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–West Virginia closes the season strong. The Mountaineers came into the week understanding that they very much still controlled their own destiny in regards to a potential trip to the NCAA Tournament. Well, West Virginia did exactly what they needed to do by going 2-0 on the week with a win at Utah and then at home against UCF.
The win against Utah was a gritty back-and-forth game where the Mountaineers had to overcome a 12-point first-half deficit and then were able to grind it out down the stretch for a 71-69 win. The team then returned home and took care of UCF after a dominating first half to then hold on in the second half and send the senior class out in style in their final game in Morgantown with a 72-65 win.
The Mountaineers senior class is one that made a leap of faith in joining head coach Darian DeVries' program with so much change going on but it was fitting close to that chapter for the group. The Big 12 Tournament still is on deck, but at least West Virginia can enter into the final week prior to the NCAA Tournament Selection Show relaxed.
The only question remaining at this stage is where will this team be seeded when the Selection show does debuts? The resume is strong and we'll dive into this more later on in the article but credit to DeVries and this team. Down the stretch run of this season, anytime that the Mountaineers ran into a must-win type of situation they were able to get it done. That included beating Cincinnati and TCU at home, Utah on the road and the way that this group was able to close, beating UCF on Senior Day.
It has been far from a perfect season but when you consider the challenges that this team has navigated with an already short roster, a 19-12 finish overall and 10-10 in the Big 12 Conference is quite the accomplishment in year one under DeVries.
The way that this team fought down the stretch and played with effort is how it will ultimately be remembered and it's setting a solid foundation for the team in the future.
2–No decision on quarterback expected anytime soon. This isn't necessarily a surprise by any means and was actually one of my predictions before the start of spring practice in this column but head coach Rich Rodriguez essentially left little doubt on the subject.
The Mountaineers want the competition at quarterback to continue past the spring and into the summer with Rodriguez even joking that a final decision might not come until a minute before the opening game of the 2025 season Aug. 31 against Robert Morris.
And while that was a joke, there is certainly a lot of truth behind it. That's because the longer the battle rages the more competition that the head coach can create in order for him to find more than one of the options that he feels he can win with in the fall.
West Virginia wants to have as many as three, if not four, quarterbacks that the coaching staff believes they can win with in large part because of how they plan to utilize the position in their offense. The Mountaineers want to play with all 11 and because of that it means that having more than one player that they believe can step in and run the offense effectively will be critical once the fall rolls around.
“I feel pretty confident that with the talent that we have right now, we can have three guys that we can win with. But there’s still a lot of work to do to determine the starter,” Rodriguez said about the battle.
The Mountaineers have a spirited competition between redshirt junior Nicco Marchiol, redshirt senior Jaylen Henderson, redshirt junior Max Brown, redshirt freshman Khalil Wilkins and true freshman Scotty Fox. Each of them has essentially a clean slate under the new coaching staff is going to give them every opportunity to prove they can handle the role. That means pushing this battle out as long as possible in order to not only keep things under wraps for opponents but to push that competition further.
Rodriguez admitted that it's possible that one of the options could surge ahead of the others but at this point, it seems unlikely that is going to occur before the summer months for a lot of different reasons.
