Published: August 31, 2008 11:15 pm            

Potential still hidden at WVU

MORGANTOWN — Now that it has been firmly established that Patrick White can throw the football all over the field, look for West Virginia to unwrap more of its multiple offensive talent for this Saturday’s game at East Carolina.

Coach Bill Stewart had his explanation ready before he looked down at the final stats after the Mountaineers skinned the Villanova Wildcats 48-21 in Morgantown.

“If you put nine people in the box (near the line of scrimmage), we’re going to throw the football. I don’t know how to do it otherwise,” he said at the post-game press conference.

“We proved today we can pitch and catch the ball with nine in the box.”

Stewart was fiery in his defense of White, a four-year starter.

In what sounded like a rehearsal for a Heisman Trophy introductory speech, the first-year Mountaineer head coach said, “They said he couldn’t do it. They know what he can do with his feet, they know what he can do in the slot.”

Princeton resident and WVU long-snapper Adam Hughes said about White's passing, “We as a team have known he could do that for the last three or four years. There’s never been a doubt that he could throw the ball, ever. Today just proved it. Five touchdowns today — that’s special. ...

“He deserves all the credit he can ever earn, because he’s a class individual and a great teammate.”

White has run for 3,569 yards as a Mountaineer. On Saturday he wasn’t given a chance to carry the ball until 45 seconds remained in the first quarter.

Instead, during the game he completed 25 of 33 passes for 208 yards, with at least five of his incompletions the result of drops by his receivers.

His five touchdown tosses were a record for a WVU quarterback at “new” Mountaineer Field. Mark Bulger threw for six at Pitt in 1998.

White said, “With this new staff, anything’s possible.”

Stewart said, “I would have liked to have gone 65 percent run” during the game, but as long as the Wildcats crowded the line, he felt he had to call pass plays.

At another point he added that he “put the squash on” a lot of the pre-snap motion that has characterized the WVU spread offense. “I don’t want to share everything in the first football game,” he said.

Mission accomplished. Stewart got a win, didn’t ask his more inexperienced players for risky plays, kept from exposing his whole playbook to other teams' defensive coordinators — and disproved, for now, the knock on his team’s Heisman hopeful.

More yards and points could have come from unleashing more of the sophisticated offense, but what was on display at Puskar Stadium last weekend was more than enough for the start of the season.

“We were in a pro offense,” Stewart said. “Just a different method to the madness, so to speak.”

If Stewart is expecting defenses to come out in prevent formations in the first quarter, receiver Alric Arnett, who caught two touchdowns in the Villanova rout, has another opinion.

Arnett said, “Teams are still going to load the box, because we have the greatest one-two running punch in college football in Pat White and Noel Devine. Once those guys load the box to try and stop those guys that’s when we’re going to try and hit you over the top.”

He sounded a high-seas warning to the Pirates and other upcoming opponents. “That was just the tip of the iceberg,” the receiver said.

The Mountaineers travel to Greenville, N.C., to play East Carolina at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, in the first of four regular-season WVU games to be carried by ESPN television.

— Contact Tom Bone at

tbone@bdtonline.com

        

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