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Football Notebook: Sooner Ground Game Prevails
November 20, 2016 12:53 PM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - With each snow squall that hit Milan Puskar Stadium, a squall of Oklahoma points seemingly besieged the Mountaineers during Saturday’s 28-point loss to the Sooners.
Early in the game, when it was snowing the hardest, eighth-ranked Oklahoma was dismantling West Virginia’s slim college football playoff hopes.
A mishandled punt by normally sure-handed Gary Jennings led to OU’s first touchdown, a Samaje Perine two-yard run.
Then Dede Westbrook hit West Virginia with another 75-yard squall, followed by some Joe Mixon runs that led to Oklahoma’s third score, a Jeffrey Mead five-yard reception from Baker Mayfield.
Then, West Virginia’s Justin Crawford made two long runs to get the ball to the OU 22 and a Ka’Raun White 11-yard reception took it to the Sooner 11 before Oklahoma’s defense punched the football out of Crawford’s arm and the Sooners recovered his fumble at the four.
OU once again marched the length of the field - mostly on Perine and Mixon runs - to make the score 28-0 with 10 minutes still remaining in the second quarter.
By that point, many of the 57,645 bundled up to see this one headed for the exits.
“When you play a good football team you can’t make the amount of mistakes we made,” said West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen. “We just had too much stupid stuff happen and that’s going to get you beat.”
Trailing 34-7 at halftime, and then 41-7 when Josh Evans intercepted Skyler Howard’s fourth-down pass at 20 and followed a convoy of blockers for a touchdown, West Virginia continued to battle.
“At halftime I said, ‘We’re only hallway done with this thing,’” said Holgorsen. “They went out there and they did fight. They made mistakes but it wasn’t because of lack of preparation and it wasn’t because of lack of effort.”
The Mountaineers scored three straight touchdowns - two Howard runs and a Howard-to-Ka’Raun White 37-yard pass to make it a two-possession game, but once again the snow began to fall and that seemingly brought OU’s slumbering offense back to life.
As it had done in the second quarter when the conditions were again deteriorating, OU leaned on its two workhorse backs to march right down the field. Mixon carried it four times for 22 yards, Perine ran it twice in the red zone and then Mayfield got the ball across the goal line from the one.
In between, Mayfield hit two big third-down passes to Mark Andrews for nine yards on third and six, and to Geno Lewis for 18 yards on third and 10.
The Sooners tacked on a meaningless late score when West Virginia failed to make a first down on fourth and five from its own 36.
Perine and Mixon are as good as any two-back combinations in the country and both demonstrated that on Saturday night. Perine, as he did two years ago as a freshman in 2014 when he ran for 242 yards and four touchdowns, took 31 cracks at the Mountaineer defense and advanced the ball 160 yards while tallying two touchdowns.
Mixon got it 24 times and ran for 147 yards and a TD as the Sooners accumulated 316 yards on the ground.
Oklahoma was so successful running the ball in poor weather conditions that Mayfield was only required to try 15 passes, completing nine, for 169 yards and two touchdowns. The 75-yard screen pass to Westbrook was just enough to keep West Virginia’s defense from bringing everyone up to stop the run.
Oklahoma has enough weapons to move the ball in any weather conditions and against any type of defense it faces. A now healthy Perine and a more battle-tested offensive line makes the Sooners a vastly different football team than the one that lost to Houston and Ohio State earlier this year.
“Everybody wants to say they are no good because of what happened earlier in the year, but they are a different football team right now than they were earlier in the year,” noted Holgorsen. “They’ve got a bunch of healthy people and more experience so they are going to be in contention down the road.”
OU clearly has enough offensive firepower to remain in contention for a college football playoff spot, but that Sooner defense is another story.
Oklahoma gave up huge chunks of yardage on the ground - Crawford getting loose for runs of 29, 36, 61, 36, 45 and 45 yards to produce 331 yards rushing, just 13 yards shy of Tavon Austin’s school-record 344 yards he tallied against Oklahoma in 2012.
OU’s secondary was beaten overtop three times for long gains, twice for touchdowns to Jovon Durante and Ka’Raun White, and a 61-yarder to Shelton Gibson that turned into points for WVU early in the fourth quarter.
OU’s defense surrendered 8.9 yards per play, 579 total yards and its open-field tackling is less than stellar - not college football playoff-caliber defense, in my opinion.
“I felt like we could run the ball, yeah,” said Holgorsen. “We didn’t run it very good for the first three series but then we kept searching and we found some things that were working.”
Based on this, and the way Oklahoma State also took advantage of West Virginia’s mistakes out in Stillwater, the Bedlam game two weeks from now in Norman should live up to its billing.
Meanwhile, West Virginia has to pivot from Saturday’s disappointing loss and get refocused in time to face a vastly improved Iowa State team in Ames on Saturday.
Despite their 3-8 record, the Cyclones have gotten progressively better, losing by three to Baylor, losing by seven to Oklahoma State, losing by five to Kansas State and losing by just 10 to Oklahoma before winning their last two games against Kansas and Texas Tech.
It will be the regular season finale for Iowa State’s senior class and an opportunity to gain some momentum for first-year coach Matt Campbell’s program as it heads into the offseason.
“I told them, ‘This is going to be the toughest week of the year ahead of us,’” said Holgorsen. “I could have said that probably six weeks ago when it came to this specific week. We put a lot into this game and it didn’t go the way we wanted it to. We’re disappointed with it and we’ve got a tough one on the road against an improving Iowa State team. You guys (media) saw what they did to Texas Tech (Saturday).”
The Mountaineers have two regular season games remaining and can reach double-digit victories for just the ninth time in 125 years of football at West Virginia University, and the first since Holgorsen’s first Mountaineer team did so in 2011.
That would be a heck of an accomplishment for a team that was predicted to finish seventh in the Big 12 before the start of the season.
“I’m anxious to see how our guys respond,” said Holgorsen. “The one thing I can say about these guys is they continue to fight and they continue to work.
“There is not a doubt in my mind that they’re not going to prepare and practice and put forth as much into it as they possibly can. I know we’re going to do that,” he concluded.
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