West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez patrols the sideline in the course of the Mountaineers’ 49-0 loss to Texas Tech Saturday. (Photo by David Pennock)
Texas Tech stomped West Virginia. There have been a number of methods to describe it, however all of them can be other ways of claiming the 2 faculties are simply in two totally different leagues. The Red Raiders beat the Mountaineers 49-0 in probably the most lopsided losses in WVU historical past.
Texas Tech, high to backside, is a greater and extra gifted soccer group than WVU. That’s why the Red Raiders will play in the Big 12 Championship recreation subsequent week, and why the Mountaineers performed their closing recreation Saturday afternoon. WVU’s roster can’t compete with Texas Tech, and it confirmed.
“I would say that even if we won the game, we got to get bigger, faster, stronger, more athletic,” Rich Rodriguez mentioned. “Then, we got to coach them up. Now it’s glaringly showing up that we’ve got to do that.”
WVU had an opportunity to be aggressive coming into the sport, with the optimistic momentum it confirmed in the final 4 video games, beating Houston and Colorado, and taking part in Arizona State shut. The Mountaineers have been rapidly introduced again to Earth.
Rodriguez is as soon as once more evaluating the whole lot.
“I’ll evaluate everything as I always do, and I’ll fix our problems,” Rodriguez mentioned. “Some of them can be fixed pretty quickly. Some of them may take a little time, but I know what they are.”
Rodriguez talked about fixing the issues a number of occasions throughout his nine-minute postgame press convention, however aside from getting greater, quicker and stronger, he didn’t title them.
There are obtrusive points just like the offensive line, the tackling, and the protection giving up large performs. Those points had persevered all season lengthy and have been fully uncovered in opposition to the Red Raiders.
“I know how to fix our problems, and it’s painful to do it, but we’ll do it,” Rodriguez mentioned. “Our problems just didn’t arise this week. It’s been there all season, so I’ll know what we need to do and how we got to go about doing it, and that process will be tough.”
How does Rodriguez plan on fixing the expertise downside? It received’t be including 81-plus transfers like he did final 12 months. Rodriguez plans to assault highschool and junior school recruiting onerous, which, over time, will make the issues go away.
WVU already has certainly one of its finest recruiting lessons in the fashionable period, and only in the near past scored four-star Kevin Brown, who selected WVU over Ohio State and North Carolina. Rodriguez plans to signal 33 commits this cycle. Most of them will signal beginning on Dec. 3.
“I’m really excited about our recruiting class,” Rodriguez mentioned. “I’m not saying that because I’m up here and we got our tails kicked by them. I think we’ll sign maybe 40 high school, junior college guys next week. We’ll get us a dozen or so out of the portal. Fix our problems. We’ll get some young guys here in our program to get bigger, faster, stronger in the weight room.”
The solely downside is that attempting to rebuild a program by way of highschool recruiting takes time. The 33 recruits aren’t all going to be on the spot affect gamers, and most received’t even play. It’ll take a while to get them prepared for the subsequent stage.
In this new period of school soccer, followers and athletic departments don’t have endurance. Multiple head coaches have been employed after not having success. It’ll be fascinating to see how a lot time followers and AD Wren Baker give Rodriguez to make WVU compete for championships once more.
After a 4-8 season, followers are already sad.
“I’ll fix it,” Rodriguez mentioned. “I’ll fix some other issues, I think we may have. Nobody likes this, least of all me. This is not good, but it ain’t gonna stay like this forever. Like I said, some of the problems are going to be a little harder to fix, but we’ll fix it.”