Published: June 24, 2009 12:28 am      

HERTZEL COLUMN - Sands working hard at WVU

MORGANTOWN — You hear it all the time, this talk about how important experience is whether it is on the professional level or in college.

It is a point that is so obvious that often it just rolls through the conversation without anyone realizing exactly what it means, for experience comes in many forms, especially when you are a true freshman moving forward.

Every day is a new adventure really for a freshman football player at West Virginia like Robert Sands, who established himself as a future star at safety last year.

Each game you see a new blocking scheme or technique, a new move from a receiver. You practice moves but don’t yet have them down pat in a game and sometimes you make a reaction and discover something about yourself that you didn’t know.

Last football season, Sands was a presence on the field, but failed to make the big play, the kind that they know will come from him next season. He sacked no one. He tackled no one for a loss. He didn’t break up a pass or intercept one.

At 6-5 and as athletic as he is, you know all of that is in him and you wonder why he couldn’t pull it off last season as a freshman.

The reason the big plays didn’t come, he believes, is because there was that uncertainty in his mind on every play, that instantaneous delay to figure out what it was that was playing out before him that slowed him down that half step.

Until you reach the point that you react rather than think, and the ability to do that comes only from experience, you are at a disadvantage, especially on defense where you are always reacting.

Coaches, of course, try to inject experience into the inexperienced by repetition and by asking them to spend time in the film room, perhaps allowing them to recognize certain aspects of a team’s offense without actually having to experience it.

And so it is that Sands has taken to watching a lot of film on his own.

“I want to see the mistakes I made as a freshman so I don’t make the same ones I made as a sophomore,” the rangy Floridian said.

Anyone who has ever had his golf swing filmed knows how important film study is. The mind’s eye often is far different than reality and the best way to recognize it is to see it on film.

So Sands is studying himself to improve and the coaches obviously believe that is important.

He is also looking at opponents’ film, seeing their offense in such a way that by next season he will feel as if he has seen their plays over and over. It is not game experience, but it is the next best thing.

“Film helps you better yourself and helps you go to the next level,” he said. “Anybody can say they had a good year, but you want to have a great year and you want to be consistent with that. You don’t want to have one good game. You want to have multiple good games. You want to have a great season, not one or two good games.”

So it was the other day that Sands was walking through the Puskar Center after working out to go study film when he passed offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen in the hall.

“Where you going?” Mullen asked.

“To watch film,” Sands replied.

“Well, if you ever need help knowing what the quarterback is doing or looking for, come and talk to me,” Mullen said.

Bells went off in Sands’ head.

This would be a breakthrough, a chance to figure out what the offense is trying to do, what the quarterback wants to do on this play or that play.

He’s taken advantage of Mullen’s offer and drops by his office when Mullen is free to pick his brain, to pick up maybe one or two nuggets that might take two or three years of experience to figure out on his own … if he did it at all.

That makes so much sense that it might serve all the offensive coaches to make time to talk with their defensive players and vice versa, to give them the theories of what the week’s opponent is trying to do in hopes adding to their understanding.

Contact Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com or through Facebook.