MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia football coach Neal Brown got to see two practices from his team during spring camp before the Big 12 on March 13 decided to suspend all athletic events due to the COVID-19 virus pandemic.
While two practices — both without pads — doesn’t seem like much, Brown knows he may be better off than other head coaches throughout the country.
“This is where it’s not necessarily an equal playing field,” Brown said. “We had two spring practices (March 12-13) while some haven’t had any. Some have had 7-10 practices and there are others where they’re all the way done with spring football, so it’s really kind of uneven across the board in college football.”
Brown mentioned the early games in the season could show the repercussions of missing spring practice and possibly summer workouts. For the Mountaineers, those include the out-of-conference slate of Florida State, Eastern Kentucky and Maryland.
The uneven playing field is apparent here, with the Seminoles able to practice three times before the university suspended its spring sports March 17. The Colonels, like WVU, practiced March 12-13 before the Ohio Valley Conference suspended all sports March 16.
The Terrapins didn’t get a chance to practice at all with their schedule set to begin March 23. The Big Ten suspended its spring calendar March 13.
Florida State and Eastern Kentucky are both breaking in new head coaches, so spring camp was critical. Mike Norvell was hired from Memphis by the Seminoles last December, and his first game at FSU is slated for Sept. 5 in Atlanta against the Mountaineers.
“It really has been a learning experience,” Norvell said March 24. “We kind of went with the flow and we’re controlling the things that we can control. Everybody’s disappointed. Everybody wanted to practice. Everybody wanted to continue to be around each other. It’s one of those things that we get to control our response, like I tell them all the time. They’ve done a nice job of that so far, and we’ll continue to play it by ear on what we can do here moving forward.”
Walt Wells came to Eastern Kentucky after a two-year stint as a quality control coach at Kentucky. He will take on WVU on Sept. 12 at Milan Puskar Stadium.
For the first time since 2015, the Mountaineers will face Maryland on Sept. 19 at Milan Puskar Stadium, but it will be the first time WVU takes on the Terps under Mike Locksley. While this is Locksley’s second season at Maryland, spring practice was important following a 3-9 2019 campaign.
He didn’t get a chance to meet with his players at all on the field. Maryland’s first spring meeting was via Zoom on March 23.
While personnel may be similar from one year to the next, teams often, especially when facing a first-year coach, use tape from opponent’s spring games to break down. For WVU, that won’t be the case when preparing for the Seminoles or Colonels with the cancellation of all spring games nationally.
However, that doesn’t mean the Mountaineers’ analysts aren’t already working on a game plan. With newly found time this spring, they are putting together what they can now rather than waiting for the summer.
“They’re helping with some opponent breakdowns, as well,” Brown said. “We’ve always done a summer opponent breakdown, so when we get into fall camp, we say ‘The opponent of the day is Florida State.’ Then we have a really good feel for how they’re going to line up with what they’ve done in year’s past. It’s no guarantee that’s how they’ll line up in Game 1, but it’s what they’ve done in the past with offense, defense and special teams. With Eastern Kentucky and Maryland, we already have those done based on what they’ve done in the past, so we prepare for those. We’re doing those now when, in a normal case, we’d be doing those at our staff retreat at the end of July.”
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