West Virginia had to get tougher.

So the Mountaineers made some adjustments to the practice schedule in order to accomplish it last week. There weren’t any alterations to the structure, but more good on good. There also was emphasis on inside run drills and perimeter blocking on offense while the focus was tackling on defense.

The end result of the regimen? The best performance of the season on both sides of the ball as the Mountaineers found an edge in the run game with a season high 173 yards on the ground and the defense held North Carolina State to 27 points and tackled much better than the week before.

Head coach Neal Brown wants his team to play a blue-collar brand of football and that is exactly what they were able to do for one week. Now the challenge is repeating it.

“I think we’ve got to continue to challenge our guys,” Brown said.

The Mountaineers spent the week leading up to the game essentially re-creating itself in the run game and finding out ways to put the offensive line in better position to succeed. That meant not necessarily looking at what the coaches were most comfortable with, instead what the players did best.

That was especially important given the fact that the Mountaineers were breaking in three first-time starters on the interior given the injury to Josh Sills and Mike Brown dealing with an illness.

The results speak for themselves as Brown saw more hat-on-hat blocking from the group as well as better all-around communication. He also saw positives from Chase Behrdnt, who was moved to guard, new center Briason Mays and James Gmiter who filled in at left guard.

“I thought Chase Behrndt played his best game of the season by far,” Brown said.

Some of that also can be attributed to the play of the running backs as they were able to be more decisive and bit the holes without the hesitation that was present in the first two games.

Brown is expected to be available this week while the status of Sills remains up in the air, but what the performance of the three young players now allows is more mixing and matching with personnel. The Mountaineers will now be able to rotate more guys into the game which should help overall.

“We’re going to have to present differently each week to have success in the run game,” he said.

NOTES:

--West Virginia isn’t under center a lot, but the Mountaineers do go into each game with a package of plays in that scenario.

--Brown is happy with how his team has responded in the second half of each game, but needs to get to the point where they can put together better efforts in the first half.

--On the positive front, West Virginia is set to get back junior wide receiver Tevin Bush after he was suspended for the North Carolina State game due to a violation of team rules.

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