Game Week--Marshall

I was watching a replay of the WVU-WMU game last night and at the beginning of the 4th quarter Joe Manchin joined the booth. At one point the conversation turned to the WVU-Marshall game and Manchin spent the next five minutes blabbering about how great it was for the schools and the state. His rational was all the money that the game would make for Huntington and for the schools. According to this article Manchin is at best short cited and at worst an idiot as both WVU and Marshall will get shafted out of the normal t.v. money. And going by his "Open for Business" slogan idea, which is now being recalled but will take $50,000 to replace, I'd go with the latter.

Now onto the preview on the field. WVU travels to Huntington for the first time in nearly 100 years as it took them that long to get the smell out of their clothes since the last visit. Last year the number 5 ranked Mountaineers jumped out to a 21-0 lead before beating Marshall 42-10. In the game WVU amassed 485 yards with 312 on the ground. Steve Slaton rushed for 203 yards and White added 48 while passing for 168 and two touchdowns. Marshall was led on the ground by Ahmad Bradshaw with 70 yards on 18 carries. Bernard Morris completed 12/22 passes for 168 yards. Gone from last years Herdies is Ahmad Bradshaw on offense and Albert McClellan on defense. Bradshaw took his Playstation 2 and 1500 yards rushing into the NFL draft and where he was a first round first day selection of the NY Giants while the CUSA Defensive Player of the Year tore his ACL when a pack of wild teenagers fled a showing of We Are Marshall he was attending. Replacing Bradshaw at tailback will be Chubb Small whom I assume according to his name has left a fledling career either in porn or as a male Marshall cheerleader to handle the load (haha) at tailback and has started off strong with 4 carries for minus 2 yards against Miami. In that game the leading rusher other than Morris was Darius Marshall with 16 yards. It appears as though Marshall has no ground game. Despite the lack of ground game and the fact that Center Doup Legursky is best known as the guy that the infamous WVU "spy" labelled as fat, he is up for the Rimington Award. The receivers are the stars on offense for the Herd. TE Cody Slate could have a big day against WVU linebackers in man coverage and Darius Passemore and Marcus Fitzgerald are talented wideouts. Unfortunately they have Morris throwing them the ball. He did manage to throw for 162 yards against Miami but had 3 interceptions in the game. The defense has brought in veteran Steve Dunlap as the coordinator. In his first game the defense gave up 251 yards rushing to Miami. Not a good sign. Remember to set the alarm clocks because this game kicks off at 11 a.m. and should be well in hand by the third snooze alarm.