Published: November 15, 2009 03:06 am      

HERTZEL COLUMN: WVU’s latest defeat full of head-scratchers

CINCINNATI — The sun beat me up this morning, making me wonder who beat me up last night.

Dr. Cutty Sark did all he could, but he could neither change what had transpired on the field at Nippert Stadium nor make any more sense of it at the time.

That West Virginia suffered a difficult loss was not the problem. Losses happen, especially when you are on the road facing the No. 5 football team in the country. You can even take a blown call by an officiating team, although it still remains difficult to understand how the officials could come to the conclusion they came to after viewing the video evidence.

Who was that officiating team, anyway? O.J. Simpson’s jury?

What does keep hammering away at the senses, however, is that there are so many things about this West Virginia football team and the events that transpired on Friday night that seem inexplicable.

Why is this team not improving? If anything, it has deteriorated as the year has progressed, the last game no better than the one before and the one before no better than the third or fourth game of the season.

Why can’t West Virginia get kickoff coverage right? Consecutive penalties — breaking the same rule — wouldn’t happen in a Pop Warner League game, let alone before a national television audience.

And why the insistence to kick the ball to Mardy Gilyard, who ranks among the nation’s kickoff return leaders and who burned WVU last year for a 100-yard touchdown return on the opening kickoff? WVU kicked off deep three times, all three to Gilyard, who simply averaged 32.7 yards a return.

As discombobulated as was — is? — the kickoff coverage team, it gets a pass when held up next to the play calling, which has been strange at times in the past, but on this night went off the charts.

Fourth quarter, third and 9 at the Cincinnati 25, the Mountaineers trailing 21-14, five and a half minutes left to play and running back Noel Devine out of the game having his ankle taped.

You make the call …

“I knew Stew would have his hands full with Cincy because of his conservative play calling,” e-mailed Donald Blydenburgh. “Yes, have a running game against Cincy, but use diversions like play-action-pass, end arounds, sweeps, screens, BOMBS downfield, LONG passes, DRAW plays, reverses, double-reverses ... my gosh, Stew and Mullen have no imagination and are about as exciting as a doorknob.”

“The questionable call that I have is the 3rd down call with 5 minutes to go. With 3rd and long, normally that calls for a pass. But Coach called for a run up the middle. Under that situation would not Ryan Clarke have been a better selection instead of a lighter, shiftier Jock Sanders?” e-mailed Joseph Larry.

“What was the play with Jock Sanders on third and 9?” e-mailed Steve Willis. “Simply put, Jeff Mullen wants to be a pro football O.C. (offensive coordinator) and he thinks too much. He outsmarts himself and his own players.”

Long passes, Ryan Clarke, too tricky … the criticism all has merit.

But the problem that kept me and Dr. Sark up most of the evening wasn’t really that straight handoff to Sanders on third and 9 as much as the thinking that went into it. There was a lot of discussion on the sideline, apparently, between Stewart and his offensive coordinator.

It all began with Stewart’s decision that he was not going to punt the ball for fear of not getting it back or of Cincinnati taking it down the field and scoring.

“You saw what they did on the next play,’’ he said.

That was a 43-yard breakaway by Isaiah Pead, who finished the night with 175 rushing yards. “We couldn’t stop them. They’re that good. I wanted to score and go for the win.’’

OK, so now the thinking goes to having two plays to make 9 yards.

“We wanted to get something that would give us a manageable fourth-down play,” Stewart said.

Now you hear coaches talk about trying to get to a manageable third down, but it’s not even certain if there is such a thing as a manageable fourth down play.

They decided to go with a play that had worked much of the night, a power running play.

“We’d been gashing them for 6, 8, 10 yards all night with that,” Stewart said.

But not with the diminutive Sanders, who has to be the fourth option in that situation behind Devine, who was out, a pass or Ryan Clarke.

In truth, Clarke probably should have been the first option if you were going to run the ball. He gained 60 yards on the night on just five carries, but that’s the rub.

Five carries!

When talking about the way Clarke had run during the game, Stewart said, “They didn’t want to hit ol‘ Clarke.”

Well, if they didn’t want to hit him, wouldn’t he be the guy to get the ball if you ran? Why did he run only five times?

Not that he might have gotten much out of that play, either, because Cincinnati blitzed right into that hole.

“It was one of those ‘Gotchas!’” Stewart said.

Now it was fourth down, behind by only a touchdown, but Stewart had his mind made up that he couldn’t give the ball up, so he went for it on fourth down, calling a pass but Brown was rushed hard by Curtis Young and could not hit Bradley Starks.

That was when the cell phone was picked up and for an appointment with Dr. Sark up at The Blind Lemon in Mount Adams.

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