MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The Gold & Blue Lunch Report has sweet memories of Lubbock, a flat-and-dusty burgh to be sure, but also our pick for the most underrated city in the Big 12, which is to say no one would ever overrate it.
We’ve swigged beers to Toadies covers, smelled the steak grilling at Cagle and snapped a few selfies at the Buddy Holly museum (mostly for my parents, who still turn melancholy about the day the music died.) Lubbock gets a bad rap.
Josh Lambert had a swell time there himself at the end of the 2014 game, blasting a 55-yard field goal as time expired and celebrating the 37-34 win by giving blowback to the fans behind West Virginia’s bench. We haven’t seen the kicker so animated before or since, and he certainly didn’t look himself last week.
Against Kansas State, Lambert needed a few too many deep breaths before his first kick back from suspension, resulting in a delay of game. Then he compounded the penalty by shanking a 30-yard try. Later in the game, when he hit from 37, the kick was a Texas leaguer that lacked oomph.
That was enough for coach Dana Holgorsen, who used walk-on Mike Molina for both subsequent PATs and opened the door to the much-dreaded bye-week kicker controversy.
“Can we talk about something else other than kickers? I hate bringing kickers into the forefront of things. Just ignore them,” said Holgorsen, who sounded perturbed enough we half-expected him to summon special teams coach Mark Scott to the podium for relief.
What really struck me was Holgorsen’s squashing my question of whether WVU might consider a kicking platoon — for instance, using Lambert on long-distance kicks and Molina closer in.
“Mike has more pop than Josh,” he said.
That’s news, folks, considering Lambert owns six career kicks from 50-plus and two years ago set the NCAA mark with 16 kicks from 40-plus in a season.
Lambert’s drop in pop might be rustiness as Holgorsen says, but we’re told his suspension didn’t preclude him from practicing, so you wonder if there’s a physical issue. Heading into next week’s game at Texas Tech, where points should be bubbling, the question of who is WVU’s kicker will be a talking point, whether or not Holgorsen likes it.