West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez believed that his team used the second opportunity of the spring to improve which is exactly what he wanted to see.
The Mountaineers won’t strap on pads until Saturday, but the second day in shorts inside the indoor facility was one where the head man was pleased with the efforts out of his team on the field.
“We got better. Thought our guys worked pretty hard,” he said. “A lot of evaluations are still going on.”
That last part will be a recurring theme throughout the spring with so many new faces on the roster and the coaching staff is wanting to see some basic things out of each of the players on the roster. One of those is simply treating the practice opportunities as a chance to play hard in front of the coaches.
“That to me is a certain type of ability. We obviously have to have a certain skill set, size, strength, speed and all of that kind of stuff but the playing hard part you hope is a given,” he said.
Now, there is often a difference between what a player believes is playing hard and what the coaches do but that’s the job of the staff to make sure that those two ideals align.
The Mountaineers added over 40 players to the roster either through the transfer portal or the incoming mid-term enrollee freshmen and the job of the coaches is to sort through who on the roster is capable of taking that next step to put themselves in position to help the team win.
Given this is the second stint in Morgantown for Rodriguez after coaching the team from 2001-07, he already is experienced when it comes to building a winner at West Virginia but this time around the process can be a little more expedited given the rise of the transfer portal. In the past, developing a culture and finding ways to fill roster spots took more time because now you’re able to bring in older and experienced players.
That’s exactly what Rodriguez and his coaching staff did in December and January landing a total of 23 transfers with only one year of eligibility remaining to help inject experience into the roster. That doesn’t include several others that have played multiple years at other stops.
“Most of them are grown men, so it's a little, there's still a difference between an 18-year-old high school kid and a 22-year-old fourth year grown man that's been in a program somewhere. So, I think you can fix some issues quicker than ever before. Now, you'll have other issues that come up, but I think you can fix stuff quicker,” Rodriguez said.
One of those areas that the Mountaineers hope they were able to address through the transfer portal is the pass rush adding several experienced pieces such as American Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year EDGE Jimmori Robinson. But how effective those pieces will be will play out over the spring.
“We needed to address that in recruiting, I think we did but again we haven’t had in practice in pads yet so stay tuned,” Rodriguez said.
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