Spring key for young WVU defensive line

West Virginia is in a much different position on the defensive line than it was this time a year ago. But for position coach Bruce Tall it’s one he’s quite familiar.

Gone from the roster is a wealth of experience as all three starters graduated leaving a hole of 78 career starts between Noble Nwachuku, Christian Brown and Darrien Howard. That means that the starting roles will be up for grabs and this spring will start the process of determining who fills those.

Fortunately for West Virginia, it’s a situation that Tall stepped into a few years ago when he arrived.

“Everybody had experience but us. But we had good energy and the guys performed well,” he said.

Filling the biggest, literal, hole on defense will come at nose guard where Howard served as a full-time work horse during his only year as a starter. A big physical option that served as the centerpiece to the Mountaineers defensive front, replacing Howard will be no easy task. But West Virginia has several players in mind that could fill that spot but at this point it remains a heated competition.

Among those that could play there would be redshirt junior Jaleel Fields, who missed last season with a knee injury, and junior college transfer Jalen Harvey who arrived in January. A former Syracuse player, Harvey is a big physical nose that is tough to move in the middle.

“He’s worked hard in drills and gives great effort,” Tall said.

One name missing from the ranks is redshirt sophomore Alec Shriner, who is going to work on the offensive line to start spring ball. There is a possibility he could move back to defense but for now the coaches plan to experiment with him on offense.

Another option could be redshirt senior Xavier Pegues, who has the ability to line up both inside or outside and the coaches plan to experiment with all options throughout the course of the spring.

“We’ll take some guys and move them around a little bit to look at them. We’ll take some of the ends and let them play both and that is one player we’ll look at doing that with,” Tall said. “It’s great to have him back out there this spring.”

Regardless who gets the starting nod at that spot, Tall envisions the position being more of timeshare than it was with Howard with the goal of playing at least two there.

As for the defensive end spots, redshirt sophomore Adam Shuler became nearly a half-time player last season while sophomore Reese Donahue took off at the end of the year. Those two will be strongly in the mix along with others such as redshirt freshman Jeffery Pooler, junior Ezekiel Rose and redshirt senior Jon Lewis along with the possibility of Pegues playing there as well.

The goal will be to create competition among the group to see which of them emerge, although the two returning players obviously have an inside track given their on the field experience.

“Reese and Shuler gave us a lot of reps,” defensive coordinator Tony Gibson said.

Rose is another that enrolled at West Virginia in January and Tall has been highly impressed with his motor and infectious attitude. The Mountaineers expect Rose to compete for time this fall and the program also will add two more defensive linemen after the spring in Darius Stills and Lamonte McDougle.

Tall doesn’t expect to start narrowing down anything on the defensive line until this fall, but the process of looking at how players fit into the scheme will begin this spring. He hopes to have around seven or eight players travel with the team this fall at the position.