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Return to West Virginia roots pays off for Mountaineers defense

USA TODAY Sports' George Schroeder offers up the five games you can't miss this week.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The very first thing the new defensive coordinator wanted to do was to reinstall an important piece of the program’s culture.

“I want to go back to the 3-3-5,” Tony Gibson recalls telling Dana Holgorsen back in February 2014.

The reasons all made good football sense. Three seasons into Holgorsen’s tenure as head coach, competing against all those high-scoring Big 12 offenses in games that had sometimes become laughable, West Virginia desperately needed to find a way to play better defense.