Naturally, things are expected to improve in year two under a new regime.
Oftentimes, it’s the biggest improvement you’ll see in a coach’s tenure, and it’s not necessarily limited to just wins and losses. Further establishing the culture and the expectations from within (effort, accountability, being on time, etc.) is a big part of turning the arrow in an upward direction.
West Virginia athletic director Wren Baker was recently asked about the football team’s expectations this fall during an interview with the Big 12 Conference and explained why he feels much better about this year’s situation.
“I think we’re expecting to take a big step forward. Last year, you come in and not only are you replacing virtually a whole new team, and you’re trying to assemble a staff; you don’t have a GM on the ground yet. And so from a recruiting standpoint, you are way, way behind because the volume you’re trying to get and the amount of decisions you’re having to make…we all know in this new world you’re dealing with really a budget that’s a salary pool; you can only spend so much on one position and so much on one player. But when you need one hundred players, that’s a really complicated puzzle piece, especially when you didn’t have any time to really game plan for that.
“Just being out there at practice, there’s a lot less misses in the recruiting cycle. I know they’re very excited about the players that we have. Rich signed a bunch of young guys, and there’s some of them that are ready to play, but there’s still some that are going to need development. We probably need to avoid injury to have the kind of season we want to have, but there’s a lot of excitement.”
That’s the best way to describe West Virginia’s situation to someone on the outside who may just look at this as another lost season with a huge roster turnover. Not every roster flip is the same. As Wren mentioned, by the time Rich got settled in Morgantown, he was recruiting the leftovers in the portal and didn’t even have a defensive coordinator or much of his staff in place until late in the portal process.
They were able to use those extra resources to get better talent and guys who had not only played a bunch of football, but had a high level of production, such as running back Cam Cook and a bunch of others. Last year, the Mountaineers were starting guys who had never been in a starting role, and it showed.
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