Frustrated as Ever, Rich Rodriguez Pledges WVU Football Will ‘Get it Fixed’

Once again, the WVU fell in the annual Coal Rush Game, this time in a 52-31 loss to Arizona.

Despite recent struggles by the team, fans showed up and provided a solid home atmosphere for WVU. Their efforts add to the frustration of a lackluster performance for head coach Rich Rodriguez.

“It’s really frustrating. I think our fans were fantastic. They showed up today. I thought it was a great crowd. They tried to lift our defense up. We had great crowd noise, and we didn’t reward them enough,” Rodriguez said in the postgame press conference.

Arizona punted just three times on the day, which puts more pressure on the WVU offense to perform. But WVU was unable to keep up with the pace of Arizona’s offense.

“It’s very frustrating because we can’t get a stop on defense, and then offensively there is probably a little bit of pressure. You can’t have a turnover. You have to score every possession and it is extremely frustrating,” Rodriguez added.

Rodriguez emphasized the need for the coaching staff to sort out the problems, as the team has played hard in his eyes.

“I told the team they are playing hard, but as coaches there is some stuff that we have to fix, and fix it in a hurry,” said Rodriguez.

“I think our guys are conscientious enough to do that, but we didn’t get it fixed today defensively, and then offensively, when we had a couple of turnovers, it really cost us and we couldn’t get the momentum we needed.”

Even so, Rodriguez believes he and the coaching staff will “get it fixed.” However, they are running out of time as the season is halfway finished.

“It’s half of the season. It’s over. We’ll move on to the second half. We have got to be a better team in the second half, which we will be. We’ll get it fixed. I don’t want to wash this first half away, because we’ve got to learn from it,” Rodriguez promised.

“That’s the biggest thing. We can’t just say, ‘What did we do wrong in the first six games, and what did we do well and then let’s figure it out.’ We owe that to our program. We owe it to our school. We owe it to our fans. That’s our job as coaches to get our players to get it right.”

Find more coverage of the WVU football program at WV Sports Now.

For a related story, Rich Rodriguez talked about the possibility of a change at defensive coordinator.