West Virginia put together their best effort of the season on defense against Oklahoma State and that was due to several factors.
The Mountaineers held the Cowboys to just 36 yards rushing and 227 total yards. The defense allowed just 11 first downs across 45 snaps and most importantly held them to just 14 points on the scoreboard. That also included a pair of interceptions and yielding just a total of 191 passing yards.
West Virginia missed only a single tackle and outside one mistake by a true freshman held up in the coverage department better than at any other point this season.
“By far our best performance,” head coach Neal Brown said.
The defense also executed the best that they have all season in their zone coverage and the two sacks that the Mountaineers recorded could be directly linked to the way that they held up in that area. The players at those levels also did a much better job being in their correct landmarks at the right depth and finding crossers which had been a problem with the zone coverage this season.
“You have some built-in rules and so I think as we’ve simplified what we’ve done we’ve got a better understanding of what those rules are. We’re executing those rules and we’re doing a much better job of getting to our landmarks at our depth,” he said.
And because the defense is playing more zone, there are more eyes to the football which has led to the Mountaineers being able to make more plays on the ball in the air.
It’s a bit of trial and error as the coaches find out what their players can do best.
“You can sit there and complain about it or you can adjust it and continue to get better and improve and then maybe find some different spots not necessarily coverages, but how you're running them, maybe adjust to your personnel. You gotta do what they can do,” coordinator Jordan Lesley said.
Brown chalks the increased confidence on the defense by experiencing some success at the end of the Kansas game and then carrying that over into the bye week with better execution. And with more reps, the hope is that they’ll continue to take steps forward.
“ And then we played really physical, and we strained, and I thought we executed at a high level on Saturday,” Brown said.
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