense. The tight end position is blocking only here if they even make it on the field.
Pat McAfee is back for the kicking duties that mainly consiste of him hitting a ton of extra points – 64 of 65 last year. He is not an accurate field goal kicker but he hits enough extra points to make up for it.
The Mountaineer defense is productive as it created 34 turnovers and had 35 sacks last season. They are near the top in yardage allowed every year as many of their games turn into one-sided affairs where the other team is passing most of the game. There are only four returning starters on the team so look for a drop-off here. The schedule has Villanova, Marshall, and Auburn as the out of conference home games while the team travels to Greeenville to face ECU and Boulder to face Colorado. They get USF and Cincinnati at home this year too making the schedule a bit easier compared to the tough OOC schedule (especially for a Big East squad).
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