The West Virginia defense took a step in the right direction with four takeaways in their 41-28 victory over UCF on the road on Saturday, and transfer cornerback Beanie Bishop Jr. led the way by catching two interceptions in the win over the Knights.
Saturday's four-turnover defensive performance against UCF is the most takeaways for the Mountaineers' defense on the season, coming close to the three interceptions that West Virginia plucked out of the air against Pittsburgh.
It was three interceptions and a fumble for the Knights that allowed WVU's defense to derail the game and Bishop was on the forefront of the defensive attack.
Bishop, in his first year at WVU as a transfer out of Minnesota, snatched the first takeaway of the day against the Knights in the early second quarter, after a pass took a two lucky bounces off of a UCF receivers and went into the air and then into his hands.
"I think I played good man coverage and forced him close to out of bounds. I saw him and I was thinking he was going to catch it but then I saw the ball bounce and I hurried up and ran to it," Bishop said. "I couldn't let one get away like I did against Texas Tech."
This play would give way to the second interception of the game two drives later, where the UCF quarterback John Rhys Plumlee was pressured and effected on his throw, which gave WVU safety Marcis Floyd a gift-wrapped interception.
Then in the second half, Bishop came up again and made another play in the defensive secondary, jumping to grab a ball thrown into coverage by Plumlee to make his second interception of the day, his first two-interception game since playing for Western Kentucky in 2021.
"The last game with two interceptions was against Middle Tennessee State in 2021, but that was the last time I was able to catch two of them," Bishop said.
The final takeaway forced came from linebacker Lee Kpogba, who sacked the quarterback and forced a fumble that was scooped up by the Mountaineer defense, marking four takeaways in Saturday's win.
Brown made takeaways a focus for the WVU defense moving forward and he knew they'd be an important part of getting a win against UCF since they're a talented offense that can score in bunches, as they currently rank top-five in the nation in offensive yardage.
"I felt like we were going to need some takeaways," Brown said. "They’re so good on offense and some of the areas they’re good, we’ve got some issues."
However, from Bishop's point of view as a contributor on a defense that has struggled mightily across its last two games, he understood the importance of getting takeaways as a way to rather get his own team's offense back on the field.
"I'm watching a lot of film. During the two games that we dropped, we know that we got to be able to take the ball away and we haven't really been able to create takeaways," Bishop said. "So, we just kind of harped on that. We've got to create takeaways so we can get the ball back to the offense so we can score more points."
Bishop then ended up being the catalyst for Brown's game plan and was a force in the secondary against UCF, with two pass breakups and four solo tackles alongside his two takeaways. To Brown, he's been impressive for most of the season and has improved in terms of ball skills since he's joined the Mountaineers.
"Beanie Bishop has played, outside of one game, really well for us. I think he’s leading the country in passes defended," Brown said. "He’s really cleaned up some of his ball skill habits."
Despite some struggles that Brown recognizes that may plague the defense, like tackling and pass coverage, he's confident in the toughness and intelligence that his defense continues to play with game in and game out.
"We’re tough and I talked about the mental toughness, but we’re physically tough on both sides of the ball up front," Brown said. "We didn’t tackle as good as we needed to today, better than last week but I think we did a really good job striking people. We play relatively smart football"
More importantly after two losses, Brown found what stuck out to him on defense and then made an effort to work on it and improve.
"I sat here last week after a disappointing loss and the one stat that really sticks out was points off turnover differential and that’s something we had worked a ton," Brown said. "We worked a lot of it in the spring into fall camp and today that was the reason we won the game. We had 21 points off takeaways. That was the story of the game."
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