W.Va. coach still mad about performance at Louisville
West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez found little positive to talk about Friday.
Not after the third-ranked Mountaineers' national championship hopes were ripped away at No. 5 Louisville. Not after their 14-game winning streak, the nation's second longest, was stopped. Blown pass coverages. Special-teams lapses. A fumblefest and a hurt funny bone. Rodriguez saw it all in the 44-34 loss Thursday night.
"I want everybody to be mad. ... I'm mad," he said. "I'm going to be mad for another day or two. And then we move on. I don't need anybody to counsel us or tell us the good or the bad or the ugly."
The Mountaineers (7-1, 2-1 Big East) need some help to earn their fourth straight Big East title and a possible second straight Bowl Championship Series berth.
West Virginia knows it must finish strong. Three of the final four regular-season games are at home, starting Nov. 11 against Cincinnati.
"It's been a while since we lost," Rodriguez said. "But I've lost before and we'll lose again. We'll just do things the way we know best and move on."
The coach must figure out how a previously unbeaten team could allow 20 more points than any previous game this season and the most since last year's 46-44 win over Louisville in triple overtime.
Rodriguez was especially critical of his defense for being soft against Louisville.
"Other teams have defended them better than we did," Rodriguez said. "There were some plays that were too easy for them, in my opinion. It was too easy for them to pitch and catch and too easy to run.
"We weren't blitzing well. We were running right into people. We weren't breaking on the ball. We weren't rerouting any wide receivers. First-down play-action passes were something we knew were coming yet we act surprised by it. We've got some meeting to do and some corrections to make."
Rodriguez said he didn't believe the injury to running back Steve Slaton's left arm was long term.
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