MORGANTOWN — At some point this spring, Rich Rodriguez wasn’t going to be happy with one of West Virginia football’s practices. There were a couple of times last summer when Rodriguez thought a practice didn’t meet his expectations, and he wasn’t afraid to share his thoughts with the media.

The spring hasn’t been perfect so far, but Rodriguez seemed in a better mood. That changed after the sixth practice, which was WVU’s first scrimmage, and then the seventh practice on Monday.

“Scrimmage was just OK,” Rodriguez said. “Offense moved the ball some and made some plays. I thought the defense wasn’t very physical. Had some problems lining up a little bit. A lot of new guys in a new scheme, so you could tell it was the first real scrimmage from that standpoint. The effort was OK. I don’t think everybody understands our definition of playing hard is.”

Effort and playing hard are non-negotiables for Rodriguez. Rodriguez expects his team to play with a hard edge. It frustrates Rodriguez because it’s a mindset that a player can control.

There are going to be mistakes. It’s when those mistakes aren’t fixed after the second, third and fourth time that sets Rodriguez over the edge.

“You’re going to make mistakes every day, that’s part of the deal,” Rodriguez said. “But you got to learn from them and move on to the next batch of mistakes that you’re going to make.”

Like last year, WVU still has 80-plus new players. Rodriguez went about this roster a whole lot differently, with last year’s team made up of a ton of transfers. There are some transfers and returners, but WVU has a lot of new freshmen coming in, too.

Even though the roster might not seem similar, there are still a lot of new players learning Rodriguez’s expectations when taking the field. The excuse of being new doesn’t last long for Rodriguez.

“Should be after the first practice,” Rodriguez said. “That’s my frustration with coaches. That was practice six. I think today was seven. Shouldn’t be in practice six where I have to remind everybody about playing hard.”

After the first couple of practices, an “OK” practice was to be expected. Now that WVU is almost halfway done with the spring, Rodriguez thought it’d be a bit better by now.

“I expect more progress quicker,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t have a lot of patience. It’s not a very good trait. I need to have more patience. My patience runs really thin. I would have expected us to be further along in practice seven than we are.”

Rodriguez’s lack of patience is part of the reason why he runs a high-tempo offense and why his practices look like a circus. Rodriguez doesn’t like standing around.

This is nothing new, either. College football is lacking patience, with head coaches getting canned everywhere, and the transfer portal being used to instantly fix rosters. Society is also lacking patience. That’s changed over the past couple of years, but Rodriguez has always lacked patience.

“For me, it’s not been any different,” Rodriguez said. “It could be 1990 at Glenville State College. The sense of urgency has always been the same for me. It doesn’t matter whether I’m in the first year with the program or the seventh year of the program, whatever it’s going to be.”

It’s still the spring, though. If WVU were to have a bad practice, it’d prefer to happen in the spring, while the season is five months out. A bad practice in August, well then, you have issues.

With all the new players this spring, there’s a lot of learning to do.

“There’s been some good stuff,” Rodriguez said. “I think there’s some exciting players, but there’s some stuff, too, that you can tell, there’s a lot to learn.”