Don't expect the new coaching staff to stick with every single element of the previous West Virginia offensive and defensive playbooks, but the Mountaineers' new offensive coordinator and incumbent defensive coordinator said yesterday that fans will see much of that same stuff as in recent, successful seasons.

The offense figures to undergo more minor remodeling than the rest.

First-time coordinator Jeff Mullen, who oversees an offense with four new assistants and one vital mainstay in fourth-year quarterback Pat White, said his unit likely will carry a new terminology, a tweaked playbook and a spread style replete with more motion, more quick passes and downfield throws, more pass protection schemes and more runs from slotbacks.

Coach Bill Stewart's new assistants met with the media for the first time yesterday.

"We're going to use tempo and play it really fast or really slow," said Mullen, the coordinator/quarterbacks coach who came from Jim Grobe's Wake Forest staff, where he helped run a spread offense before it became so in vogue. "It'll look a lot like it did last year. We'll use more shifts and motion than you're used to seeing here. We will have the perimeters guys run more than you're used to seeing. We will throw the ball a little bit.

"It starts with the quarterback. You can't take a quarterback who's been successful like Pat White and change. There's a lot of talent here [at the skill positions], and we'll use them all."

One thing Mullen will alter is the terminology and presnap regimen. He said he plans to spend a week watching films from the old haunts of the new offensive staff: Associate head coach Doc Holliday (Florida), fullbacks and tight ends; Chris Beatty (Northern Illinois), running backs and slotbacks; Lonnie Galloway (Appalachian State), wide receivers; and David Johnson (Georgia), offensive line. That way, they can begin to find a common language for formations, reads, plays and such, "or we wouldn't be able to call a football game." He said Pat White will have a say in that transition, too.

Jeff Casteel adds two former defensive coordinators, David Lockwood and Steve Dunlap, and the brain trust figures to do the yearly tinkering to a 3-3-5 defense that has to replace seven departed starters.

"The kids know what they know," Casteel said. "They have to go out and execute. We don't want them to [be unable] to play fast."

Yet, he added, his remodeled staff -- line coach Bill Kirelawich is the only other holdover assistant besides Casteel -- will perform "a lot of film study ... and bounce ideas off each other" the same as the offense.

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