Glover, Mathews in bowl

There will be a Youngstown-area connection to the Konica Minolta Gator Bowl on New Year’s Day in Jacksonville (Fla.) Municipal Stadium.

Sidney Glover from Warren Harding High will be a starter at the spur safety position for West Virginia (9-3), when the Mountaineers square off against Florida State (6-6) at 1 p.m. (WKBN-TV 27).

Glover (5-foot-11, 204 pounds), a junior cornerback in his second year as a starter, will try to help WVU beat the Seminoles for the first time in the Gator Bowl after two previous losses to the Seminoles in 1982 and 2005.

He will be playing in his third bowl game.

Also on the WVU roster is Trevor Mathews (6-4, 223), a redshirt junior punter from Lakeview High in Cortland who is listed in a reserve role.

This will be the Mountaineers’ seventh Gator Bowl appearance since 1982.

Gator Bowl chairman Dan Murphy said that West Virginia, under second-year coach Bill Stewart, became an appealing option for the Gator Bowl after the Mountaineers knocked off then-eighth-ranked Pitt on the final play of the game in Morgantown, 19-16, on Nov. 27.

Stewart, who replaced Rich Rodriguez at the WVU helm as interim head coach three weeks prior to the 2008 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, led the Mountaineers to a 48-28 victory in that game against Oklahoma.

And after being named the school’s 32nd coach on Jan. 3, 2008, a day after that impressive victory, Stewart followed that with a record of 9-4 in 2008 — the most wins by a first-year coach in school history.

Murphy said Florida State was invited to play after coach Bobby Bowden announced it would be his last game.

Murphy said it was fitting that Bowden, a former WVU coach, will “coach his last game against a team he coached for a number of years back in the 1970s, and also a team that he began his current bowl streak against here in the Konica Minolta Gator Bowl back in 1982.”

Glover bounced back from a hamstring injury to his left leg that limited his playing time in spring practice this year, to become the team’s sixth leading tackler with 53 stops, including 34 solo tackles.He also has six tackles for losses of 26 yards, two fumble recoveries with 44 return yards, four pass breakups and one fumble recovery.

Last season, Glover was WVU’s fifth-leading tackler with 61 stops, including one sack and 4.5 tackles for loss; and tied for third on the team with six pass breakups while also forcing a fumble.

A busy player who also plays special teams, Glover was used in a more than 600 plays last season, including a season-high 70 at Colorado.

As a freshman in 2007, Glover played in 11 games and had 18 tackles, including 14 solo stops and one sack and a forced fumble.

While at Harding High under coach Thom McDaniels, Glover enjoyed an outstanding senior season as a team captain with 130 tackles, three interceptions and eight touchdowns.

The son of Sidney and Deidri Glover is majoring in multidisciplinary studies.

Mathews, an engineering major and the son of Zane and LuAnn Mathews, was a walk-on to the Mountaineers in 2007.

He made the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll and is a member of the Student Advisory Committee and Student Society for the Advancement of Biometrics.

While at Lakeview High under coach Tom Pavlansky, Mathews had a successful overall senior season with a 39.5-yard punting average, 22 pass catches for 427 yards (an average of 19.4 yards per catch) and six touchdowns.He also had 43 tackles, including two sacks and six tackles for loss, and one interception.

XJohn Kovach covers college athletics for The Vindicator. Write to him at kovach@vindy.com.