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Holgorsen unaware of announcement

MORGANTOWN — Has one ever been that person who was the last one to get a joke? Well, Tuesday’s announcement from N.C. State that Saturday’s showdown with No. 14 West Virginia (2-0) was canceled hadn’t come until after veteran Mountaineers’ head coach Dana Holgorsen met with sports writers from around the Mountain State.

“We’ve been instructed to prepare for N.C. State, and we’re preparing for N.C. State,” Holgorsen said during his opening statement. “So, here we go.

“Honestly, I’ve been looking forward to this game for quite a while. They have a good program down there. I know a lot of Mountaineer people and fans all involved that have been looking forward to playing this game since 2010. I guess was the last time these two programs played. They’re good; Dave Doeren has been there a long time. He’s a really high-respected defensive football coach.”

The Mountaineers’ head man then turned his attention to how his team would handle the expected inclement weather that is expected to hit the Mountain State later in the week.

“Really the only thing that forces us inside is lightning,” continued the coach. “If it’s 28 and snowing, we’re going to be outside. There’s a footing aspect to snow that we’ll deal with. But rain, we’ll practice in rain. The only way we go in is if they say there’s lightning, you have to go in, and then we go in. Other than that, we’ll be outside. We haven’t had a whole lot of rain days, we’ve had a couple.

“I was not concerned with last Saturday at all. I thought we handled those conditions just fine. How many of those games did we play in last year? Iowa State was like that, Kansas State was like that, Utah was like that – it didn’t work, Oklahoma State, I believe, was like that, Oklahoma a couple years ago, we’ve played in all kinds of weather.

“We don’t care what the weather is, we go out, and we play in it. Now, there’s lightning that doesn’t allow you to do that, and there’s 150 mile-per-hour winds in a hurricane that probably won’t allow you to do that. Other than that, we’ll go out and practice. I thought we handled it really well last Saturday, and I was like the weather held off as long as it did, so the crowd would be there. The crowd was spectacular and gave us a lot of juice in warmups. I couldn’t be happier with our support right now from a fan prospective. That’s why (redshirt junior long snapper) Rex Sunahara was the player of the game on special teams because it was wet, and he had never snapped in those conditions, and his snaps were perfect. He’s had plenty of wet-ball snap drills. (David) Sills (V) lost the ball once, (redshirt senior quarterback) Will (Grier) lost the ball once. Other than that, we were pretty good on ball security, so I was happy with it overall.”

Holgorsen was even asked if changing the day and time of the contest with the Wolfpack had been considered.

“That’s not going to happen,” he said. “We’ll play at 3:30 on Saturday, or we won’t play. Our job is to get ready for every game the right way. I’ve been through this before, and if you start trying to outsmart systems like this, then it’s going to affect your team.

“Back in 2008, when I was at Houston, we moved a game because of a hurricane. We moved it from Houston to Dallas, and there were 250 people that ended up going to that game because the hurricane that ripped apart the city of Houston on Friday night at midnight as our players sat in a hotel room in Dallas and watched it and didn’t get any sleep, we had to move the game from 2 o’clock in the afternoon to 10 a.m. to try to beat the hurricane, and then the hurricane sped up and went straight to Dallas, and we played in a hurricane that just ripped our city apart.

“And then we were just completely discombobulated as a football team for about two weeks, and it affected us the next game, and it affected us the next game. I want to play this game so bad you have no idea. With that said, the most important game after this game is Kanas State, and we cannot do anything to put ourselves in any kind of a disadvantage whatsoever to play any Big 12 football game. That’s how I view it. Now, I don’t make the decisions.”

Minutes after Holgorsen left the podium, defensive coordinator Tony Gibson came in and announced that the game had just been canceled.

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