WVSports.com continues with our popular feature: The 3-2-1. We'll break down three things we learned that week, two questions we have and give one prediction.
Here is the next installment of the 3-2-1 looking at the West Virginia football program, the latest on basketball and what’s happening in recruiting.
3 things I learned:
1–A new era now begins. West Virginia rallied but didn't have enough to complete the comeback in the 42-37 loss to Memphis in the Frisco Bowl to end the season.
It was a frustrating end, to a frustrating season in a frustrating era for the Mountaineers as the program fell to 6-7 on the season and wrapped up the tenure of head coach Neal Brown at 37-36 over the past six years. West Virginia didn't beat a team with a winning record in 2024 after the season started with so much promise and potential.
Senior quarterback Garrett Greene played one of the best games of his career throwing for a career-high 328 yards and 2 touchdowns, while rushing for 95 yards and a score but in the end, it wasn't enough and now the program will enter a new era.
The program can officially flip the page forward with Rich Rodriguez back in control of the football program after previously serving atop it from 2001-07.
As part of that, we've seen some serious movement both with the roster and the coaching staff. With on the field coaches, only tight ends coach Blaine Stewart is expected to return while there have been almost 20 players, some of those key ones, enter the transfer portal since the end of the season.
This is the nature of the beast when it comes to transitions but the focus now will be on getting the coaching staff in place and then rebuilding the roster with talented pieces.
That is the primary objective for Rodriguez in the coming weeks and with the dead period for visits in effect until Jan. 1, expect him to be focused on locking that in so the process can move forward throughout the off-season.
2–Transfer portal movement. West Virginia only lost a handful of players to the transfer portal prior to the Frisco Bowl with the centerpiece to those departures being redshirt freshman linebacker Josiah Trotter. He finished his one year on the field with 94 tackles and earned Big 12 Defensive Freshman of the Year Honors in the process.
But since the end of the bowl game, the Mountaineers have had a number of players decide to enter the transfer portal with the list including redshirt junior offensive lineman Tomas Rimac, redshirt sophomore linebacker Trey Lathan, redshirt sophomore wide receiver Hudson Clement, sophomore wide receiver Traylon Ray, junior running back CJ Donaldson, redshirt junior cornerback Ayden Garnes, redshirt freshman offensive lineman Johnny Williams and true freshman wide receiver DayDay Farmer just to name a few that have chosen that route.
That's a sizeable chunk of both talent and experience from a roster that already was dealing with the exit of some new pieces due to graduation. There's no question that Rich Rodriguez's first team in Morgantown would be better off with some of those guys in the picture but that's the nature of a coaching change in 2024. Especially one where the head coach is expected to entirely flip the culture from what was there before.
This isn't unexpected by any means as these players were all recruited by a different coaching staff and bought into a different message than the one they will be receiving now. There also is the element of exploring options for some of them given the fact that college football has essentially become a non-stop free agency when the portal gates swing open. But it's also important to note a few other things with this process.
There is always the option for any of these players to return if they choose to do so and the portal is going to swing both ways and the Mountaineers will have every opportunity to backfill the roster with pieces that Rodriguez wants to bring into the program.
The transfer portal will remain open until Dec. 28 which gives the possibility for more players to exit during that time but once a player is in the transfer portal it allows them the opportunity to take their time with the process to find their next fit.
Rich Rodriguez has added South Alabama cornerback Jordan Scruggs. The 5-foot-11, 176-pounder, took an official visit to Morgantown over the weekend and announced his intentions. Scruggs is coming off a season where he had 70 tackles an interception and also held offers from Virginia Tech, Colorado, UNLV and a number of others.
The Mountaineers also added Eastern Michigan wide receiver transfer Oran Singleton who hauled in 64 catches for 639 yards and a pair of touchdowns. He also had 23 rushing yards on 6 carries and will have one year left.
It's the first two transfer additions for West Virginia but it certainly won't be the last.
The Mountaineers have experienced quite a bit of turnover, but this isn't anything to be unexpected at this stage of the process and simply comes with a coaching change.
3–Rodriguez contract details. West Virginia welcomed back Rich Rodriguez as the 36th head coach of the football program and WVSports.com obtained The Employment Memorandum of Understanding through a Freedom of Information Act Request.
Rodriguez will have a five-year contract through the 2029 season where he will start at $3,500,000 and the amount will increase by $100,000 each year topping out at $3,900,000 in the final year of the deal.
