Box Score MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Skyler Howard passed for 263 yards and three touchdowns and running back Wendell Smallwood contributed 88 yards and two scores on the ground to power West Virginia to a 41-17 victory over Liberty Saturday at Milan Puskar Stadium.
 
At one point early in the third quarter, Howard completed 14 straight passes in the most efficient performance of his young Mountaineer career.
 
Overall, Howard completed 21 of his 26 pass attempts today and has still not thrown an interception in 166 career pass attempts at WVU. In the meantime, he also was the team's second-leading rusher with 68 yards on 12 carries.
 
"He's a good football player, a good quarterback," said Liberty coach Turner Gill. "He did a lot of good things – very efficient in his passing game; very accurate. He ran that offense good."
 
"I thought our guys played pretty good," said West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen. "Offensively, I think we made strides. We had zero turnovers for the second straight game; I think everybody is fired up about that.
 
"The completion percentage is very high (84.3 percent), and I think Skyler did a good job of putting the ball in play."
 
After beginning the game with an 11-play drive that resulted in a Josh Lambert 28-yard field goal, the Mountaineers added three more points courtesy of Howard's legs. His 34-yard scramble on third and 15 moved the ball to the Liberty 13.
 
The drive eventually stalled at the eight, where Lambert punched through his second field goal, a 25 yarder.
 
West Virginia's third possession of the first half resulted in the game's first touchdown when Howard found the speedy Shelton Gibson open near the far sideline. He made a quick inside move on Liberty strong safety Avery James and turned on the jets to outrun the rest of the defense for a 52-yard touchdown.
 
It was Gibson's second scoring grab in as many games.
 
"We had to tackle well and we didn't do that," said Gill. "When you don't tackle well, they are going to have some big plays (against) us."
 
Nine minutes later, the Mountaineers tacked on six more when Wendell Smallwood carried the ball four yards to the Liberty goal line. As he was extending the ball to score the touchdown, it was knocked out of his arm.
 
Smallwood managed to win the scrum at the bottom of the pile to score the touchdown, officially ruled a 0-yard fumble recovery.
 
In the second half, true freshman receiver Jovon Durante extended West Virginia's lead to 27-0 on its second possession of the third quarter when he made a nifty catch on quick slant for a 10-yard touchdown.
 
Durante finished the game with a team-best seven catches for 60 yards - second to Gibson's team-leading 81 yards receiving.
 
Four minutes later, Liberty finally snapped West Virginia's defensive scoreless streak that spanned 6½ quarters when the Flames' Todd Macon bounced in from the seven. A John Woodrum-to-Dante' Shells 36-yard pass that placed the ball at the West Virginia 10 set up the score.
 
Liberty's other TD came on a Woodrum-to-Zac Parker 60-yard scoring strike midway through the fourth quarter when the Mountaineers were leading by 24, 34-10.
 
Smallwood produced his second touchdown with 3:36 left in the game. His five-yard run culminated a 12-play, 75-yard drive that was directed by backup quarterback William Crest Jr., who played a good portion of the fourth quarter and finished the game completing all six of his pass attempts for 50 yards.
 
West Virginia had 313 yards through the air and 172 on the ground on 45 attempts.
 
Liberty (1-1) finished the day with 372 total yards – 280 of those coming from Woodrum and 92 on the ground from four different rushers.
 
West Virginia's defense, which pitched a shutout in last week's opener against Georgia Southern, faced a much stiffer test this afternoon.
 
The Flames also left nine points on the field when All-American kicker John Lunsford missed three of his four field goal tries, all three misses going into the wind at the north end of the stadium.
 
"Defensively, we had another shutout in the first half, but I think we all are a little disappointed with giving up some of those plays and the amount of points that we gave up in the second half," noted Holgorsen. "Teams are going to score. There are a lot of good players out there that are going to do that, and we have to learn how to handle that."
 
"I give a lot of credit to West Virginia," added Gill. "They are a good football team. They did a great job of playing the game. I thought our guys continued to fight, they did a good job of playing all four quarters, (but) obviously West Virginia was the better team."
 
The Mountaineers (2-0) will have two weeks to prepare for border rival Maryland, which lost to Bowling Green earlier today and faces USF next Saturday in College Park.
 
Last year, West Virginia defeated Maryland on Josh Lambert's field goal on the game's final play in College Park.
 
The Maryland game was announced a sellout earlier today.