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Mountaineers, Horns to Hook up Saturday
November 09, 2016 01:17 PM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - After listening to Dana Holgorsen’s 21 ½-minute press conference on Tuesday afternoon, you almost get the impression that his West Virginia Mountaineers are facing the New England Patriots this Saturday instead of the 5-4 Texas Longhorns.
Holgorsen used superlatives to describe every aspect of the Longhorn program, from offense to defense to special teams to the way embattled coach Charlie Strong has righted the ship after a 2-3 start to the season.
“The thing that strikes me with this group is incredibly competitive and just a very physical team,” Holgorsen said. “You look at their 5-4 record and you can go across the country and find a bunch of really good 5-4 teams.”
Since losing, 45-40, to Oklahoma on October 8 and Strong assuming defensive play calling responsibilities, Texas has won three of its last four games and held all four opponents below their season scoring averages.
The Longhorn offense has done its part from the get go, scoring at least 21 points in all nine games this season and topping 30 points eight times.
Texas has arguably the best running back in the country in 6-foot-1-inch, 249-pound junior running back D’Onta Foreman, who is drawing comparisons to another great Longhorn running back, Earl Campbell.
Foreman’s streak of 10 straight 100-yard games dates back to the final two games of the 2015 season, one of those coming against West Virginia (147 yards) in Morgantown.
In his last two games, victories over Baylor and Texas Tech, the Texas City, Texas resident has rushed for 250 and 341 yards respectively, boosting his season rushing average to 180.8 yards per game.
He snapped Texas’ nine-year drought without a 1,000-yard rusher and has a legitimate shot of reaching 2,000 yards this season, needing only 250 yards with games remaining against West Virginia, Kansas and TCU.
“They give it to him 25, 30, 35 times a game and I don’t know how one guy can handle that, but obviously he can,” Holgorsen said. “I’ve been on record saying the days of doing this with one back is over, which I was wrong. He’s the premier back in the country right now and is leading the nation in rushing. He’s a great player so we’re obviously going to have our hands full with him.”
Foreman gets support in the run game from backup running back Chris Warren III and former starting quarterback Tyrone Swoopes, who comes in to run Texas’ “18-wheeler” package.
The signal calling duties are now in the hands of freshman Shane Buechele, the son of former major league baseball player Steve Buechele.
“Their quarterback is continuously getting better,” Holgorsen noted. “The freshman kid is managing what they’re asking him to do. We all know about the 18-wheeler package they have with Swoopes to come in, a 250-pound, 6-foot-5 guy, they put in at tailback. We kind of know what they’re going to do and it’s still going to be a challenge to stop it.”
Buechele became the first true freshman quarterback in school history to start the first two games of his career and was just the second to start the season opener, Bobby Layne being the other in 1944.
Buechele is completing 61.9 percent of his pass attempts for 2,257 yards and 19 touchdowns, three each going to Armanti Foreman (D’Onta’s twin brother), Jerrod Heard, Dorian Leonard and Devin Duvernay.
Foreman leads the team with 33 catches for 414 yards, while Duvernay is the Longhorns’ best down-field threat with 23.1 yards-per-reception average on his 13 catches.
“They’ve got some receivers that can flat-out go,” Holgorsen said.
The Texas defense struggled to stop teams earlier this year, but is finally finding its way with Strong making the calls. Texas forced just one turnover in its first four games but has come up with 12 since then.
In last Saturday’s win at Texas Tech, the Longhorns came up with two critical turnovers, both in the red zone. Texas has produced at least two turnovers in four of its last five games.
“They play a lot of guys, upwards of 28-30 guys on their defense, so they have a lot of competition at each and every one of those spots and they’re constantly rotating guys in there,” Holgorsen noted.
Linebacker Anthony Wheeler leads Texas with 60 tackles, while Brecklyn Hager has been involved with eight tackles for losses, five of those by way of sacks.
The Longhorns have produced 34 sacks in nine games so far this season and try to do so by causing a lot of confusion, frequently switching from three- to four-man fronts, sometimes after each play.
The special teams, too, have caught Holgorsen’s eye, particularly punter Michael Dickson, who ranks second nationally this week with an average of 48.2 yards per punt.
LSU transfer Trent Domingue has been solid as Texas’ placekicker, making 12 of 16 including a 39-yard field goal with 46 seconds left to defeat Baylor.
Texas specialists have also come up with five blocked kicks, two on punts, two on PATs and one field goal, to rank first in the nation in that combined category.
“Their special teams are as solid as it gets,” Holgorsen said. “They are incredibly deep when it comes to DBs, wide receivers and linebackers, which means they have an abundance of available bodies to put on special teams.
“Overall, this is a very, very deep and talented football team that is constantly getting better,” Holgorsen added. “They are going to have as much energy as they’ve had all year on Saturday playing for bowl eligibility and playing for stuff that we can’t control, and we’re not going to worry about.”
In last year’s meeting in Morgantown, WVU defeated Texas, 38-20, despite the Longhorns’ distinct statistical advantage. Texas ran for 277 yards and produced 19 first downs, but a Foreman fumble resulted in Jared Barber’s 42-yard return for a touchdown and another Longhorn fumble was recovered by the Mountaineers in the red zone.
A third Texas turnover, an interception thrown by Swoopes, resulted in Skyler Howard’s two-yard touchdown run.
Howard only tried 12 passes for the game, completing 10, for 122 yards. The WVU ground game manufactured 257 yards and two scores.
West Virginia (7-1, 4-1) is looking to remain in the Big 12 title hunt. The Mountaineers are coming off a 48-21 victory over Kansas last Saturday night in Morgantown, and are a game behind Oklahoma and a half game behind Oklahoma State in the league standings.
West Virginia owns a slight 3-2 edge in all-time series play, with the two teams splitting their four games since the Mountaineers joined the Big 12 in 2012.
WVU defeated Texas, 48-45, in Austin in 2012, lost, 47-40, in overtime in 2013 in Morgantown, and dropped a 33-16 decision in Austin two years ago.
“It will be as big a challenge as we’ve seen all year with their athleticism, their size, their physicality and the different looks they give us,” Holgorsen said.
Saturday’s game will kick off at noon ET and will be televised nationally on FS1 (Joe Davis, Brady Quinn and Bruce Feldman).
The Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG’s coverage begins at 8:30 a.m. with the Go-Mart Mountaineer Tailgate Show leading into regular game coverage at 11 a.m. on stations throughout West Virginia and online via leanStream and the mobile app TuneIn.
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