First, as always, you can follow the blog on Twitter.

A bit late with everything this week ... had a commitment this evening and had to knock out the print stuff earlier. Look in Wednesday’s News & Advance for a story on Liberty’s run game, which has struggled to gain a rhythm in the season’s first four weeks. Coming Thursday, I’ll have a piece on Liberty senior offensive tackle Josh Weaver. No Wednesday blog post this week, but I’ll be back Thursday with the weekly picks.

- As I’ve said before, I vote in The Sports Network’s Top 25, so I figure it’s only fair to share my ballot with readers. My vote this week:

1. Richmond
2. Northern Iowa
3. Villanova
4. William & Mary
5. Montana
6. Southern Illinois
7. James Madison
8. McNeese St.
9. Appalachian St.
10. Elon
11. Weber St.
12. New Hampshire
13. South Carolina St.
14. South Dakota St.
15. Massachusetts
16. Eastern Illinois
17. Holy Cross
18. Central Arkansas
19. Eastern Kentucky
20. Colgate
21. Eastern Washington
22. Florida A&M
23. Texas St.
24. Youngstown St.
25. Liberty

An abbreviated look at West Virginia Wesleyan, whom the Flames will entertain Saturday at 3:30 p.m. (Some early schedules had the game at 7, but it’s been moved. As a writer, I’m of course pleased with this development.)

WEST VIRGINIA WESLEYAN
LOCATION: Buckhannon, W. Va.
ENROLLMENT: 1,250
FOUNDED: 1890
NICKNAME: Bobcats
COLORS: Orange and Black
CONFERENCE: WVIAC (Division II)
STADIUM: Cebe Ross Field (3,000)

HEAD COACH: Dennis Creehan (Edinboro, ‘71)
RECORD: 1-3, 1st year at WVWC/72-57-1, 13th year overall

2008 RECORD: 1-10, 1-7/8th WVIAC
POSTSEASON: None
2009 RECORD: 1-3
OFFENSIVE FORMATION: Wing-T
DEFENSIVE FORMATION: 3-4
LETTERMAN RETURNING/LOST: 28/24
STARTERS RETURNING/LOST: 7/15
OFFENSIVE/DEFENSIVE STARTERS RETURNING: 4/3

2009 SCHEDULE (1-3)
August
29…..at St. Paul’s…..................Cancelled
September
5…....at Urbana…......................L, 20-19
12…..at Concord….....................L, 35-26
19…..WEST LIBERTY….............L, 49-26
26…..at Seton Hill…...................W, 38-26
October
3…....at Liberty….........................3:30 p.m.
10…..SHEPHERD….....................6 p.m.
17…..FAIRMONT STATE…...........1 p.m.
24…..at Glenville State…..............1 p.m.
31…..WEST VIRGINIA STATE…...1 p.m.
November
7…....at Charleston…....................1 p.m.

2008 RESULTS
August
30…..SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT…..L, 26-21
September
6…....at Virginia Union…....................L, 35-14
12…..CHARLESTON…......................L, 24-17
20…..CONCORD…...........................W, 31-26
27…..at West Liberty….....................L, 46-0
October
3…....SETON HILL….........................L, 35-32
9…....UNC PEMBROKE….................L, 36-14
18…...at Shepherd….........................L, 27-12
25…...at Fairmont State….................L, 31-0
November
1…....GLENVILLE STATE…...............L, 40-14
8…....at West Virginia State…............L, 31-24 (OT)

****

Now, Tuesday’s press conference highlights:

* On the injury front, all of the game-time decisions last week played, and all came through the game fine. Quarterback Tommy Beecher took two shots to the head, including the second one that could have easily been called a helmet-to-helmet hit. But he was fine. The blood you saw on television replays was from Beecher biting his tongue after taking a shot to the jaw. He’ll be ready to go Saturday.

Wide receiver Chris Summers (foot) played and performed well Saturday, and battling through pain to play always makes good impressions on teammates.

Linebacker Doncel Bolt was dealing with a painful quad injury but played and set a career high with 13 tackles.

The only player who couldn’t go was starting right tackle Justin Vargas, who suffered a high right ankle sprain at Lafayette. Liberty coach Danny Rocco said Vargas will sit out Saturday in hopes that two more weeks off will help heal the injury and get him ready for Big South Conference play, which opens Oct. 17 when Coastal Carolina visits Liberty.

* The state of Liberty’s quarterback situation has been popular message-board fodder. The debate: Should Mike Brown play QB full-time or is the Brown-Beecher rotation best for the team at this point? My contention—there’s just not enough information at this point. Let’s look at this step-by-step.

- The rotation worked well at West Virginia. Beecher was accurate and Brown was all over the field as a receiver. Beecher really made only one mistake, throwing the ball into double coverage late trying to make a play with Liberty down 13 points.

- Then came the North Carolina Central game, where Beecher sustained a concussion and Brown was forced to play QB basically on the fly, since he hadn’t worked with the first team as a quarterback.

- At Lafayette, Brown was the starting quarterback and Beecher didn’t play. Brown was electrifying, but let’s be honest here. Lafayette really had no idea what to expect because there was no game film of Brown starting a game at quarterback. He threw the ball 36 times, and pretty much every game film anyone would have had of Brown previous to that would have shown him running the ball nearly every time he took a snap. So the element of surprise probably helped the Flames there, at least a little bit.

- The JMU game, well, you can just throw that one out. Neither team could throw the ball. Tough to make a quarterback assessment from that night, considering how hard the rain was falling.

“No matter where you’re at, the quarterback position is always the most critical decision and position on the football team. It just is,“ Rocco said. “We’ve had a situation where Tommy was our quarterback in one game, and then the next game he played just a little bit. Then Mike Brown became our quarterback for two games and last week, we couldn’t have thrown the ball if we’d had whomever…Brett Favre out there throwing the ball. So it really wouldn’t have mattered. In my opinion, we’ve really yet to settle into, OK, here we are on offense, and this is how we’re going to go, these are the weapons we have and this is how we’re going to use them. ... Hopefully this week, this game, the open date and then the beginning of conference play here the next week against Coastal, we’ll be able to make some significant improvement because we can have a little more continuity.“

- Rocco broke down exactly what misfired on Corwin Acker‘s back-breaking 65-yard touchdown run last Saturday, the run that put JMU up 17-10 in the fourth quarter:

“It was really a run stop defense,“ he said. “With that type of defense, the risk that you have is if you don’t set the edge on the outside. On this particular play, we didn’t get the edge set. Our outside linebackers have to turn the play back inside, because that’s where all the defense is, filling those gaps. The ball started to the edge, and our outside backer was in good shape, and he kind of just peeked inside a bit. There’s help inside. There’s no help outside. When the ball got to the edge, our safety didn’t take a real good angle and he put himself behind the tailback. Then our corner, who is in man coverage in that call, once the ball shows up on the sideline, he has to get back outside the football to turn it back to all of the pursuit. So it was really a leverage play, a play where we lost leverage. We gave up the edge, and when that happens to you, you have a chance to give up big chunks of yardage. That’s obviously what happened.

“That play should have never gotten out there the way it did, but we’ve got to learn from it. The running back just made a really good cut. He’s got great speed.“

- WSET’s Dennis Carter beat me to it on this question: What’s the motivation level this week for the players? Last week, they’re playing the biggest home game in school history. This week—and no disrespect to West Virginia Wesleyan—they’re playing a Division II team that’s 2-13 over the last two seasons.

“There’s always things that I can do, it’s just a matter if I do the right thing,“ Rocco said. “I spend more time thinking about that exact question, the psyche of the team, the morale of the team, the motivation of the team. As I look at that and communicate, I feel very comfortable and very confident that these guys are very resilient. We’re very disappointed (about the JMU loss) but not discouraged. To be discouraged is bad and hard to rebound from. If I walked around here all week sulking, feeling sorry for myself, crying, etc., then that’s the way my kids are probably going to act. But if I’m willing to move on and re-energize myself and our staff, that’s what our kids should do. So we’ll see, how hard we play, how well we play.“

- The student turnout Saturday evening, despite the torrential downpours at the stadium, was impressive. Nearly three hours before the game, Rocco looked out of his office window and saw the entire student side of the stadium full. He was so moved by the student showing that he wrote a letter to the Liberty student body expressing gratitude and had it posted on the Flames’ official Web site.

“It was 4:15 in the afternoon, and we had a number of recruits on campus that were there to visit for the game and to tour the facility,“ Rocco said. “As we go through our list of each week, we always talk the student-athletes and that I get a chance to visit with them in my office. And I just couldn’t stop looking out the window. I was just really taken aback by it. I can remember some families coming in, and I was still pre-occupied with looking out the window and saying, ‘Can you believe this?‘ Jokingly, I said I wonder if these kids know the game’s at 7?“

That’s all for tonight. Check back Thursday for picks and more notes.