Box Score MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia threw the football 12 times and ran it 51 times; a hard-hitting defense produced five turnovers and the Mountaineers used some great special teams play to beat Texas, 38-20, here at Milan Puskar Stadium today.
 
Twelve passes? From Dana Holgorsen?
 
Seriously?
 
Well, that's the new normal for West Virginia, winners of two straight following back-to-back victories over Texas Tech and Texas to improve to 5-4, 2-4 with regular season games remaining against Kansas, Iowa State and Kansas State.
 
"Overall, great team win," Holgorsen said. "It's hard to win in the Big 12 so when you do, you have to enjoy it."
 
Even if you have to run the ball most of the time to do so.
 
This was the same formula West Virginia used for years when the Mountaineers were regularly going to BCS bowl games and winning Big East championships. And as strange as this sounds, West Virginia was actually more balanced offensively today, throwing the football just 12 times, than it has been at any time this season.
 
That's because quarterback Skyler Howard completed 10 of those throws, two going for touchdowns to Jovon Durante for 53 yards right before the end of the first half, and a pretty eight-yarder over Daikiel Shorts Jr.'s outside shoulder late in the third quarter to give West Virginia a 28-17 lead.
 
Both throws were right on the money.
 
"He is capable of it," Holgorsen said. "I've seen him do it a lot. It's tough when his confidence takes a hit and he gets booed. I tell him they are booing me, but he gets booed, and he has nasty articles written about him. But he has thick skin; he is a great kid. He is a great communicator, he is smart and he understands the situation."
 
In between Howard's touchdown tosses, the Mountaineers rode the legs of emerging tailback Wendell Smallwood, who ran for a career-high 165 yards on 24 carries, Rushel Shell, who finished this afternoon with 53 yards on 12 totes and Howard, who lugged it 12 times for 34 yards.
 
"You can't give it to No. 4 (Smallwood) every snap," Holgorsen said. "He carried it 24 times. That's a lot. It's a long season. If you sit here and say he is our guy, and we're going to give it to him 30 times a game, then he isn't going to last. You have to be able to do different things."
 
Smallwood didn't get into the end zone today, but his consistent, quick-hitting gainers helped the offense score four times, including Elijah Wellman's second-quarter one-yard plunge and Howard's two-yard keeper with 3:30 left that put the game on ice.
 
However, perhaps the biggest touchdown came with 3:39 left in the first quarter when linebacker Jared Barber picked up D'Onta Foreman's mishandled reverse handoff and ran 42 yards for a touchdown.
 
Barber's scoop and score completely turned around the game because Texas was moving the ball effectively on the ground and the Longhorns defense was smothering West Virginia's offense.
 
"We were moving the football and they weren't stopping us," Texas coach Charlie Strong said. "When that happens you feel like you are controlling the game and we were controlling the game. It was just the mistakes that we were making."
 
After the first quarter, when Texas outgained the Mountaineers 163-93, West Virginia had the upper hand in total yardage, 321-276, for the remainder of the game.
 
West Virginia's defense also had the upper hand in creating turnovers, getting five this afternoon – or two fewer than Texas has committed during the entire season.
 
Trailing 10-7 after Nick Rose kicked a 31-yard field goal to break the seal on the scoreboard, and Foreman made up for his fumble by outrunning the West Virginia defense for a 65-yard score, the West Virginia defense came up with a second big turnover on its side of the field late in the second quarter.
 
The Longhorns (4-6, 3-4) drove from their own 21 to the Mountaineer 25 where, on a third-and-six play, backup quarterback Tyrone Swoopes tried to elude pressure and run for the first down. He was held up at the 25 and linebacker Nick Kwiatkoski pried the ball away from Swoopes and Daryl Worley recovered the fumble.
 
An unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Christian Brown moved the ball back to the 13, but three Smallwood runs for 34 yards put West Virginia in position to take a shot down the field, where Howard hooked with Durante down the right side for a 53-yard scoring strike just before the end of the half.
 
That put West Virginia ahead 21-10, a lead it maintained at halftime.
 
"Probably the biggest turning point in the game," said Strong. "We had momentum; we were driving the ball and then we turned the ball over. Then they take the ball and go score right before the half."
 
At the beginning of the second half, Texas marched 80 yards in 15 plays – mostly on the ground – to get into the end zone when Jerrod Heard hit a wide-open Daje Johnson in the flat for a five-yard touchdown to pull Texas to within four, 21-17.
 
After West Virginia got into the end zone on Howard's short pass to Shorts, West Virginia's special teams came up with a big turnover when Nana Kyeremeh knocked the football out of Kris Boyd's hands during his return and Justin Arndt recovered it at the Longhorn 22.
 
West Virginia moved to the Texas two as the third quarter ended, and Josh Lambert kicked a 19-yard field goal to start the fourth quarter to make it 31-17, Mountaineers.
 
Four possessions later, following Nick Rose's 34-yard field goal, which reduced West Virginia's lead to 31-20, Texas produced a three-and-out on defense and got the ball back at the 43 with 7:18 left in the game. On first down, Heard tried a pass down the seam that Kwiatkoski read beautifully and made an athletic catch to intercept the ball at the 48.
 
Kwiatkowski's interception put West Virginia into position to score the game's final touchdown – all eight plays coming on the ground, including Howard's third-down run at the three.
 
Holgorsen was in bit of a conundrum late in the fourth quarter with a winding clock his friend. That's because his offense was most effective when it used tempo against Texas' young defense.
 
"Our plan going into it was shorter passes and a lot of runs, all while doing it quick," he said. "I really wanted to go up-tempo. I thought it could limit what they could do. They give you a ton of different looks on defense, and I thought if we could go fast, then I could eliminate some of the stuff that they could do. When we did, we were effective."
 
West Virginia finished the afternoon with 257 rushing yards on 51 attempts, while Howard completed 10-of-12 passes for 122 yards and two touchdowns.
 
Shorts led West Virginia with four catches for 33 yards – three of those four grabs coming for first-down yardage on third down.
 
Foreman's 147 yards led a Longhorn ground attack that produced 277 for the afternoon, averaging 5.1 yards per attempt.
 
Heard completed 11-of-18 passes for 162 yards and a touchdown.
 
"We had five turnovers and a number of penalties," said Strong. "It's tough to win a game, especially on the road. We played well enough and if we could just eliminate some of the mistakes that we made."
 
West Virginia goes back on the road to face 0-10 Kansas Saturday in Lawrence. The Jayhawks dropped a heartbreaking 23-17 decision at TCU earlier today.
 
Texas is back home in Austin to play Texas Tech next Saturday.