Each week WVSports.com Managing Editor Keenan Cummings provides a look at some of the things that stood out to him during the course of the game and on the stat sheet.
These observations are a snap shot of what unfolded in the West Virginia 38-20 road loss to Texas and what could happen next for the Mountaineers.
--There are no excuses for what unfolded on the field tonight. West Virginia simply didn’t show up for this game and that has been a recurring theme this season in two of the three losses. The Mountaineers didn’t seem to be mentally in the game with dropped passes, penalties, missed tackles, missed assignments, mistakes and everything else that could possibly happen and that falls squarely at the feet of the coaching staff. Listen, Texas is one of the two most talented teams in this league on paper and they’re difficult to beat when they play motivated as they did tonight, but the Mountaineers never even gave themselves a chance and was down 28-0 before they could really even settle into this one. Nothing went right in this one as the defense showed no resistance at all with players running free in the secondary and even when they did have things covered it still didn’t go right with catches on tipped passes and the lot. As I mentioned above, this was a game of two teams that needed to find a win in this league and one of them played like it and it certainly wasn’t West Virginia. Nobody should have walked away from the Virginia Tech game believing that they had arrived by beating the Hokies, but this type of follow up on the road is about the worst thing that could have happened. The Mountaineers have had too many of these type of performances of late and that is troubling to say the least in year four. You’re not always going to have the best team, but when you can’t even provide some fight to start and dig yourself that deep of a hole it’s almost impossible to dig your way out of it.
--West Virginia had one run over 10+ yards in the entire game. One! It was a 14-yarder by Justin Johnson, who was by far the best back on the field tonight. But that just isn’t going to cut it. For the game, the offense finished with 61 yards total rushing and only 2 yards per carry. At one time in the second quarter, they had 6 rushing yards and 4 punts.
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