MORGANTOWN — If there is a nerve center to the attack-dog defense that new defensive coordinator Zac Alley has brought with him to West Virginia which will debut at 2 p.m. Saturday at Mountaineer Field against Robert Morris, it can be found in an anonymous yet aggressive group of linebackers.

This is where the heart of the defense beats, at what they term Mike, Will or Bandit linebacker positions that will be manned, now that a depth chart is out, by Reid Carrico, a Ohio State transfer who made his presence felt last season at the middle spot; Chase Wilson, a new transfer from Colorado State holder Ben Cutter at the weakside linebacker, Branden Siders, a new Wyoming transfer, at the hybrid Bandit spot which can be a pass rusher, a pass defender or hybrid linebacker whose main role is create chaos for the offense.

The group’s mission is central to the defense, being in charge not only of making tackles, but also in making sure everyone is on the same page, lining up in the right spot, running the right assignment.

The importance of this can’t be overstated, as anyone who last season saw how vulnerable a defense is when just one player isn’t lined up right or in the wrong coverage as the pass defense wound up 117th out of 133 teams in the nation.

“It’s not just those three guys starting,” Alley said the other day. “It’s every linebacker in the room. If you are out there playing linebacker in this system your job is getting everybody lined up, to communicate, to hold the others to a standard and if they are not lined up to fix it, to give them the call.

“That’s what All-Americans do if you want to be the best.”

Now it’s a lot to start thinking of the group in terms of potential All-American honors, but do not be surprised that you aren’t familiar with them as we don’t get a whole lot of news out of Colorado State and Wyoming in this part of the world.

While we recently discussed Siders and Carrico made his presence felt by running backs last season, Wilson is equally important and interesting.

“You can tell he’s played a lot of ball. His understanding is really high,” Alley said of the 6-foot-1, 230-pounder who has 42 career games played in five year at CSU, two earning second team All-Mountain West honors.

“He has football intelligence, the anticipation of what’s coming, you can tell he has been in situations like that before. So he understands the whys behind what someone is trying to do.”

And experience cannot be overstated.

“I think it matters if you are in Year 1 or Year 4, the more experience you have, the better you will play,” Alley stressed. “The reps, doing it over and over again, matter. If you tell me a guy has had 10 reps or 10,000 reps, I’d always rather have the guy who has 10,000 because he has a better chance of executing that right.

“When you bring guys in, like a Chase Wilson, that’s played a lot; a lot of times it correlates. It’s not ‘Oh, my gosh, we’ve never run Sam Fire, Cover 3. We’ve run that everywhere I’ve ever been, so there’s a lot of correlation to how the fit and eyes and different parts of the game play. It’s important to have experience and reps.”

Experience, though, matters most if it comes with off-the-field work and study and Wilson has that to an excess.

“Nobody worked harder than that guy. He’s been up here every day — six, seven hours every day. I always see him in the weight room, in the meeting room, in the training room. He’s always doing the things he needs to do to be successful,” Alley said.

“He should be a great player, a great vocal leader for us and you will see that Saturday.”

There was a connection between Alley and Wilson right from the moment he arrived, and there is a bit of story involved in that journey.

When he committed, he loaded his car up with all his belongings and headed east from Fort Collins, Colorado, but not in the car.

That he shipped.

“It was too old and beat up that I wasn’t sure it would make it,” he said.

He, on the other hand, is in fine shape and clicked right away with Alley.

“Coach Alley reached out to me and his kind of mindset of how he likes to play defense and just his aggressive mindset was something I could really get behind,” Wilson explained. “That was the biggest factor in wanting to transfer.

“This was the first visit I took and right after my visit, it felt a lot like Colorado to me, more hills than mountains, but I fell in love with it,” Wilson added. “I fell in love with the people, the game-day atmosphere, and the fan base just felt like home to me.”

And now he’s ready to line up with Carrico and Siders and introduce themselves not only to the home crowd but to the ball carriers, quarterback and protectors on the Robert Morris offense.