Mountaineers cruise to win over Cowboys
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MORGANTOWN -- Sometime in the dark of night, the West Virginia football team arrived back home after the long flight from Oklahoma.
About an hour later, their plane arrived.
After thoroughly dominating Oklahoma State, 38-14, on their home field in Stillwater, the Mountaineers didn't need a plane to fly home.
They were walking on air after having walked all over a once proud Big 12 team that had nothing to be proud of on this day as their fans continually booed them as WVU out muscled them and outhustled them to go to 2-0 in the conference and make a statement that they weren't just talking when they said coming into the season that they were determined to get to the Big 12 title game in Dallas.
It was a performance to celebrate and the time to celebrate it.
"This league is really hard," Brown said. "Each week is a new challenge. You want to celebrate something like this but a lot of times in this profession to really celebrate. This is a really big deal. We came into a tough venue against a tough team against a program that has won 10 games a bunch of times with a coach that's going to be in the Hall of Fame at some point and we played a complete game."
A 1-2 start with only a win against an outclassed UAlbany team and losses to both Penn State and Pitt, the talk around the conference was that WVU wasn't among the conference's elite.
"The way we started the year, people maybe fell asleep on us," Coach Neal Brown said following the game. Perhaps those people might take note that five weeks into the season both Penn State and Pitt are undefeated.
They might note that Alabama isn't.
There's no ignoring the Mountaineers now.
"We just kept our heads up after those losses. We were hungry," running back Jahiem White said.
The defense was awesome, the offense was "awesomer", to coin a word.
So dominant was WVU that fans were leaving by halftime and when the final gun went off no one had to worry about getting caught in a traffic jam from the crowd of 52,202. They were long gone, most of them crying in their beers in some downtown bar.
Normally, you do not roll statistics out as evidence of performance, for as Neal Brown constantly notes, they can be deceptive.
Not this time, as WVU gained 558 total yards to 227 for the Cowboys.
You might remember that last year running back Ollie Gordon rushed for 284 yards against WVU himself in Morgantown.
This time around the entire OSU offense couldn't get that many yards against a West Virginia defense that made up for much criticism leveled its way this season.
The Cowboy offense barely spent any time on the field as the offense ran 81 plays to 45 for Oklahoma State. WVU had 31 first downs in the game and possessed the football for 42 minutes of the game.
Oh, and Gordon, well let's just put it this way. WVU rushed for 387 yards while Oklahoma State ran for 36 yards. Laid out end to end 36 yards doesn't get you four first downs.
Oklahoma State came out intent on establishing Gordon with the run, running him on five straight carries, but WVU didn't let him dictate anything and that sent a strong message.
"I know they were throwing for 300 yards a game but that didn't concern me. We came in here to stop the run and make them one dimensional," Brown said, unaware that the Cowboys offense would wind up being no dimensional.
Gordon's day ended early with a leg injury, but you don't get hurt unless people are popping and WVU was hitting people hard.
And think about this little statistical tidbit.
Oklahoma State's seventh-year quarterback was supposed to dissect WVU's secondary like a coroner working over a dead body. After all, OSU was ranked No. 11 in passing offense coming into the game with 320.6 yards a game while WVU's pass defense was 119th giving up 256.5 yards.
Well, OSU passed for 191 yards in this game and completed only 14 passes.
The game did not come without one frightful moment for WVU as Garrett Greene, at the end of a 39-yard scramble, stayed down with an injury to his throwing shoulder.
But unless you are carrying Kryptonite in your pocket, you don't stop Superman so easily. He went to the locker room, let Nicco Marchiol come in and throw a dart of a touchdown pass to Traylon Ray, then talked his way back onto the field and completed a marvelous game.
Greene carried 10 times for 86 yards and a touchdown and completed 9 of 15 passes for 159 yards.
The only blotch on his performance was a fourth-down slide after thinking he had gotten a first down only to have replay reveal that he came up short.
Putting the quarterbacks together, Greene and Marchiol combined for 17 carries and 132 yards rushing and completed 10 of 16 for 169 yards.
That is the ABCs to the XYZs of the game that wasn't a game as WVU rode its running attack to a 31-7 halftime lead.
The long-awaited breakout game for White came in this one as he danced for 158 yards on 19 carries to go with Greene's 86 yards on 10 carries, CJ Donaldson's 77 tough yards on 20 carries and two TDs and Marchiol's 7 carries for 46 yards.
"He's not a good player. He's a great player," Brown said, taking responsibility for not getting him as many touches as he should have as the season played out. "He was a tough tackle today. He really made people miss."
Now they get ready for No. 11 Iowa State at home next week for an 8 p.m. game.