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Poor First Half Dooms WVU
November 08, 2014 05:22 PM | Football
AUSTIN, Texas – Running back Johnathan Gray ran for 101 yards and three touchdowns to lead Texas to a 33-16 victory over 24th-ranked West Virginia today at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.
Mountaineer fans were curious to see how West Virginia would respond after losing on the final play of the game against sixth-ranked TCU last weekend. They got their answer in the first half when the Longhorns ran and passed with ease to build a 24-3 halftime advantage.
"The first half was a good, old-fashioned butt kicking," said West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen. "That's what it was on all three sides of the ball. We got outcoached and outplayed. We did not play good."
Gray scored on a pair of second-quarter touchdown runs - one a pretty 39-yarder down the near sideline where he eluded a couple of West Virginia tacklers in the open field and dove for the pylon where the replay official ruled that he scored. His other touchdown run came from the two, one play after his 40-yard jaunt up the middle got the ball to the WVU 13.
A 2-yard, Tyrone Swoopes-to-Geoff Swaim touchdown pass on the game’s opening possession culminated an 11-play, 90-yard drive for the Longhorns that set the tone for the afternoon.
Late in the second quarter, Quandre Diggs set up Nick Rose’s 39-yard field goal when he picked off Clint Trickett’s pass that was intended for Kevin White and returned it to the Mountaineer 22.
West Virginia’s lone points of the first half came on a 22-yard Josh Lambert field goal. The Mountaineers had to kick the field goal after Russell Haughton-James was flagged for illegal motion on fourth and goal at the one. During the play before that, Wendell Smallwood easily reached the end zone on an off-tackle run but the play was blown dead when replay officials buzzed down to the field to take a look at Smallwood's third-down run that was stopped just short of the goal line.
"We were close to the goal line and we didn't get in," said Holgorsen. "We could have done something about the push to get in on third down. We go for it on fourth and then we get stopped. The referees were where they were supposed to be. We couldn't score on that and then the false start came."
The two teams played to a scoreless third quarter, although most of it was spent in Texas territory. Once, West Virginia unsuccessfully went for it on fourth and seven from the Longhorn eight, and a second drive into Texas territory also ended without points when Lambert’s 40-yard field goal try was low and wide left.
The Mountaineers (6-4, 4-3) eventually reached paydirt early in the fourth quarter when Dreamius Smith darted in from the 9. Two fourth-down conversions, one from West Virginia’s own 30 that netted 18 yards on an Andrew Buie run, and the other coming from the Longhorn 26 when Dustin Garrison got three yards to the 23 kept the drive alive.
Texas (5-5, 4-3) scored a safety with 11:36 left in the game when Cedric Green sacked Trickett in the end zone, but West Virginia was able to keep it interesting when it scored a touchdown two possessions later following a Daryl Worley interception.
Smith took a simple off-tackle handoff and turned on the jets down the near side of the field for a 62-yard run to the Texas 18. He got 10 more on a screen pass and two plays after that Smallwood went in from the four.
Texas’s last score came with a bow when West Virginia failed to convert on fourth and nine from its own 15 and Gray ran it in on the very next play. Safety K.J. Dillon was ejected from the game during the play for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
With the clock winding down, West Virginia was unable to punch it in on the game’s final play when Kevin White was stopped inches short of the goal line as he made his school-record 16th catch of the afternoon.
"We have to give our guys a little bit of credit for at least going out there in the second half and competing," said Holgorsen. "I don't think we competed very hard in the first half, but at least we did in the second half. Whether it was a little bit of a hangover, so to speak, from last week I don't know, but we weren't ready to play. I take responsibility for that."
White finished the game with 132 yards receiving, Smith reached 100 yards on just 10 carries while Trickett’s day ended with 248 yards passing.
The Longhorn offense finished the game with 351 total yards after getting 266 of those in the first half. Gray ran for 101 yards on 10 carries, Malcolm Brown added 90 yards on 20 rushes as the Longhorns churned out 227 yards total on the ground.
Swoopes finished the day completing 11-of-29 passes for 124 yards with one touchdown.
West Virginia has next Saturday off before playing its final home game of the year on Thursday, November 20, against ninth-ranked Kansas State. The Wildcats and TCU play tonight for first place in the Big 12.
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