Box Score MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - West Virginia passed and ran its way to an easy 45-6 victory over Maryland this afternoon at Milan Puskar Stadium.
 
Quarterback Skyler Howard completed 21 of 33 passes for 294 yards and four touchdowns, and Wendell Smallwood carried the ball 22 times for a career-high 147 yards and a TD for the Mountaineers, now 3-0 on the season.
 
Today's 39-point win over the Terrapins is the widest margin of victory ever for West Virginia in the 52-game series, which dates back to 1919, and fourth-most by either team. Three times - in 1949, 1950 and 1951 - the Terps defeated the Mountaineers by 40 points or more.
  
West Virginia established a school record for first downs in a game with 37, and the WVU defense came up with five interceptions – the most for the Mountaineers since 1990 versus Cincinnati here in Morgantown.
 
"Obviously I feel pretty good about the victory," said West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen. "Overall, what a day. It's a great day to be a Mountaineer. It started out good; I thought the crowd was awesome and our guys hit the field ready to play."
 
That was clearly not the case for Maryland.
 
"We thought we had to throw the ball in order to be able to be successful today," said Maryland coach Randy Edsall. "We come out and we move it. We get a fourth and one and we get stopped. After that, we couldn't get anything going."
 
With the game well in hand midway through the second quarter, the only remaining question was whether or not the defense was going to pitch its second shutout of the season.
 
Maryland's Jahrvis Davenport took care of that with 11:45 left in the game when he split West Virginia's secondary for a 41-yard touchdown reception. The two-point conversion attempt to reduce West Virginia's lead to 38 was unsuccessful.
  
West Virginia tried (and converted) a fake punt midway through the third quarter up 38 when Nick O'Toole ran 13 yards to the Terrapin 36 on fourth and 12. A five-year pause in the series until 2020 likely made the decision to run the fake punt a much easier one for the Mountaineers.
 
Considering the way Maryland performed today, particularly in the first half, the Terps should probably take the long way back to College Park on the Pennsylvania Turnpike as punishment.
 
West Virginia jumped all over Maryland right off the bat, scoring touchdowns on four of its first five possessions. The lone empty possession came on the Mountaineers' fourth drive when it stalled at the Terps' 34 and Josh Lambert's 51-yard field goal attempt sailed wide right.
 
Maryland (2-2) couldn't do anything with the ball and punted it back to West Virginia, which started at its own 20. Rushel Shell ripped off 14 yards, Skyler Howard passed 17 yards to Daikiel Shorts Jr. to the Maryland 49, and then two plays later, found Shelton Gibson in stride down the far sideline for a pretty 41-yard scoring toss.
 
Howard's other first-half scoring throws covered seven yards to fullback Elijah Wellman on WVU's opening possession and for 15 yards to Gibson on a wide receiver screen play to the near side of the field with 4:41 left in the first quarter.
 
West Virginia's first-half rushing scores came on a Smallwood four-yard jaunt right through the middle of the Maryland defense and a Shell two-yard plunge when he bounced off a Terrapin tackler at the line of scrimmage and bulled his way into the end zone.
 
Lambert finished an impressive first half by kicking a 48-yard field goal as time expired.
 
Maryland quarterback Caleb Rowe, who replaced starter Perry Hills during last weekend's win over USF, had a miserable first half, completing just five of his 24 pass attempts for 24 yards and two interceptions.
 
His second half wasn't any better, the junior finishing his day completing only 10 of 27 passes for 67 yards with four interceptions before giving way to Oklahoma State transfer Daxx Garman.
 
Here's how bad things got for Maryland: tailback Brandon Ross broke free for a 55-yard run down the near sideline to the Mountaineer one-yard line late in the second quarter, but as cornerback Terrell Chestnut tackled him, he fumbled the football out of the end zone, giving the Mountaineers a first and 10 at their own 20.
 
Then, after KJ Dillon fumbled the opening kickoff of the second half, Maryland turned right around and gave the ball back to West Virginia. Karl Joseph picked off Rowe's pass intended for running back Wes Brown in the end zone.
 
"When you turn it over six times and have 10 penalties, you're four-of-16 on conversion downs; they are 10-of-17 on conversion downs, that makes it tough," noted Edsall. "The thing that disappointed me more than anything is we played undisciplined at times with some of the penalties. That's the stuff we don't expect and shouldn't have."
 
The only negative for the Mountaineers in the first half was Howard's streak of consecutive passes thrown without an interception ended with his 174th attempt when freshman Jovon Durante could not hold on to a catchable pass, the ball bouncing into Anthony Nixon's arms.
 
Following a scoreless third quarter, Howard opened the fourth with a one-yard touchdown pass to Shorts Jr. in the back of the end zone with 11:45 remaining.
 
At one point late in the game, West Virginia's offense was as balanced as it could get - 297 yards rushing and 297 yards passing. The Mountaineers finished the game with 304 yards on the ground and 297 through the air.
 
"We have called 60 or 70 percent run plays for about a year and a half," said Holgorsen. "If they give us numbers, then we are going to run the ball every snap. When they don't give us numbers we are going to throw the ball downfield."
 
The Mountaineers clearly did both today very effectively.
 
A sellout crowd of 61,174, including country music star Brad Paisley and college football hall of famer Bobby Bowden, inducted into the WVU Sports Hall of Fame earlier today, observed the game.