This week the Mountaineers take their show on the road as they go to Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium to take on the Longhorns. After having a huge game against Baylor, West Virginia will look to continue its winning streak.
Words cannot describe how well the Mountaineer offense played last week against the Bears. Geno Smith, Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey all set new WVU records. Smith threw for an incredible 656 yards and eight touchdowns. Bailey caught 13 balls for 303
yards and five touchdowns. Austin reeled in 14 balls for 215 yards and two touchdowns. If there was college fantasy football having any of these three guys would have won your matchup. The amazing thing is Smith had more touchdowns than incompletions and he is already number one on the Heisman watch list after receiving all 15 first place votes. WVU records he set were for yards, touchdowns and completions, of which he had 45. Bailey and Austin also set numerous records for receiving and for touchdown receptions. J.D. Woods, Smith’s new favorite target also had a touchdown and 114 yards receiving. Woods also made a spectacular one handed grab to add to his impressive stats.
Even the running backs produced on a day where the passing game ruled. Andrew Buie had 25 carries for 82 yards and two touchdowns. Dustin Garrison, who had been dealing with an injury showed some signs of life as he had 28 yards on three carries. At this point it is very clear the Mountaineers are a pass first team, but they should utilize the run game more just to keep teams off balance. Both the passing game and the running game will have their work cut out for them this week as Texas’ defense is a lot more solid than Baylor’s. For starters, through their first four games they have allowed an average of 21 points. Their defense is also allowing an average of 180 yards rushing per game and 210 yards passing per game. This will be one of the toughest defenses the Mountaineers will face possibly all season, so Geno and the rest of the offense must come prepared to fight.
While the offense played out of their minds, they had to due to the shoddy work of the defense. Currently West Virginia’s defense is ranked 96 and is giving up an average of 32.5 points per game. They played an atrocious game last Saturday and if not for the crushing offense, the Mountaineers would have lost this game. The defense let quarterback Nick Florence rack up 561 yards passing with five touchdowns. They also left wide receiver Terrance Williams open countless times and he managed to grab 17 balls for 314 yards and two touchdowns. Time and time again it would be third and short for Baylor or third and long for Baylor and they managed to convert almost every single time. Baylor’s punter Spencer Roth only had to punt twice since they practically kept converting every third down they faced. The defense has it get its act together and fast otherwise the Longhorns’ offense will have a field day with them.
However, there are good things to say about the defense surprisingly. Right now, the Mountaineers’ defense is good at stopping the run. And they managed to sack Florence three times last week. The Mountaineers had good penetration and while they only came away with three sacks they did manage to knock him down as much as they could. On Florence’s first pass, Darwin Cook intercepted it, but unfortunately the Mountaineer offense couldn’t do much and kicker Tyler Bitancurt missed a 50 yard field goal.
Texas' offense has a good consistency of running and passing the ball, so the defense will have to stay on its toes when quarterback David Ash gets the ball snapped to him. One other player the Mountaineer defense has to look out for is wide receiver Jaxon Shipley. So far this season Shipley has 17 receptions for 192 yards and four touchdowns. He is also averaging 11.3 yards a catch and the way the West Virginia secondary has been playing these stats will definitely go up. If the secondary can find its groove early on and stick to Shipley and try to limit him as much as possible then he might have a frustrating day, but don’t hold your breath.
The Mountaineers' special teams was a lot less busy thanks to the offense. The Mountaineers punted twice and for each time they used a different punter. Corey Smith was the first to punt and managed to kick it 45 yards. Michael Molinari punted the second time and dropped it 31 yards downfield. Austin had a decent day fielding kicks, he had two kick returns for 72 yards. Most of the kicks though went out of the end zone and even when Baylor punted Austin couldn’t do much with it.
All things considered this is going to be a lot lower scoring than the Baylor game and this one could come down to the wire. West Virginia also gets a taste of playing on the road in the Big 12 and this game is a test to see if they can deal with a very hostile crowd.
Prediction: WVU-30 Texas-27
Player of the Game: Geno Smith 40/50 450 yards 4TDs 2INTs
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