×

WVU’s win streak hits the wall at Texas

Photo courtesy of BlueGoldNews.com WVU head coach Neal Brown shows some emotion on the sidelines during Saturday night’s 38-20 loss at Texas.

MORGANTOWN — West Virginians everywhere were hoping that when the Mountaineers boarded their flight to Austin, Texas, it would be the team that roughed up Virginia Tech but instead it was the team that had lost its first two games of the season.

The result was that they were hit hard and early by a Texas team that was superior in every aspect of the game, winning, 38-20.

“They took it to us,” coach Neal Brown said. “They won the game in the first 15 minutes. We just didn’t make any plays in the first 15 minutes.”

The Mountaineers were sleepwalking through the early going, falling behind 35-7.

“The bottom line was we just didn’t make enough plays to win the game,” Brown said. “There were five or six drops and a lot of them were crucial on third and fourth downs.”

He cited the dropped passes and a defense that was blown apart both on the ground and in the air. Hudson Card, the backup quarterback starting due to injury, was magnificent, completing 21 of 27 passes for 303 yards and three touchdowns.

There was also the inability to run the ball, something WVU has had problems doing against the better defenses in the league since Brown’s arrival. They finished with just 61 rushing yards on 30 carries, 2 yards per try.

Quarterback JT Daniels was under extreme pressure all night and suffered many key drops.

He finished with 29 of 48 for 253 yards and a touchdown throw to Kaden Prather. Prather and Bryce Ford-Wheaton each had eight catches and Sam James had seven.

WVU was also stunned for a touchdown on a trick double pass play from receiver Xavier Worthy, who wound up the night with seven catches for 119 yards and two touchdowns.

The Mountaineers fell to 2-3, 0-2 in the Big 12, while Texas went to 3-2, 1-1 in the conference.

As if the one-sided loss weren’t enough, WVU’s star freshman running back CJ Donaldson suffered an injury to the head-neck area in the third quarter and knocked unconscious. He left the field on a back board, his helmet, shoulder pads and jersey removed and transported to a hospital.

He did offer a thumbs up sign to the players, who kneeled on each sideline while they tended to him on the field for 15 or more minutes, and to fans as he was being driven away. He was later cleared to return to Morgantown with the team.

The first half began coming apart before the coin flip hit the ground. WVU won the toss, which normally is a good thing, but Brown, wanting establish his offense and get his running game and quarterback JT Daniels unwound early, instead of the traditional decision of opting to kick and take the ball in the second half, he chose to receive.

Proof, once again, that it is better to give than to receive for by the time WVU finally found it’s offense there were only seconds remaining in the first half and they were down 28-0.

A late touchdown gave them some spark … but they had to kick off instead of receive in the second half.

Now we’d like to tell you what transpired in that first half but we were told by our parents young that if you didn’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

So the less said the better.

It started on the Mountaineers before the first play when there was a false start on Ja’Quay Hubbard. The Mountaineers over came that and moved down the field until the drive stalled near field and they punted Texas back deep.

Good start, especially when the defense played dominantly and forced a fourth-and-24 punt.

WVU got the ball into the Texas 42 with fourth-and-2. Go for it or punt. It’s 0-0, the defense was good … but that analytic whispered went into Brown’s ear that he was supposed to go for it.

He did and the sky fell in.

The play failed and Texas didn’t, driving to the end zone with a pass by starter Hudson Card to Xavier Worthy made it 7-0.

Brown called this the crucial moment in the game.

“The second drive was huge,” he said. “Mike O’Laughlin was hurt on a pass that we had to convert a third down. On third-and-2 and fourth-and-2 we had drops, then they went down and scored.”

At that point there were 95,000 or so fans in the stands and they started that Hook ’em Horns stuff and the defense started slapping the Mountaineers around at will. Play after play until they got the ball back.

Already having established physical superiority, they to trickery for a second touchdown, that on a double pass from Card to Worthy to Ja’Tavion Sanders for a second score.

Two more would come while WVU couldn’t cover and couldn’t establish anything resembling an offense.

Finally, when it was 28-0 and the seconds were ticking off in the half, WVU put together a drive based mostly on passes to Bryce Wheaton-Ford before Daniels hit Prather in the end zone for the score, allowing them to go into the locker room down 28-7.

It proved to be a minor victory as Texas came out, took the football down the field and put it into the end zone.

It wasn’t pretty, but it carried a message for the touchdown pass was deflected by the Mountaineers’ Aubrey Burks. But before you could say “Nice play”, Worthy made a spectacular diving catch of the 44-yard pass and it was 35-7 … Worthy having contributed two TD catches and throwing one TD pass.

WVU put together its best offensive drive of the night, going 65 yards in 18 plays that was capped by a Tony Mathis 1-yard TD run, but it was on this drive that Donaldson was injured.

That made it 35-14 but Texas came right back and picked up a field goal to make it 38-14.

The Mountaineers strung together another long, time-consuming drive covering 75 yards in 14 plays and ending with a short Justin Johnson Jr. TD jaunt around left end, but the two-point conversion was missed, leaving Texas in charge at 38-20 with 4:31 left.

WVU had a huge chance to recover the onside kick but the ball was bobbled around by Prather and eventually wound up in Texas’ possession.

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *

Starting at $3.92/week.

Subscribe Today