After Saturday's loss to Oklahoma State turned into an emotionally and physically charged shootout in Morgantown, starting safety Anthony Wilson and leading signal caller Garrett Greene are ready to get back to work and improve on the performance.
The Mountaineers fell 48-34 to the Cowboys at home and were forced to trade blows with the Pokes back and forth in a game that lacked defensive consistency and racked up the yardage totals, 491 total yards for Oklahoma State and 475 yards for West Virginia.
The WVU offense put up scores on the boards, but a few turnovers, missed opportunities put the Mountaineers' defense on the field quite a bit and in precarious situations, leading to 282 yards and four touchdowns on the ground from OSU running back Ollie Gordon to become the deciding factor.
However, now through five solid starts, Greene has led the offense to continued improvement and has steadily improved himself each week and that was true against the Cowboys in a game that was mostly out of his control.
He answered the bell with his second-straight passing performance, for 249 yards, two touchdowns and an interception after going for a career-high 391 one week ago and he's comfortable with whatever passing situation he gets thrown into.
"I think it's good for whatever Coach Brown calls, whatever it is. If it's drop back or if it's roll-out, I feel comfortable doing both," Greene said.
But after the loss to the Cowboys, Greene was content with how the team responded to a shaky first half after going down 10-0 and recognizes that WVU needs to capitalize on more opportunities and score more points.
"I think it's a testament to how resilient our guys are, coming off a loss like that at Houston we were just itching to get back," Greene said. "We had some things go our way and some things not go our way early in the first half but then eventually we got going. We just got to score more points."
Greene also took the blame for a crucial play in the contest for West Virginia, a zone read play on fourth and two in the fourth quarter where Greene kept the ball and looked to make a play but was tackled short for a turnover on downs.
"It was just a complete and total misread by me. I try to be Superman sometimes and it bites me in the ass," Greene said.
For Greene and the offense to bounce back, it's up to him to get back to work with his teammates to respond to two-straight defeats in two games where his unit scored 30 or more points.
"I think we just got to go back to work, we've still got a long season ahead of us," Greene said. "We're seven games in but we've got a lot of ball left ahead of us."
On the defensive side of the ball, that group's struggles continued with their second-straight matchup allowing 40 or more points, and although they forced one fumble and a Wilson snatched an interception, the Mountaineers' defense wasn't enough.
The stops on the defensive side of the ball came in bunches in the first half, but began to falter in the second, after giving up nearly 150 yards on the ground to OSU's Gordon in the fourth quarter, as well as 210 yards through the air.
"We hurt ourselves a lot in that fourth quarter and there's a lot of things we're going to have to clean up defensively and we will," Wilson said. "This is something we'll have to learn from and move forward. Just self-inflicted things that we know we could have done better and that we've got to clean up."
WVU did put together two stops off of turnovers and held the Pokes to a few punts in the first half, but with poor field position the offense was unable to capitalize. For Wilson though, a transfer playing his first season for WVU this year, his first interception on the season was a feat of instincts and was a crucial takeaway that gave the Mountaineers' their chance.
"I just saw the ball and made a play on it," Wilson said.
Following the loss, Wilson touched on the locker room environment alongside his teammates and how it stems from the standard the defense holds for themselves and the potential that has flashed for him and his teammates.
"After every loss, everybody's mood's not the best but we hold ourselves to a standard and we have to uphold that," Wilson said. "So we just harden ourselves and know our potential, so we're just going to keep working at it."
Now for Wilson and the defensive unit, he said it's up to them to stick together and continue to work through whatever adversity comes their way.
"We got to continue to stick together, block out the outside noise and keep going to work and that's what we're going to do," Wilson said.
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