Rich Rodriguez Thanks Mountaineers Fans, Discusses the Toughness of Rushing Attack

West Virginia University head coach Rich Rodriguez provids his initial assessment following the win against Colorado

West Virginia University head coach Rich Rodriguez | Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI

The West Virginia Mountaineers (4-6, 2-5) handled the Colorado Buffaloes Saturday afternoon 29-22.

Head coach Rich Rodriguez met with the media after the game and discussed Scotty Fox Jr.'s day, the offense overcoming adversity, and the running game.

Opening statement

Really proud of the guys to pull out a win. We didn’t really play well but they stayed engaged. When they (Colorado) started making a little comeback, nobody panicked. We’ll take any win we can get.

The weather was terrific. Our crowd was unbelievable. They were here, they were loud, and I think they really made an impact – they have all year. We have one more home game and I know Thanksgiving might be a tough time, but we’ll be playing one of the best teams in the country. So, I hope we can pack it out like they have all year and make an impact like they did today.

The running game against Colorado

I’ll have to watch the film. A couple things that hurt us was really negative yardage plays on the perimeter stuff – six, seven yard losses, those are hard to recover in the run game, so we got to take a look at that and I don’t think we got enough push as we needed to for most of the game, but to the o-line’s credit, at the end when you need to get a first run and everybody knows you’re going to run it and they did it, that’s the key. When we get to the point where everybody knows you’re going to run it and you’re still going to run it to get first downs, then you got what you want. At least at the end of the game, that was a positive sign.

Freshman quarterback Scotty Fox evaluation

Scotty, I think he did some good stuff. There was a couple things he wanted to have back. He’s so consciousness that I have to be careful when I tell him something, like an opening play, like ‘be ready for this,’ and they don’t do that, but he’s so concentrated on being ready for that, that they don’t do that, then it’s probably over coached it, if that makes sense. He’s a very coachable guy and a great competitor. We needed to throw the ball to move at times today and he made some nice throw.

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