Who is Jeff Mullen?

So, Coach Stewart today named his offensive coordinator. If you read this blog then you know I was calling for an exciting, big name hire to fill out Stew’s staff. As it turns out, Jeff Mullen, quarterbacks coach of Wake Forest was today named to the position. My first though is, what, we couldn’t get the offensive coordinator from Wake? Sure, they aren’t a whipping boy in the ACC any more and even went to a BCS bowl a couple years ago. And they run some version of the spread offense. But, here’s a guy with no West Virginia ties (I’m not saying he HAS to have them, but since you’re going with that theme you should either get that or a more recognizable name) that has been tethered to Jim Grobe first at Ohio then Wake.

According to Stewart, Mullen will introduce motion and movement into the pre-existing form of the spread that we have. Will we continue to no-huddle? Guess that remains to be seen. Zone blocking? More svelte, athletic offensive linemen? We’ll find out eventually. Mullen’s top accomplishments were coaching up quarterbacks Ben Mauk (who really didn’t do a whole lot at Wake), Cory Randolph (have you heard of him before?) and Riley Skinner (a serviceable college QB). But now he is responsible for making Pat White and Jarrett Brown top players in college football? I think that’s a lot of responsibility. I hope there was something that Coach Stew saw in this guy, because to me this hire makes almost no sense and we’re running out of room on our staff for that final great coup.

Can I have that 2 hours and 20 minutes of my life back?

Every year, same script. Can we ever put together a decent game in the Capital Classic? No Three points tonight, too disgusted. Bad foul shooting is a culprit, but the game overally was just ugly. I thought we could rest our main cast for Georgetown, but an injured Joe Alexander had to play the entire game. There are no winners here. I guess I should be more excited about this game, after all there is a trophy now. If that doesn’t legitimize things, I don’t know what will.

Three Points: WVU vs. Marshall Women

I was one of the dozens of people in the state that watched this game on public television, complete with the pledge drive every timeout…get your Mountaineer or Thundering Herd hat, t-shirt, or sweatshirt now!…and including the hundred or so excited onlookers in the crowd. Seriously, I hate the Capital Classic idea to begin with. I don’t like how it falls in the heart of conference schedule and is played in Charleston only so some legislators can hobnob. Most of the people at the game could not care less about the actual game, and the women’s game tips at 5:30 which is convenient for…nobody. Wait, this is supposed to be three points, not a free-wheeling rant.

I. Ashley Powell: She did a lot of good things tonight but there were times when you wanted to choke her as a fan. It took over half the game for her to realize that Marshall’s defense was absolutely ignoring her. Even at that it looked like she was in great pain to score. Powell has never been a real scoring threat on offense, and everyone likes a point guard who can distribute and play defense, but Marshall was daring her all night and she couldn’t muster a shot or penetration for the longest time in the game. I applaud her for the scoring she did, it was probably the difference in the game, but I wish it would have come earlier.

II. Olayinka Sanni: Sanni was dominant (at time) and was able to score around her average, but at times the Marshall freshman TyNikki Crook was covering her way more than a freshman should be able to. Of course the double teams were frustrating but Sanni has seen them before, and teams basically have to let Sanni get her points and hope everyone else doesn’t beat them. You know what else though? Coming into the game all the fishwrappers were talking about Marshall’s lack of a true center…I don’t know what they call Crook, but beyond that Handy and Hammond were big enough to defend on Sanni (with help) and while they weren’t big bodies like Sanni, I think I was sold a bill of goods as to Marshall not being able to defend Sanni. They did a better job than some Big East teams have.

III. LaQuita Owens:Owens just hasn’t had a great scoring season like she did last year, a lot of that contributed to Meg Bulger coming back, but Owens went off for a quick flash of 11 points that looked like that old Owens for the first time in a long time. This is the stretch where WVU took the lead for good, so give Owens a lot of credit for that. However, after her hot streak she took a couple ill-advised threes off the dribble. WVU is just not a good team off the dribble, I think that could hurt them against a good defending team.

One more thing, I hope Meg Bulger is all right. She looked to be in a lot of pain with her knee but was able to walk around on the court after the game, so that’s a great sign. Nobody deserves as many health problems as Meg has had with that knee.

Three Points: WVU vs. USF

I. Get well soon, Joe Alexander: After the St. Johns game, Alexander was held out of practice and did not play at all today. Heard he will have an MRI tomorrow on his groin and will be day-to-day from there. Obviously we got the win without him today but we will not be a winning team in the Big East without a healthy Alexander.

II. Junk defense: Hey, remember the Catlett years? The Cat was a master of junk defenses, throwing out the diamond-and-one, triangle-and-two, and the Jedi mind trick defensive schemes. Well, Huggins’ defenses are not as junky, neither are Stan Heath’s, but there are definitely some out-of-the-ordinary tactics being used by both coaches. Come up with a combination that adds up to five, and Heath probably employed it today. 2-3, 1-3-1, 1-1-3, 1-2-2-1, 1-1-1-1-1 (okay, didn’t actually see that one). Huggins stuck mainly with the matchup zone we have seen the last few games, but in order to shut down Kentrell Gransberry on the inside, he used Joe Mazzulla to deny the ball while the other four played in sort of a match-up box, it was all kind of odd, but it did finally start working to keep the ball out of Gransberry’s hands (after he had already posted up 20+ points) but he could have scored all night until Huggs finally came up with a defense that was able to control him.

III. Joe Mazzulla: Speaking of, Mazzulla had a solid all-around game, as Huggs decided to solve Alexander’s absence with a smaller lineup, bringing in Mazzulla at 2-guard (I was calling for this clear back to last year, Mazzulla moves great without the ball.) This worked with USF because they really lack size besides Gransberry they have a lot of wing types, meaning we could easily put Ruoff at the 3 and Butler at the 4. I wouldn’t say it would work that well all the time, but it worked today. And Mazzula made a fortune from the foul line down the stretch, finishing 7-of-9 and with 11 total points in the game, matching a season-high career-high.

Bonus: Remember when WVU had to shoot well to win games? Today they shot 38.5% from the field, and made 7 of 23 treys but still managed to win despite USF’s 44.9% from the field. WVU did cash in at the stripe as a team hitting 22 of 26. A lot of those came late in the game but it’s also good to see WVU was able to draw the fouls today, which is usually not a strong point.

Big East Basketball Prediction #1

Here at the Mountain Top we like to gaze into the future…we predict the final order of finish in the Big East. To do so, instead of taking into account only who’s hot and who’s not, we actually take into account every game remaining on the schedule, factoring in season-ending tiebreakers when needed, and from there create the final standings. Each week we will post these along with our analysis from the week in Big East hoops.

Three Points: WVU vs. St. John’s

Three points is our quick recap of events here at The Mountain Top. Each point will be noted by an awesome Roman numeral, which are so much cooler than like, regular numbers.

I. Jamie Smalligan: This guy is becoming less and less of a factor for every Big East game. I never understood why coaches start a guy, then he plays less than say 20 minutes. Smalligan played 5 minutes in this game, and has absolutely no statistical line. I guess it’s nice for Huggins to give deference to the senior but he might as well not even be on the team at this point. He’s played 58 minutes in five Big East games and contributed 5 points, 12 rebounds. In fact he’s only scored 49 points all season. I knew his role might be limited under Huggins, but I had no idea it would be this limited.

II. Matchup zone:I love the matchup 1-3-1 look that WVU has gone to this year. It’s not the Beilein 1-3-1 with the point guard running the baseline, but teams really seem to have a hard time against us in this defense. Wellington Smith usually gets in the middle and is able to cut off any penetration. The only thing I didn’t like out of this set was we gave us a few offensive rebounds that we need not.

III. John Flowers: Flowers is definitely contributing to this team right now. You have to remember this guy was a Beilein recruit. For all the crap our fans gave Coach B over recruiting, I think Flowers, Joe Alexander, and Da’Sean Butler, and to some extent Alex Ruoff could play for any school in the Big East. Flowers last night in 15 minutes scores 10 points, including 2 treys, added 3 rebounds, 2 blocks and a steal. He had an offensive efficiency rating of 15, second highest for last night’s game, and for the season his rating is 7.7 which is just behind our 5 “real starters” (remove Smalligan, add Smith.) If we can get that from him every night this season then we will do great in the conference portion of the schedule.

p.s. You should probably get really familiar with Ken Pomeroy’s statistical breakdowns as I am definitely a disciple.