Published: September 07, 2008 02:08 am      

COLUMN: WVU in need of answers ... and fast

GREENVILLE, N.C. — Seems you can never find a hurricane when you need one.

Certainly, West Virginia University would never have complained if Hanna had come to town sporting driving rain and winds of 125 mph, forcing postponement of what turned into one of the worst moments in recent WVU football history.

But Hanna turned out to offer about as much punch as the Mountaineers, tip-toeing into to town and out of it with little more than a trail of debris in the form of broken branches and a few inches of much-needed rain.

The real hurricane came later, entering in a purple haze and leaving Bill Stewart’s first Mountaineer team in a purple daze.

The final score was East Carolina 24, WVU 3.

It wasn’t that close.

“They came out and beat us in every aspect of football,” said offensive tackle Ryan Stanchek.

If this had been a boxing match it would have gone down as TKO. If it were war it would have ended on the deck of the battleship Missouri.

While quarterback Patrick White, whose Heisman Trophy hopes dropped in equal proportion to WVU’s chances to finally win that national championship that evaded it last year, tried to explain that “we’re still West Virginia,” saying, “We still wear the same colors,” this was very much an un-Mountaineerlike performance.

Understand, that final score showing three points for WVU means that the offense did not cross the goal line. The last time that happened was during Rich Rodriguez’s first season, 2001, when Miami beat WVU, 45-3.

WVU couldn’t throw the ball, White hitting 11 of 18 passes for just 72 yards, and it couldn’t run it, gaining 179 yards, 97 of them by White.

The offense couldn’t stay on the field and the defense couldn’t get off the field, which you find on Google as the formula for defeat.

The offense couldn’t stay on the field because it doesn’t seem to know if it is fish or fowl.

Is it a running offense or a passing offense?

It has no personality right now, seemingly unsure of how to make the best use of White’s unique talents and unable to shake Noel Devine loose with any consistency.

As the perfect example of where the team stands, one needs to look no further than a third-and-4 play at the end of the third quarter when this team that has preached how it is going to be filling the air with footballs ran Devine over left tackle, a call that lacked imagination and execution on a day when they weren’t blocking anyone very well anyway.

Add that to the day’s most horrific moment, second-and-10, White in the shotgun, Devine to his left and Jock Sanders to his right. The ball was snapped to White, who was going to give the ball to someone, but who? Devine went right, Sanders went left, the two colliding in front of the frustrated White, who ate the ball and portion of the artificial surface on a 2-yard loss.

“Someone went the wrong way,” White said. “One mistake can break a play down.”

All that having been said, and the defense was worse than the offense, showing absolutely not one iota of improvement from the Villanova game when it couldn’t find a way to get off the field, allowing that Division I-AA opponent 28 first downs and 87 snaps.

This time it was ECU running 71 snaps to 54 for WVU and collecting 20 first downs to 8 for the Mountaineers. They juked WVU tacklers in space, ran through on the inside, caught passes while leaping, while sliding or while lying on the ground, the ball once hitting a fallen T.J. Lee in the helmet while he was on his stomach, having the ball bounce in the air and come to rest in his arms.

But this had nothing to do with luck. In truth, while you must give East Carolina credit for building on its upset of Virginia Tech with this one over a West Virginia team that beat it 41-7 last year, the Mountaineers’ deficiencies had as much to do with it as the Pirates’ efficiencies.

“We have to be able to consistently win first down,” defensive coordinator Jeff Casteel said about the inability to get the football away from the offense last week and this. “We are always behind in the count then.”

First-down gains lead to third-and-short situations, situations that good defensive teams have trouble stopping, let alone a team that neither tackles well nor defends the pass at all.

Stewart knew it was bad, but he wasn’t about to point fingers or begin ripping his players.

“I’m not going to go in and call them dirty, filthy, vulgar names. If that’s what people want, they better put me somewhere else,” Stewart said.

Hopefully, Stewart and his assistants can get the point across without being dirty, filthy or vulgar … but that doesn’t mean they can’t be forceful and let the team know the way it has played through the season’s first two games is unacceptable.

And it is up to the sports writers to find a way to get their point across without being dirty, filthy or vulgar that the coaches have got to decide just what kind of offense they want to run and install it in a hurry, or it could turn into a dirty, filthy or vulgar season.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.