Last year, the West Virginia Mountaineers traveled to Lawrence, Kansas, where they were stunned by the Jayhawks, who won their first conference game since 2010 in that upset. This time around, the Mountaineers were hosting the Jayhawks in a game which saw KU trying to break another streak: 25 consecutive road losses (and an even longer conference road losing streak). This season, West Virginia is much improved, while Kansas is a very similar team despite having a new head coach and both of these points were very evident in the Mountaineers' big win on Saturday.
West Virginia kicked field goals on each of their first three possessions, with Josh Lambert making kicks from 43, 42 and 25 yards away. Clint Trickett then finished off the quarter with a 63-yard touchdown pass to his top receiver, Kevin White, and WVU had a 16-0 lead after one quarter. As crazy as it sounds, that does not even tell the whole story of how lopsided it really was. West Virginia outgained Kansas in yardage 200-24 in the first quarter.
The second quarter saw more of the same from West Virginia with dominance over the Jayhawks, only they did not score at quite the same clip. Rushel Shell pounded the ball into the end zone from the one yard line for a touchdown with just over four minutes to go in the half, and Josh Lambert hit his fourth field goal of the first half as time expired, nailing a kick from 53 yards out. The biggest highlight of the first half for Kansas was when they blocked one of Josh Lambert's attempt, but as was the story throughout the game, the offense could not move the ball whatsoever and they ended up punting (that was just one of Trevor Pardula's 14 punts in the game).
Somehow, Kansas actually outscored West Virginia 14-7 in the second half and completely shut out their offense. The second half was an ugly one to say the least, and each score was the result of a major special teams play. KU scored their first touchdown (first points period, actually) in over six and a half quarters of play when they moved the ball 18 yards and Corey Avery punched it in for a touchdown, following a muffed punt by WVU's Jordan Thompson. On the ensuing kickoff, however, Mario Alford returned the ball 94 yards for a touchdown, his second of the season. The final score by either team came late in the fourth quarter, when Nick Harwell returned a punt 76 yards for Kansas' second touchdown of the game. It was an ugly game, but West Virginia was just too much for the meager Kansas offense.
A major key to the game for the West Virginia defense was to get pressure on the quarterback early and often, and they accomplished this with flying colors (despite very few actual sacks). The Jayhawks' starter, Montell Cozart, is very weak against the blitz, and the repeated pressure spelled doom for #2 in white. Cozart did not even play the entire game due to taking a few big hits and also poor performance, so Michael Cummings played a majority of the second half, although it did not change much at all for the team.
It was not a great day for Clint Trickett, considering how well he has played this season, but he got the job done. 20/35 passing for 302 yards with a touchdown and one interception was plenty to hold off the Jayhawks. His top receiver on the day was Kevin White, who had 6 catches for 132 yards and a score. On the ground, Rushel Shell had a great game, running for 113 yards and a touchdown on 21 carries. The team gained a total of 557 yards on the day.
For Kansas, their spell of horrendous offense continues. Montell Cozart started the game, completing just 4 of 10 passes for 42 yards (which included one pass that went for 30 yards). Michael Cummings was not much better, going 8/17 passing for just 65 yards (TJ Millweard also played 3 snaps for KU, completing his only pass for 4 yards). Nigel King was the team's leading receiver, with 4 catches for 52 yards. Corey Avery got the bulk of the touches on the ground today, carrying the ball 17 times for 58 yards and scoring the team's lone offensive touchdown. Isaiah Johnson intercepted a pass on defense.
The Mountaineers are now 3-2 overall and 1-1 in Big 12 play, with a matchup against Texas Tech next week. Despite it being a slightly down games for Clint Trickett this week (he was averaging 400 yards passing per game entering this week), this team has showed that they are much improved from last year and can hang tough with the best of them (do not forget that they gave Alabama a run for their money in their first game of the season and did the same two weeks ago to Oklahoma). They lively will not be making a run at the Big 12 title this year, but do not be surprised to see WVU spoil someone else's bid at the title.
For KU, as disappointing as the last two games have been it hasn't been overly surprising, especially this week. new head coach Clint Bowen has a lot of work to do to make this team competitive in his short guaranteed tenure at the helm of the program, but if anything is working for him, they didn't get worse this week. The whole team is not very good, frankly, but the quarterback position is a question mark that they need to have an answer for soon if they want to be at all competitive. Terrible efficiency and an inability to get the ball to the best players on the team (aside from his punt return success, Nick Harwell combined with Tony Pierson today to get just six total touches in this game) is going to continue to spell doom for the Jayhawks. The basement of the conference is not a fun place to be, but it looks like Kansas will be stuck there for a while.