MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — As the WVU football team concludes their second week of spring drills later this afternoon, there’s been very little discussion about improving on some of the difficulties of the previous season. That isn’t much of a surprise since the roster is almost halfway comprised of new players and a brand new coaching staff is in place.
West Virginia’s pass defense was statistically one of the worst in the nation last fall and much of the criticism for those numbers, fairly or unfairly, fell on the cornerbacks. New cornerbacks coach Rod West had a clear plan on how to assess returning players he inherited in his position room.
“Full disclosure, I tried my hardest not to watch any of the film from last year,” West said.
“I tell all the guys that I wanted a clean slate. I didn’t want to hold anything against the guys that were here in the past. They may have been taught something that we don’t teach. I didn’t want to go down that road.”
Of the eleven cornerbacks currently on the WVU roster, eight are new to the team this spring.
“What I try to stress is the three C’s. We’ve got to be confident, first and foremost. Every time we are on the field, we have to think we are the best guy and we are going to win that matchup every time. Number two would be composure. Whether we make a big play or give up a big one, we’ve got to have a short memory and play the next play as if it has a life of its own. Number three is that we have to have a high compete level.
“I think we have a lot of potential. To play cornerback in this conference, you know the ball is going to be thrown around a lot. To play in Coach [Zac] Alley’s scheme, you know you are going to be put in some one-on-one matchups. So we’ve got to be confident and buy into that. The guys, so far, they have bought into everything we are trying to teach them. They are trying hard. We make mistakes but we tell them just to make new mistakes. Every day is a new learning curve. Just don’t make the same mistakes from practice one and make them in practice two.”
West’s coaching tenure dates back to 2009. After stops at Kentucky Christian, Delta State, Morehouse, Texas A&M-Commerce, Morehead State, Chattanooga and Richmond, West spent the past four seasons as the cornerbacks coach with the North Carolina-based version of the Mountaineers at Appalachian State. West welcomes the resources that WVU can offer.
“There’s everything you need to win — the fanbase, tradition, a great coaching staff. And I think we have talent too. And a chance to be in a Power 4 conference was very appealing. I’m happy we’re here.”
Although West had not previously coached with Rich Rodriguez, he did cross paths with new defensive coordinator Zac Alley. Alley and West both coached in the Sun Belt Conference when Alley was at Louisiana-Monroe.
“We kind of bumped into each other at the coaches convention after the season and talked a little ball and some of the things they were doing on defense. It has some similarities to things we were doing at App[alachian] State. We just kind of started a relationship there and occasionally we would talk after the season. If we were playing a common opponent, we might share some thoughts in terms of how we can attack them or how they may have attacked the same opponent in the past.”
As Rodriguez implements his “hard edge” mentality in his second stint as the leader of the Mountaineers, West says players that don’t meet that standard of toughness will be easy to identify.
“If we all went to practice right now and I said, ‘Point out the soft player’, you would be able to see it. There should be a certain level of violence associated with football. When that level of violence is lacking, it is our job to address it. We all know what it looks like. You don’t have to have a video of it to show. And the guys know. They know. And it is our job if there’s is anybody early on that doesn’t get it, we tag those plays in practice and we show it to them.”
West is a father of two and he says the experience of being a parent allows him to be a better coach.
“We have meetings where we don’t talk about any football. We’re just getting to know them. Some of our guys may have children. We’re getting to understand their family dynamics, where they are from and also, how you can coach them. I think the good thing about being a parent, I think it helped me become a better coach because my two kids learn completely different and I have to discipline them differently. It is the same thing when you are coaching young men.”