The defense had been the topic of conversation surrounding the Mountaineers over the last two weeks.
After moving on from their defensive coordinator before the bye week, Saturday proved to be the first test for new coordinator Jeff Koonz. Koonz and the Mountaineers would force three turnovers, with two of them turning into touchdowns.
Excited for our defensive guys, man. It's been a tough couple of weeks for them. We get two touchdowns, and really, we've been close. We've had some drops, we've had the ball bounce the wrong way, and today it bounced our way," West Virginia head coach Neal Brown said.
The Mountaineers finished the game with a pick-six, a fumble recovery, and then a backward pass that was scooped and scored late in the fourth quarter.
They totaled seven tackles for loss as well as three sacks in addition to the three turnovers. Brown said part of their success on defense was how physical they were across the entire defense.
"I thought we were really physical on defense. We didn't tackle as good as we have, and sometimes we missed some tackles, but I thought we were really physical at the point of contact, safeties, linebackers. We got pressure on the quarterback, which is the biggest tell. If you want to force interceptions, that's how you do it. You got to put pressure on the quarterback," Brown said.
As far as how Koonz did in his first test as defensive coordinator, Brown was happy with how communicative he was, and he did a good job throughout the week of getting comfortable with the entire defense.
"First of all, a lot of times, play calls in the game are really overrated, right. And I don't mean that it just is what it is. What he did a really good job during the week was forming belief and creating buy-in with the staff but also creating buy-in and belief with the players, they wanted to compete for him. They were competing before, but anytime you have change, you've got to go in as the leader, and you've got to create the buy-in. And I thought he did a great job with that," Brown said.
Brown added the staff created a good plan and they were able to execute it at a high level against the Bearcats.
"It's a staff-wide plan. I thought we did a nice job, we made some adjustments during the bye week that helped us. And our kids went out and executed in some key situations today," Brown said.
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