By Dave Morrison
Register-Herald Sports Editor
MORGANTOWN —
It’s the same personnel, basically. But to a man, members of West Virginia’s defensive unit say there is something different about this year’s group.
It showed on the scoreboard, as WVU opened with an offensively blasé 31-0 win over Coastal Carolina.
There are the obvious changes in some areas of the defense.
Different alignments and a different tempo.
“We played fast,” WVU coach Bill Stewart said. “You saw a new Mountaineer defense out there on the field today, with that 40 look and that SWAT look and it was really nice to see. We have a lot of speed and we used it today to our advantage. That six defensive back-look swarmed all day.”
And there are some new additions — including Terence Garvin, who matched his total tackles of a season ago with 10 for the Mountaineers.
But by and large this is the same group of a year ago, with eight starters returning and a multitude of players who played last year.
But there is a different approach inside the helmet.
For the last decade, since Rich Rodriguez came in and inserted the spread offense in 2001, WVU was known for its offense. With stars like Noel Devine, Jock Sanders and Tavon Austin back — with a good supporting cast — there was no reason to think this season was going to be any different.
The exception was, this defense came with a decent pedigree, if based on returnees alone. Ah, but it also has a new mentality. It’s not bend but don’t break. It’s don’t bend at all.
The defense did that Saturday. Certainly Coastal Carolina isn’t Cincinnati, UConn or Pitt. It’s not Syracuse or Marshall, either. All those teams are better.
But WVU was really never threatened by the Chanticleers, and if you are looking for defensive perfection, a goose egg to start the season against an inferior foe is what you want.
Linebacker Anthony Leonard knows this.
“I wouldn’t say that we are looking to be better known than the offense,” Leonard said. “People like touchdowns. That’s always going to be the case. But I think we can be a good backbone for the offense. Our job is to get the ball back to the offense. We did a pretty good job of that today.”
Coastal did get off a pair of field goals, both missed.
But it was Coastal’s one real scoring opportunity that drove home the point about this Mountaineer defense.
Up 10-0 late in the first half, Geno Smith threw his only interception of the game and it was returned to the Mountaineers’ 21-yard line.
That’s where the new attitude, the new mentality, came into play. And Brandon Hogan made the key play of the game, with an interception in the back of the end zone.
“Right before that I had told everybody on defense, ‘We don’t want them to get any points, let’s try to shut them out.’ And they came right at me,” Hogan said. “It was a key point in the game because it was 10-0 and they had just gotten the momentum.”
It didn’t last long.
The difference?
“Last year we would have thought the best we could get out of this is holding them to a field goal,” Leonard said. “This year, that’s not good enough. We want to be the ones making the plays. We want to do whatever it takes to stop the scoring. Any scoring.”
And though it was a lowly FCS team, it was a start. A good defensive start for a team that will improve on what was a banner start.
“We know what we’re capable of doing, and we have the guys at every position that we feel comfortable with,” Hogan said. “And we have depth. We have guys who can come in and do the same things as well. We put our standards high.”
— E-mail: demorrison@
register-herald.com
