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Who has been the most important coach hire and/or rehire so far?
This is with no disrespect to anybody else on the coaching staff but without question to me it’s Zac Alley. Not only did the football program take the defensive play caller away from Oklahoma with a strong financial commitment of $1.5 million over the next three years, but it was the name that I heard from the start was at the top of the board for the position. Head coach Rich Rodriguez made it clear that he wanted to make a strong commitment on the defensive side of the ball with a top tier coordinator and he had the funding to go out and make it happen.
Turns out that was much more than just coach speak as Rodriguez landed a young coordinator with experience working with him and success at every stop in his coaching career. Alley is an aggressive defensive coordinator who is known for forcing the issue and has been able to adapt his scheme to the available personnel over the course of his time as a coordinator. That’s not to say there haven’t been some key additions in other areas across the staff, but Alley is the most important.
Do you feel the QB job is Nicco’s job to lose? Or will we have a true competition in the QB room?
Marchiol is going to have the first crack at making an impression in the race for the starting quarterback job and has a lot of the qualities that Rodriguez is looking for at the position. When people think of Rodriguez here, we tend to link his offense to Pat White, but he has had a lot of success with different styles of options over the years and he certainly can work with what Marchiol brings to the table as a dual threat option.
Marchiol is a talented quarterback who quite frankly has only continued to get better over the course of his career and now has some valuable experience to go with that potential. I don’t think anything is going to be handed to him but given the current state of the position room, I do think that he would be the frontrunner.
Marchiol has only played a total of 423 snaps over his three years with the program but has been effective when asked to step into a larger role due to injury to starter Garrett Greene. Marchiol has completed 71-122 passes with 8 touchdowns and 5 interceptions. He's also rushed for 285 yards and 3 scores. He’s going to have every chance to surpass those totals in the coming year if he’s up for the challenge.
How would you grade the transfer additions so far overall or by position? (F to A+ scale)
There’s still a lot left to go here but so far West Virginia is addressing many of the positions that need to be hit. The coaching staff has done a good job adding to the defensive back and wide receiver rooms, while has been active when it comes to trying to fill out the major holes on the offensive front. There has been some progress there with four transfer additions but more help is needed.
That is where the biggest need is at right now and truthfully it’s one of the hardest positions to fill out of the transfer portal with players that are capable of helping you right away. One because there simply aren’t as many big bodies out there to sort through from a sheer numbers standpoint and two it is one of the most competitive spots with teams all across the landscape looking to land what talent there is at the position.
You see a lot of the same with the defensive line and it tends to rotate every other year, but quality offensive linemen are not only difficult to attract but often are some of the most expensive. Still, it’s hard not to like some of the names and effort being shown to address the spot, especially with veterans that have played a lot of football.
Right now, this has been a solid effort all around and I’d give it a B for the time being until we see how the rest of it unfolds. I have been really impressed with what has happened in the defensive back room though and it’s clear that has been a true commitment to get those positions turned around.
With the large influx of DB's, do we expect freshmen like Washington, Boyce, Cross, and Jennings, who played this past year, to leave in the spring? I know the majority of these transfer players are one year, which gives these young players a year to develop. Do we expect them to see things that way or do you feel that many of them expect to start/play major roles next year, thus will bolt for greener pastures?
This is a nearly impossible question to answer without speculating but I think it would serve West Virginia best if those players did elect to stick around and develop. Over his career, Alley has used the odd-stack and that is going to open the door for several of these players to have the potential to see the field. Yes, you can add experienced transfers to lessen the load and the responsibility on each of these, but keeping and developing the players within the program is key as well for the future. The clock is always ticking now in college athletics, but West Virginia would be better off if they could keep some of the freshmen in the fold.
How many players (transfers included) do we have that could benefit from the ruling giving former JUCOs an extra year of eligibility?
West Virginia has already gotten the good news that Keke Tarnue will be back in 2025. He met the requirements of the blanket waiver that was in response to Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia suing the NCAA over his eligibility after spending time at the junior college level.
That in itself is good news at Tarnue appeared in all 13 games this past season moving around to multiple spots and totaling 35 tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss, 0.5 sacks and a forced fumble.
The ruling is for players who are exhausting their eligibility and spent time at the junior college level so outside Tarnue, the only other player that could fall under that umbrella would be Dontez Fagan and at this point, there has been no determination on if he truly meets the requirements or is even interested in doing so.
Do we lose any other 25 signees?
My gut feel says yes, but that is nothing more than a guess on my part. It’s hard to hold an entire recruiting class together and sometimes you will lose pieces even when all logic says it doesn’t make sense. Take DeAndre Desinor for example. The Florida running back requested his release when it appeared that running backs coach Chad Scott would not be rehired by the new staff and by the time Scott was he had already moved on to other options which ultimately led him to N.C. State. It was a decision that was somewhat baffling considering that Desinor is a near-perfect fit for the scheme and Scott was back in Morgantown but that’s just how this process goes sometimes. The good news is that around half of the 21 remaining commitments are set to enroll at West Virginia at the mid-term and that’s going to cut down on that total.
Still, with so many changes the safe bet would be yes, even if I felt that the rest of the class was on solid ground just because of all the different variables.
Does the basketball team have enough depth to make it all the way?
This has been something I’ve written about a lot in the 3-2-1 and my personal belief is that if West Virginia doesn’t get back senior forward Tucker DeVries, which truthfully seems at best a long shot, it’s going to be much more difficult for this team to expect to remain toward the top of the Big 12 standings.
DeVries is not only a scoring option but helps take the load off of point guard Javon Small as essentially another coach on the floor who can take on a larger role facilitating the ball and the offense running through him.
This team is going to continue to fight and has bought into the no-excuses mantra, but the Big 12 is a meat grinder even with a full roster. It becomes a lot more difficult if one of your best players is sidelined on top of having some others out. This West Virginia team is going to battle, but the depth is being severely tested, and over the long haul that is not going to be conducive to success with what's being asked out of them.
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