WVU beat Rutgers last weekend and clinched a share of the Big East championship alongside Pittsburgh and UConn. The Mountaineers can blame no one but themselves for not going to a BCS game, they did after all lose to Syracuse at home and the eventual Big East BCS repesentative UConn in a sloppy, mistake filled overtime loss.
In the end, the Mountaineers will travel to the best Big East bowl you can go to if not in the BCS, the Champs Sports Bowl...yeah that one.
We can talk about the lackluster Big East bowl lineup later, right now I want to talk about the masterful job two people in particular did with this WVU team. One will surprise you and the other won't. I'll start with the obvious pick.
1) Geno Smith- Geno had a historic first season as WVU starting QB, he led the Big East in passing efficiency and had 23 TDs versus only 6 interceptions. Smith's completion percentage was 65.8 which put him among the top 20 passers in all of college football. Not to mention that he led the Big East in just about all offensive categories and had 11 TDs and only 4 INTs in Big East contests, Smith outperformed all initial predictions.
He only had three games this year in which his completion percentage was under 60%, which is unbelievably pinpoint for a sophomore QB who played very little last season. He came in firing and ended the season on the same note having his best game of the season against Rutgers going 23-28 with 352 yards passing with a touchdown and no interceptions.The way Geno has dealt with the pressure of being the third WVU starting QB in as many years on a team that was expected to be much better than they were last year has been picture perfect, I can say I can count on one hand this season the amount of times Smith has been visibly rattled, he's led the team with confidence and poise and finished off the season on the best possible note personally.
It took a lot in that locker room to get this team back on the right page after the Syracuse and Connecticut fiasco's, but the other reason they were able to right the ship was wait for it...Bill Stewart.
2) Bill Stewart- Bill is a man who has been the butt of many jokes in Morgantown. But honestly, when you look at what was occurred up in road in Pittsburgh with Dave Wannstedt, we should really be fortunate with what we've gotten here the last couple of years.
A lot of what people dislike about Stewart is his very nice and easy going exterior, the question usually is whether the players are motivated by such a figure. As someone who had been on the sidelines for all the Mountaineers home games this season, the Bill Stewart I see is one that isn't always huggable and cuddly.
He's the guy that got the Mountaineers to open their eyes before their season went by the wayside, he's gained an aggressiveness that wasn't as apparent his first season on the sideline.
Is there an argument to made about why WVU went into the slump in the first place, yes, but the outcome can't be ignored. Another nine win season and now Stewart is 27-11 as WVU head coach and 14-6 inside the Big East. In a college football landscape where coaches are expected to produce immediately if you look at the numbers, so far Stewart has.
He's getting the players to respond to him and even though you can say his first year was not what it could've been with Pat White under center and a preseason top 10 ranking, the last two years should more than make up for what occurred that first year under Stewart.
These Mountaineer teams were not the most stacked rosters in history, but they were still able to pull out consecutive nine win seasons in a constantly changing Big East, look at some of these powerful college programs and how they have dealt with coaching changes: USC, Notre Dame, Tennessee, Michigan and the results have been poor.
And you can't discount the effort it took to get this year's team back on track, there will be years where adversity will hit and to me the way you respond in seasons like this mean more than winning with a lot of talent under tropical conditions. Bill Stewart deserves a lot of credit for what he did this year and a lot less blame.
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