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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. �����Ƶ� West Virginia University held its Pro Day Tuesday afternoon for recently-graduated �����ƵU football players, and 21 NFL scouts representing 18 teams were on hand to observe those workouts.

Six former Mountaineers �����Ƶ� placekicker/punter Tyler Sumpter, placekicker Evan Staley, running back Leddie Brown, defensive back Sean Mahone, defensive back Alonzo Addae and defensive back Scottie Young �����Ƶ� were put through their paces by the Pittsburgh Steeler scouts, who ran the drills, while the others kept stopwatches and notepads at the ready.

�����Ƶ�It�����Ƶ�s something that�����Ƶ�s very significant for these six individuals, but it�����Ƶ�s important for our program, too,�����Ƶ� said �����ƵU head coach Neal Brown of Pro Day. �����Ƶ�We always talk about three goals �����Ƶ� we want to develop men, we want to win, and we want to graduate and place.

�����Ƶ�I tell parents this up front, and credit our academic staff, but we�����Ƶ�ve graduated 100% from the year before I got here and then these last three years of those who have (finished) their eligibility.

�����Ƶ�After that, we work on placement, and there is no better place we can put our student-athletes where they�����Ƶ�re going to make a better first-year salary than in the NFL. Now, all of them aren�����Ƶ�t going to make it, but that�����Ƶ�s the goal when you come and play big-time college football. I�����Ƶ�m excited for these guys. It�����Ƶ�s a showcase day for them.�����Ƶ�

After doing strength tests in the Puskar Center weightroom, the half dozen went to the Indoor Practice Facility for additional workouts.

The placekickers each showed off their leg strength and accuracy with field-goal tries from various distances.

�����Ƶ�Today was kind of like kicking on a game day. You sort of black out and zero in on what you�����Ƶ�re doing,�����Ƶ� said Staley, who is overcoming a knee injury he suffered in 2020 that continued to limit him last season. �����Ƶ�My knee feels great, and I feel really strong kicking the football now. I hit some bombs today that I hadn�����Ƶ�t hit in a while.�����Ƶ�

After the kickers, the three safeties went through a variety of speed, agility and ball drills, showing off their footwork, quickness and hands.

�����Ƶ�I thought I did well,�����Ƶ� stated Addae. �����Ƶ�I was happy to come out here and perform in front of NFL scouts, just get an opportunity. I was grateful to God for putting me in this position.

�����Ƶ�I�����Ƶ�ve been training six days a week for this,�����Ƶ� added the safety from Ontario, Canada. �����Ƶ�I think I put on a good show today.�����Ƶ�

One of the highest-priced workout passers available threw to the three safeties, as well to Leddie Brown, who mixed running back bag drills with route running. �����ƵU�����Ƶ�s first-year offensive coordinator Graham Harrell, who is still fifth in FBS passing numbers, throwing for 15,599 yards in his Texas Tech career (2006-09) and then spent five seasons in pro football, did all the throwing on Tuesday.

Brown caught Harrell�����Ƶ�s passes well, and he also showed nice agility in the bag drills, which were overseen by Blaine Stewart, the son of former �����ƵU coach Bill Stewart, who is now an assistant coach with the Steelers.

�����Ƶ�Since I was home, I was more comfortable, cutting on the turf and things like that,�����Ƶ� said Brown, who is the only Mountaineer who also performed at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis at the beginning of March.

While Mahone (4.56), Addae (4.58) and Young (4.68) each ran the 40-yard dash on Tuesday�����Ƶ�s Pro Day, along with all the other drills, Brown skipped the 40 and also the broad jump.

�����Ƶ�I think I did pretty good,�����Ƶ� said the running back, who measured 5-foot-11.68 and 215 pounds. �����Ƶ�I wanted to do more, but they told me they wanted to save my legs. Save my legs for what? This is an interview. I was made to do this.�����Ƶ�

Brown was timed at 4.64 in the 40 in Indianapolis, and while on Tuesday he did the vertical jump (36.5 inches), 20-yard shuttle (4.21), 3-cone drill (7.03) and bench press (18 sets of 225), he decided not to run the 40 again in Morgantown.

�����Ƶ�I�����Ƶ�m just going to stand on my combine 40,�����Ƶ� Brown explained. �����Ƶ�My film speaks for itself.�����Ƶ�

Leddie�����Ƶ�s numbers in most of the categories recorded at �����ƵU�����Ƶ�s Pro Day bested his Mountaineer teammates, though Addae did top him by .02 in the 3-cone drill (7.01). Addae also had the second-best 20-yard shuttle behind Brown (4.23) and equaled Mahone in the broad jump at 9-foot, 8-inches.

For all six, it was an opportunity to work out �����Ƶ� and hopefully impress �����Ƶ� NFL scouts.

�����Ƶ�This was a dream come true. It was a surreal moment,�����Ƶ� explained Young. �����Ƶ�I remember being in middle school and high school dreaming of getting an opportunity to perform in front of coaches at the highest level, and I got that chance today.�����Ƶ�

A few days ago, we looked at some of West Virginia�����Ƶ�s major needed areas of improvement on offense if the 2022 season is to be appreciably better than the results of the 2021 campaign.

Today, it�����Ƶ�s the defense�����Ƶ�s turn in the spotlight, and although the jumps don�����Ƶ�t need to be as big as those required on offense, there are still some areas that have to see upgrades.

Playmaking Bandits: At Troy, Neal Brown had defenses built around the bandit position.

Playing either on the line of scrimmage at one end of the defensive front, or as a second inside linebacker off the ball to give the defense an entirely different look, the bandit is a hybrid defender that does a bit of everything from rushing the passer to run fitting in the middle of the defense to dropping out into short zone pass defense.

At Troy, Hunter Reese became Brown�����Ƶ�s quintessential bandit, following in the footsteps of Sam Lebbie. At West Virginia, such a player has yet to be identified.

VanDarius Cowan, brought in as a transfer, had the most natural athletic skill to fit the needs of the position but continued assignment busts made him a hit or miss proposition at the spot.

Jared Bartlett, backing up and sometimes starting in front of the erratic Cowan, has progressed respectably, recording 32 tackles this year, but with just one tackle for loss and no sacks this year, didn�����Ƶ�t produce the number of impact plays the spot demands.

West Virginia has recruited multiple prospects for the position last year and this, but to date has not found the one player who can stay on the field, no matter the assignment, and be a difference-maker in all phases.

Whether Bartlett or one of the holdovers or new recruits can fill the bill remains to be seen, but for West Virginia�����Ƶ�s defense to function the way Troy�����Ƶ�s did in wins over LSU and Nebraska, a dominant, multi-tasking bandit has to be found.

Safety Dance: Perhaps �����Ƶ�replacement�����Ƶ� rather than �����Ƶ�improvement�����Ƶ� is the key word here, but �����ƵU must replace Alonzo Addae, Sean Mahone and Scottie Young at its free, cat and spear safety positions.

Add in outgoing transfer Jackie Matthews, who sometimes slotted in at the spear, and the Mountaineers face a huge rebuild at the position.

Also needed is more consistent play from the group, especially in defending deep balls and reading and reacting.

Mahone was the best of the three overall, but at times there were concerning breakdowns in coverage and run support.

�����ƵU also didn�����Ƶ�t get the best synergy it hoped for in using the cat and free interchangeably at times, or as the pair of high safeties in two-deep zone looks.

If nothing else, West Virginia must be flexible in its positioning and pass coverage options, with the same personnel able to execute at different spots, in order to be successful, and that wasn�����Ƶ�t always the case.

Generating big plays and turnovers is the other area in which �����ƵU�����Ƶ�s safeties must improve in 2022.

Sean Mahone had the group�����Ƶ�s only two picks in 2021, with Addae collecting its only fumble recovery, leaving �����ƵU 79th nationally in the former category and 87th in the latter.

Like the bandit spot, these are playmaking positions in the West Virginia defensive scheme, and it needs dynamic, game-changing plays from them in order to have success.

Depth at Cornerback: While versatility is clearly one of the cornerstones of West Virginia�����Ƶ�s defense, the flip side is that all of the shuffling between the secondary positions on defense might have contributed to some of the group�����Ƶ�s inconsistency in 2021.

Again, play was good overall, but with transfers and first-time starters manning the positions after Nicktroy Fortune was lost for the season, those players probably could have benefited from minimal switching.

Injuries contributed heavily to the need to shuffle players from week to week, and that�����Ƶ�s obviously something that can�����Ƶ�t be controlled, but a key priority this spring �����Ƶ� and in the search of the transfer portal �����Ƶ� will be the identification of at least four players who can stick at the corner spots and be counted on no matter the assignment.

It�����Ƶ�s not an easy one, but it�����Ƶ�s needed to help West Virginia limit big plays and get off the field earlier in drives.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (�����Ƶ News) �����Ƶ� Dante Stills and Zach Frazier topped off a big week in college football for North Central West Virginia and the Fairmont/Clarksburg area in particular by being named to the All-Big 12s first and second team respectively.

It is difficult to imagine the impact the area has had on college football over the years, but this week Nick Saban guided his Alabama football team past rival Auburn with a thrilling, come-from-behind four-overtime victory to advance to the SEC's championship game.

And Rich Rodriguez was named head coach at Jacksonville State as it moves into FBS football as a member of Conference USA.

Then, on Thursday, the Big 12 �����Ƶ� which is awaiting its championship game �����Ƶ� came out with awards for the 2012 season and the senior Stills was named to the defensive team at tackle while Frazier, a sophomore, was named second team all-conference.

For Stills, who was selected the pre-season Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year, his all-conference play rewarded his decision to return for his senior year.

Earlier he admitted that he had considered jumping into the NFL draft pool with his brother, Darius, last year.

"My goal going into my junior year was I wanted to leave," he said in pre-season interviews. "I wanted to be that three-year dude, but during the year I wasn't performing at the level I expected to be at. I was good, but my stats weren't showing it. I just didn't do as much as I needed to go to the next level."

So while Darius went into the draft as the Big 12's Defensive Lineman of the Year for 2020, only to be bypassed in the draft, Dante came back and worked on the things he felt he needed to improve.

The result was a big season, even though offenses were scheming to double team him.

In the voting of the Big 12 coaches who were not allowed to vote for their own players, Stills left with top honors at his position.

He started all 12 games and finished with 32 tackles, including 25 solo stops, with a team-high six sacks and also a team-leading 13 tackles for losses.

He accomplished what any defensive lineman sets out to accomplish.

"Our main focus is doing our job, getting up field and making penetration," he said. "I'm just trying to cause havoc."

While he was doing that while becoming a leader on defense, sophomore Frazier was gaining league-wide respect in his first full season starting at center.

Like the Stills brothers, Frazier came out of Fairmont Senior's football program and made an immediate impression across the league as a true freshman when he was forced due to injury into starting out of position at guard.

There was none of that this year, Frazier being named the starting center from the beginning and he was a dominant player.

He played all 841 offensive snaps in 2021 and on more than 1,400 snaps in his first two years. He was a three-time �����ƵU Offensive Lineman of the Game (Virginia Tech, TCU, LIU) and finished with a team-high 60 knockdowns and 28 great blocks.

Frazier only surrendered two sacks for the entire season and graded out to 90% or better in 10-of-12 games on overall performance, posting 88% in the other two games.

Earning All-Big 12 honorable mention were defensive back Alonzo Addae, running back Leddie Brown, linebacker Josh Chandler-Semedo, wide receiver Bryce Ford-Wheaton, offensive lineman James Gmiter, placekicker Casey Legg, defensive back Sean Mahone, defensive lineman Akheem Mesidor, offensive lineman Wyatt Milum, punter Tyler Sumpte and wide receiver/returner Winston Wright Jr.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (�����Ƶ News) �����Ƶ� It was slipping away, and Josh Chandler-Semedo didn't like it.

His senior year at West Virginia had hit the midway point, and the team was 2-4. The fans were disenchanted, the quarterback was being booed and the coach was being threatened.

Baylor had pushed the Mountaineers around physically, and that just didn't fit in with Chandler-Semedo's view of himself or his team. It certainly wasn't what he had in mind when he left McKinley High School in Canton, Ohio.

If he were just a student, everything would be fine. He possessed an undergraduate degree and a masters. He liked life in Morgantown, so different than the city life he had grown up in in the Canton-Cleveland section of northeast Ohio.

"I'm from Ohio so it's similar ... but it's not really similar because I'm from the city, and this is probably the most country you can get," he noted recently. "It's definitely different, but I've definitely enjoyed it �����Ƶ� the fanbase and the people here �����Ƶ� it's a lovely town and a lovely state. It's just phenomenal."

But he is not just a student. He's a student-athlete, and he understands he's here because of football and what it means to him.

It isn't a game. It's an identity, a way of life. It is his brothers, his friends, a way of life within a way of life, and it was coming apart as the end approached.

The Mountaineers were going into a bye week, and he wasn't about to accept what was happening.

"There's zero margin for error," he said at a mid-year press briefing. "I can only speak for myself, but I'm not going out like that, period. Excuse my language, but that's piss-poor. I'm not going out like that, not in my senior year. So, whatever has to happen has to happen. I don't care which way we go. I'm not finishing the season 2-10, 3-9. That's not happening."

That was what he said for public consumption. One can only imagine what he said to his teammates.

He boldly predicted that things would change, that the team would win at least four of the final six games, that they would be bowl-qualified.

He never backed down from that prediction.

�����Ƶ�I definitely believed it when I said it,�����Ƶ� Chandler-Semedo reiterated. �����Ƶ�I know these guys. A lot of us are fourth- and fifth-year guys. I�����Ƶ�ve worked with these guys, I've played games with these guys, they are some of my best friends. I knew the work we�����Ƶ�d put in, and I knew we were better than going 2-10 or 3-9 or 4-8. We deserved to be in a bowl."

Many, of course, thought Chandler-Semedo had taken one too many blows to his helmet, but in the end, he was proven right ... And he proved himself right on the field, as he had vowed he would.

"Let the play show it, honestly," he said. "I can say whatever I want Monday through Friday, but if I don't go out on Saturday, it doesn't make a difference."

The regular season ended with a 34-28 victory over Kansas. Chandler-Semedo was instrumental in the game, just as he had been all season. He led the team in tackles in the game with 8, all solo, and for the season with 104, 27 more than Sean Mahone's 77.

But his influence on winning that final regular season game isn't seen so much in the tackles �����Ƶ� even though one of them forced a fumble �����Ƶ� but in the two passes he intercepted late in the game.

Consider that both were made in the end zone with Kansas on the doorstep of scoring a touchdown that could have changed the outcome of what wound up being a game decided by just six points.

Two fourth-quarter interceptions etched Chandler-Semedo's name into �����ƵU lore. It had been since 1981 when a linebacker last intercepted two passes in a game. Oddly, he was disappointed to hear that.

"I thought I had that to myself," he joked.

�����Ƶked to recount the interceptions, he gladly did so.

"The first was a pretty common route. They want to get to the boundary, overload and basically either the Mike or the far side safety has coverage. It's something we work on every day. It was an easy play," he said.

And the second?

"I definitely went and got that. I took No. 11 and I saw the QB scramble. Classic drill �����Ƶ� see green grass, see someone open and throw it to him," he said.

While the record isn't near what Chandler-Semedo was looking for coming into the season, his personal performance went beyond what many expected of him. He spent the year out of position, filling the Mike linebacker spot that had been occupied by David Long and Tony Fields III.

At 5-foot-11 and 224 pounds, Chandler-Semedo isn't a prototype middle linebacker, suited more for the Will position he played last year or for safety.

But his intelligence and understanding gained by changing positions all gave him assets he could call upon to make the conversion successful.

"The game has never really been hard to me," he said earlier this season. "It's always come pretty easy as far as learning stuff. My dad is a high school coach, so learning football was never really a problem for me. It's really just repetitions and getting after things, but it definitely took a lot of hard work to get comfortable at those different positions."

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (�����Ƶ News) �����Ƶ� There is not a bit of truth in the rumors that have circulated that West Virginia safety Sean Mahone's first year attending school at �����ƵU was Jerry West's final season of playing for the Mountaineers.

It only feels that way.

He's been here a while, now playing his sixth year. That means that when he arrived from Lakota West High School, which is north of Cincinnati, about a third of the way to Dayton, some of his current teammates were in middle school.

He was able to play six years because he redshirted his first season, then took advantage of having an extra year's eligibility tagged on at the end due to the Covid pandemic last season.

His teammates ride him about it.

"Evan Staley and I both came in in 2016, so they definitely joke around, calling us the old heads and everything,�����Ƶ� Mahone said.

When you reach that point, playing the game becomes bittersweet for you. You know the end of college days and college ball may be near, maybe even the end of your football career entirely.

"This being my sixth year, I only have three games left. It hasn't hit me yet, but I know it's going to hit me soon," he admitted.

Maybe it will hit him this week, in one of the most important games he's played, for the Mountaineers almost have to win at Kansas State at noon Saturday if they hope to become bowl eligible, allowing Mahone to extend his college career one more game.

Mahone has had any number of big moments for the Mountaineers over six years, but his legacy may have been made more in the classroom than on the football field. He recently learned he was a finalist for the William V. Campbell Trophy, given annually to the �����Ƶ�absolute best in the nation for his combined academic success, football performance and exemplary leadership,�����Ƶ� according to the NFF National Scholar-Athlete Class, which gives out the award.

�����Ƶ�I was shocked, but I was very proud and grateful for being selected as one of the 14 finalists, it meant a lot,�����Ƶ� Mahone said. �����Ƶ�Being able to tell my parents, it meant a lot to them. I�����Ƶ�m very proud, and it�����Ƶ�s a really big honor.�����Ƶ�

Mahone says he wasn't an extraordinary student in high school.

"In high school, I was like average, but my parents really harped on it," he said. "Before I got to college, I would see players who were good but they would have issues with school and everything.

"That hit me. I realized someday football was going to end and education is important and will take you further in life."

And so he put his nose into the books at �����ƵU and up with a pair of degrees already won, an undergraduate degree in technical information systems and a master's in business adminstration.

While he is taking some undergraduate courses this semester, he is thinking of going for a potential Ph.D., although he doesn't know where that will take him.

"I'm still trying to figure out. There's so many areas, it will eventually come to me. I'm on the right path," he said.

That led to a rather intriguing question that seemed to catch him off guard, and that was in what way book smarts transfer over into football smarts.

"I'm trying to think ... eh, I guess it's the same ... football is a little different. That's a good question," he said, hesitantly. "There's like a lot of stuff in football we see every day in life."

What they don't see in every day life is a quarterback like Kansas State's Skylar Thompson, who is completing 71% of his passes, or a diminutive running back like Deuce Vaughn, who is elusive at 5-foot-6 and 178 pounds as a runner, receiver and kick returner.

Mahone is charged with being "the quarterback" of the defense, according to defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley, making the defensive calls for the second level.

"With teams that are like tempo, I have to look to the sideline. Not just me, the corner, the safety, the spear ... we have to give a strength call, left or right, then look at the formation and give a call. If they shift positions it changes," he said.

"At first it was hard. My beginning years I was at corner and didn't have to say too much, but I'm at safety now and have speak up and give the calls. Iowa State was tough because they line up and shift a whole lot. I'm used to it now."

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. �����Ƶ� Despite prodigious accomplishments both on the field and in the classroom, West Virginia �����Ƶ�super senior�����Ƶ� Sean Mahone doesn�����Ƶ�…

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. �����Ƶ� Scottie Young�����Ƶ�s role in the 2021 Mountaineer defense has changed from a nice piece to the puzzle to key driving force in t…