West Virginia defensive coordinator Zac Alley is preparing for more roster volatility following the end of spring practice, and he knows the portal will work both ways as he continues to build his defense.
Saturday represented the end of WVU's spring practice, but it's just the start of what's to come for the Mountaineers roster. And that is already underway.
"We'll assess the team, obviously, from the spring, we'll watch this film and kind of the last chance for guys to make an impression. We'll figure it out from there, depending on the numbers. I'm sure some guys will go in the portal we weren't expecting. We may have a number of changes that we're not prepared for, per se. But we'll obviously go out and address the needs in the portal once that happens," Alley said.
Part of addressing the transfer portal is first figuring out who is entering to leave WVU and what other guys elsewhere around the country are hitting the portal as well.
"A lot of guys announce early, you know, on Twitter that they're going in the portal when it opens," Alley said.
The next step is the evaluation piece, targeting who they want to get in the portal and start to go after those guys.
"You evaluate those guys, figure out who you want to target and, you know, we'll have to go after them hard once the portal opens. And then you kind of know, I would say in the back of my mind, you know, I know that, hey, there might be some attrition here, maybe some attrition there. And so we'll be looking at those particular positions to replace them, you know, but that's to be determined, you know, kind of over the next couple of weeks," Alley said.
After the window closes, Alley's attention then turns to finding ways to schematically put guys in the proper position to make plays.
"You know, you think players, not plays, you know, put guys in position to be successful. Based on who's on the team and what they do well. If a guy doesn't do something well, don't ask him to do that and I think we've done a great job of that historically in this defense of putting guys in positions to win. So once we've kind of settled the roster down after the end of the portal window and get to summer, we'll start making some of those decisions," Alley said.
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