WV 38 MSU 13, And More

After surviving a gauntlet of tests this week, I am finally ready to return to the more important things in life, namely sports.

There isn't much I can say about that disaster on Saturday. It was eerily reminiscent of the type of spectacle we were accustomed to in 2003 and 2004. This thing was over in the 1st quarter and 6 seconds. Thats how long it took for West Virginia to seize a 31-0 lead. That is just pathetic. You can't sugarcoat it, even if you wanted to. After that things improved with MSU outscoring WV 13-7 in the final 3 quarters. Lets be completely honest though, while that was partly due to improved play from MSU, an equal if not bigger factor was WV stopped caring. So those last 3 quarters of play are pretty meaningless, at least in my mind. Nothing good can be taken from this, except possibly the play of Carroll and even that would be stretching things. He was 18-35 with 169 yards for the record. The entire team took a giant leap back, we have to hope this regression was one game and won't be a trend. So with that, we're moving on.



-How did Croom respond to his team rolling over and dying in the first 15 minutes? Did he have them run laps early Sunday morning? Maybe make Monday's practice an hour and a half longer? I think not. Nope, not Croom, he gives them Monday off instead. Huh? Next week is a bye week Croom, did you forget about that? Give them next Monday off. Heck you can give them next Monday and Tuesday off, I don't care. If you think they need a break that is when you give it to them, when you don't have an opponent. The decisions this man makes never ceases to amaze me. If MSU pulls off a win on Saturday, I will of course gladly retract all of this.

-This isn't confirmed by anyone, but I think Henig is pretty much done for this year unless an emergency comes up (such as a Carroll injury). For one thing, Carroll has probably played well enough to earn the starting job. For another, after Croom put Henig in the UAB game, for what possible reason nobody knows, he was complaining of pain in his hand on the following Monday. Later in the week he was saying he was having trouble moving some of his fingers. Way to go Croom, you screwed up his hand by bringing him back far far to early, in a game in which Carroll was doing fine no less. Another major screw up in a long line of Croom screw ups. Carroll is doing well enough and I feel he should be starting regardless of Henig's health, but the problem is, if Henig is still injured, we don't really have much of a backup now.

-Carroll has already broken a record at MSU. He has 109 pass attempts without an interception, which is the school record for consecutive pass attempts without an interception in a single season.

-Um, remember me praising Ellis Johnson? Well I take it all back. This defense has barely been average 3 of the last 4 weeks. This rushing 3 and 4 men only routine and rarely blitzing isn't going to work. The QB has all day and then some to sit back there. Titus Brown is a good pass rusher there's no question about that, but the problem is nobody else on the DL is any threat to get to the QB. Therefore all the other team has to do to eliminate the pass rush is simply double team Brown, which is what they have been doing. You're going to have to send some linebackers or maybe safety at least every now and again.