WVU focused on improving in situations, then big picture

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Situational football has been the focus inside camp Mountaineer in fall camp.

The Mountaineers have tackled twice through the first ten practices of the camp, including Saturday, but situational football has been an important aspect of readying the team for the season.

Players are always going to prefer putting the ball down and playing actual football, head coach Dana Holgorsen sees the benefits in seeing how his team responds in certain situations such as third and fourth down efficiency as well as two-minute and four-minute drills.

It’s something that arises in full-blown scrimmage situations but not as much as a head coach would like to see in those instances so it's easier to force the issue.

In those situational drills, coaches are able to get a feel for how a team executes in high leverage situations as well as the range of kickers and where a punter can pooch it.

“I learn from it coaching staff-wise and player-wise as well,” Holgorsen said. “So I liked the practice a whole lot more than they did.”

The Mountaineers will resume tackling Tuesday and from that point the focus will shift to more full-blown football, which should appease the players on the roster. Scrimmages are set for Tuesday and Saturday this week for the team which should give Holgorsen an even better picture of where they’re at.

To date, the head coach has been pleased with the product on the field especially considering that they are entering the dog days of camp where it’s difficult to stay motivated given the daily grind and cumulative effect of practicing on a daily basis.

That will get complicated even further once school begins later this week.

“The energy’s been good, the work’s been good,” Holgorsen said.

West Virginia isn’t looking ahead to Tennessee yet, but they don’t necessarily have to as the Mountaineers have assigned all three of their analysts on getting an early scouting report together for the Volunteers. Any by putting it together, I mean it’s been done for over a month.

“There’s a book on my desk – I haven’t looked at it yet – there’s an offensive book on my desk that thick and a defensive book on my desk that thick and a special teams book on my desk that think of as much information as they’ve been able to gather,” Holgorsen said.

Holgorsen said that he plans to start diving into that book sometime soon but overall the goal is to save the coaching staff a lot of time by compiling the information ahead of time.

“There’s going to be information in there that we probably wouldn’t be able to get if we didn’t have somebody that was constantly doing it all summer and throughout camp as well,” he said.

It’s a good thing as well because the season opener against Tennessee presents a match up with a new coaching staff that will likely be integrating a new system and meshing it with what his personnel does best. But in reality, the first game always has its challenges even with entrenched coaching staffs.

“That’s the first game anyway,” Holgorsen said.

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