Early Progress Report on WVU's Transfer Defensive Backs

ShaDon Brown talks the new faces that makeup West Virginia's secondary.

Schuyler Callihan | Aug 6, 2024

West Virginia defensive back Ayden Garnes. / Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI

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West Virginia Mountaineers

West Virginia's secondary went through a complete transformation this offseason - a group that now has more length, size, and speed.

Since this regime arrived in 2019, WVU has fielded a lot of undersized players in the secondary, specifically at corner. Beanie Bishop did a phenomenal job in his one and only season in Morgantown, but the coaching staff is hoping this batch of transfers allows them to do more and not lean one guy.

Secondaries coach ShaDon Brown met with the media on Monday and went in-depth on some of those new faces and how each of them can help.

CB Garnett Hollis Jr.

“Garnett gives you a guy that’s big on the outside. He’s right at 6’2”, 205 pounds. He doesn’t look like a prototype corner that we’ve had here. He’s long, he can run, he can disrupt routes at the line of scrimmage. He gives us that big body where we can matchup where at times last year even as good as Beanie (Bishop) was, we would get pushed around a little bit. He’s so big and strong those plays don’t happen. The other thing is, he’s physical in the run game. He’s not afraid of contact which is a big plus. Sometimes a long guy like that doesn’t bend well enough to be able to tackle in space, but he’s got that contact courage. We can do some things differently and let him play by himself in the boundary and double some guys and some different things that we haven’t been able to do here.”

CB Ayden Garnes

“Ayden Garnes is playing really well. I don’t know if they’ve caught a ball on Ayden Garnes through five practices. He’s playing really well. He’s playing the deep part of the field extremely well and that’s an area he’s had to get better. At Duquesne, he could play with his eyes in the backfield and still be first team all-league. You can’t do that at this level and so he had to learn that in the spring. When you look at his stature, he’s six-foot, 179 pounds, he was 163 when he arrives in January, but he’s one of the strongest pound for pound guys in the DB room. He’s got a chance to be a plus player in this league.”

CB Dontez Fagan

“Strong built kid, can really run. Plays the ball down the field really well. Can bump and run. Probably a little bit better when he plays off coverage right now because he wasn’t asked to play a lot of zone at his previous stop. He’s learning some new things, but has a physicality to his game and he’s not afraid of contact. He’ll definitely have a role for us.”

S Kekoura Tarnue

“He’s playing CAT safety for us right now. He’s s a strong kid. He’s about six-foot, 200-205. He looks like a safety when he walks in and he can really run as well. His deficiencies that we’re working on is just playing the ball in the deep part of the field just because it’s been new in how we do it. He’s got really good ball skills, but just playing the ball from safety as opposed to corner.”

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