West Virginia hasn’t put together the season that they wanted at this stage of the season but the Mountaineers recognize that there’s still an opportunity to finish strong.
The 31-24 win on the road at Cincinnati is the first game in November and with three games left, the program understands that they have a chance to make a move.
“Said this the last two times I’ve been in front of you, the tale of our season is going to be how we play in November,” head coach Neal Brown said. “Here we are 1-0 and second win in a row on the road, third overall in the Big 12 on the road and now we have to come back home.”
The Mountaineers will now have back-to-back games in Morgantown against Baylor and UCF and then close the season on the road at Texas Tech. At 5-4, 4-2 in the Big 12 the program understands that while things didn’t start well there is an opportunity ahead of them.
“It’s going to be huge for us,” Brown said.
West Virginia elected to move on from former defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley during the bye week and under the leadership of Jeff Koonz, the unit stepped up big on the road at Cincinnati. In the win, the defensive unit scored two touchdowns and forced a total of three turnovers in the process. Coming into the game the defensive unit had only forced a total of six on the season.
“We’ve been close. We’ve had the ball bounce the wrong way and today it bounced our way. If you just continue to do the right things and buy in and do the best you can you’re eventually going to get some breaks and we got some breaks and took advantage of it,” Brown said.
Brown felt that the unit mixed up their looks at times and even were able to play some man coverage in certain situations that helped them. The defense also did a much better job with alignment and getting the calls in to be best-prepared pre and post-snap.
That started with the buy-in that Koonz had from the unit at large.
“They wanted to go compete for him,” Brown said.
But while the defense and special teams helped to carry the load against the Bearcats, the offense struggled to just 248 yards and a total of nine first downs. It is the first time that the Mountaineers won a game with only nine first downs since 1973.
The trick moving forward is trying to find a way to get all three phases to hit at the same time.
“We haven’t had a game yet where all three played. All three phases. If we can play at a high level in all three phases we can definitely be one of the better teams in the league,” he said.
There’s a lot of football left and it remains to be seen if that will occur, but the Mountaineers now are back over .500 with a chance to close the year even stronger.
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