No. 90 connects Talley’s past success with Mesidor’s high potential

There are many things that Akheem Mesidor and Darryl Talley share.

The first: a number. Talley’s No. 90 will be retired on Saturday, making Mesidor the last Mountaineer who will ever wear it.

The second: a role. Nearly 40 years after Talley last donned the gold and blue, Mesidor is playing the part of West Virginia’s elite defender.

“I think Darryl would be pretty proud of how Akheem’s played in that number so far this year,” Mountaineers head coach Neal Brown said.

Through four games, the sophomore defensive lineman has tallied 17 tackles — a high among the team’s defensive linemen — including 2.5 for loss. Those numbers come after Mesidor burst on the scene as a freshman, collecting 32 tackles and five sacks in 10 games.

Entering the fall, it was last season’s success that drew many eyes to Mesidor, but he hasn’t always been in the spotlight. Hailing from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Mesidor may have been a three-star prospect but, like most coming from up north, there were many unknowns about his game.

The same could be said for Talley, who played in only 10 varsity games in high school. He suited up at Shaw (Oh.) in East Cleveland, a high school not known as a hotbed for talent. Still, then-West Virginia head coach Frank Cignetti took a chance on Talley, and it paid off big time.

Talley totaled 484 tackles during his four-year career with the Mountaineers, including 19 quarterback sacks. He was named an All-American following his senior season, making him only the third in program history at the time to achieve such an honor.

By the time his college career came to a close, Talley had developed a reputation as one of the Mountaineers’ all-time most feared and impactful defenders. Many think Mesidor is following a similar trajectory.

"I think he's going to be really damn good,” defensive line coach Andrew Jackson said of Mesidor earlier this year. “I don't know what the end goal of that is or what that means but I can see that guy playing on Sundays."

Defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley doesn’t shy away from sharing his praise of Mesidor either, saying that his impact goes further than the box score.

“He plays the game the way the game was designed to be played,” co-defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley said. “That’s really it. I know he gets tired sometimes, but he doesn’t play like it,. There’s a couple of plays that a lot of them don’t show up on stat sheets that [show] just relentless effort to the football, and that’s what it is. It’s as simple as that. That’s what sets him apart from not only a lot of guys on this team, but across college football.”

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