MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – At the conclusion of the opening remarks to his weekly news conference on Tuesday afternoon, West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen let it be known that Kansas State is one of those red-letter games that has been stuck in the back of his mind since the beginning of the season.

 

And for good reason.

 

The Wildcats have had their way with West Virginia since the Mountaineers joined the Big 12 four years ago.

 

In 2012, Kansas State ran and passed at will in a 55-14 Wildcat victory that goes down as one of the worst beatings any Mountaineer team has endured in the 35-year history of Milan Puskar Stadium.

 

Two years ago, it was more of the same with K-State using a dominant second half to roll to a 35-12 victory over WVU in Manhattan.

 

Then last year Kansas State got 400 yards passing from Jake Waters – 196 of those going to explosive wide receiver Tyler Lockett – in a 26-20 victory in Morgantown.

 

West Virginia was trailing 20-3 midway through the third quarter when backup quarterback Skyler Howard replaced injured starter Clint Trickett and led WVU to a pair of second-half touchdowns to make a game of it.

 

“We didn’t play very well and we had three points at halftime and then Skyler went in,” Holgorsen recalled. “I specifically remember this, I looked at him and said, ‘Are your ready to go?’ He said, ‘Let’s do this.’ I told him to go in there and run the offense and he took us down there and scored. I thought he played good enough that day for us to beat Kansas State; we clearly didn’t play a whole game on offense, and we gave up some stuff in the pass game from that Lockett kid, who we could never stop in three years.

 

“They beat us, but I think Skyler did his part in that situation as a backup quarterback,” Holgorsen added.

 

Therefore, from a competitive standpoint, West Virginia is making progress against K-State, going from a 41-point defeat in 2012 to last year’s six-point loss to the Wildcats.

 

Now, the question is can WVU finally take the next step and cross Kansas State off the list of remaining teams the Mountaineers have yet to defeat since joining the Big 12 (leaving just Oklahoma)?

 

If ever there was a time to get a Bill Snyder-coached football team it’s now.

 

K-State is just 5-6 heading into Saturday’s regular-season finale in Manhattan and may or may not need a victory over West Virginia to become bowl-eligible for a 17^th time in Snyder’s storied coaching career in Manhattan.

 

“I have always admired his work and how he runs his program,” Holgorsen said. “I grew up watching the University of Iowa and he was at the University of Iowa and then transferred over to Kansas State, and I watched him build that program from the ground up.

 

“For eight years that I was at Texas Tech, they were rolling and winning a whole bunch of games, so it was neat to watch that. Maturing as a head coach, I understand a lot of the things that he does now. It’s always fun to compete against them and really study how they do things.”

 

Just like West Virginia, which won its first three, lost its next four, and comes into Saturday’s game riding a four-game winning streak, Kansas State also hit its rough patch when the calendar flipped to October after posting a 3-0 non-conference start.

 

The Wildcats lost by two at Oklahoma State, fell by a touchdown at TCU and dropped tough games to Texas and Baylor. A 15-point loss at Texas Tech and a 55-0 home defeat to Oklahoma were clearly the low points of the season, but K-State has rebounded with back-to-back victories over Iowa State and Kansas to put itself in a position to earn an all-important sixth triumph.

 

However, K-State may not need a .500 record to get to a bowl game this year because of the lack of .500 teams available to fill all of the open slots in this year’s bowl lineup.

 

We’ll see.

 

On the other side of the field, West Virginia has already locked up its fourth bowl bid in five seasons under Holgorsen, but the Mountaineers are seeking more … namely, an improvement in its positioning in the Big 12 bowl pecking order and an eighth victory for the first time since joining the conference four seasons ago.

 

West Virginia (7-4, 4-4) won seven games in 2012 and rebounded from a 4-8 season in 2013 to capture seven victories again in 2014, six of those coming in the first eight games, and an eighth win on Saturday would demonstrate continued progress under Holgorsen.

 

In order to get win No. 8, however, West Virginia is probably going to have to beat Kansas State at what it does best – running the football.

 

K-State is averaging 170.3 yards per game on the ground and has scored 27 of its 43 touchdowns by that method this season. Quarterback Joe Hubener is a big part of the Wildcats’ rushing attack this year with 598 yards and 13 touchdowns heading into Saturday’s game.

 

Charles Jones, a 5-foot-10, 206-pound junior tailback, leads Kansas State with 612 yards and a 5.0-yards-per-carry average.

 

Hubener has completed just 49 percent of his pass tries for 1,752 yards and nine touchdowns this year, and Kansas State doesn’t have a wide receiver with more than 29 catches or a pass play longer than 53 yards (Jones’ 72-yard catch against Oklahoma State came out of the backfield), which is very similar to the numbers West Virginia wide receivers have posted this season.

 

The Mountaineers have made more big plays in the passing game than K-State this year, but they have also missed on several additional ones because of dropped passes or inaccurate throws.

 

As a result, Holgorsen has gone to Snyder’s way of moving the football with the usage of tight ends, fullbacks, quarterback runs and then taking his shots downfield off the run game.

 

“Offensively, I have studied them all year based on us kind of doing some different things with our offense,” Holgorsen admitted. “With the run game in general, we have watched them a good bit this year on our side.

 

“I used to study Texas Tech quite a bit, and now I’m studying Kansas State,” Holgorsen added.

 

Wendell Smallwood is second in the Big 12 in rushing with 1,306 yards and has a shot at becoming the first WVU back since Steve Slaton in 2006 to run for more than 1,500 yards in a season.

 

Smallwood’s total is already eighth-most in school history, and if he can get his season average of 119 yards per game on Saturday, he can jump quarterback Pat White and running back Quincy Wilson to move into sixth place in single-season rushing with the bowl game still on the horizon.

 

West Virginia is also getting valuable yardage from Rushel Shell (639 yards and eight touchdowns) and Skyler Howard, the team’s leading rusher the last two weeks against Kansas and Iowa State.

 

Howard now shows 492 yards rushing, already 10^th-best for WVU quarterbacks with two games still remaining.

 

“You watch the running back and you say if you have him, you have to run it and watch the quarterback run the ball, so it makes sense to run the ball,” Snyder noted after studying West Virginia’s offense. “I think they want to throw it. I think they want to have balance in their offense. I know Dana was not overly excited about throwing the ball last week against Iowa State, and when they did throw it (Holgorsen) was not tremendously happy with the outcome.”

 

Howard is completing 56.1 percent of his pass attempts for 2,332 yards and 20 touchdowns, but he has been the victim of several drops from WVU’s young and inexperienced wide receiver corps, particularly on big pass plays downfield against man coverage.

 

Sophomore Shelton Gibson leads the team with 32 catches for 733 yards and eight touchdowns, or 32 fewer catches with 212 fewer yards than West Virginia’s No. 2 receiver Mario Alford had last season. This year will likely be only the second time in Holgorsen’s coaching career that a wide receiver failed to catch at least 50 passes in a season.

 

The other time also happened at WVU in 2013.

 

Therefore, expect a lot of running from both teams on Saturday.

 

“They did not score against us last year, but they ran the ball reasonably well and threw it substantially more and had probably a little bit more success running the ball than they did throwing it,” Snyder said.

 

A 4:30 p.m. ET kickoff has been established for Saturday’s game, to be televised nationally on FS1.

 

The Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG’s pregame coverage begins with the Mountaineer Tailgate Show at 1 p.m. leading into game coverage at 3:30 p.m. with Tony Caridi, Dwight Wallace and Jed Drenning on stations throughout West Virginia and online through leanStream and the mobile app TuneIn.