Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
Monday WVU Football Notebook
October 01, 2018 01:47 PM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen is chalking up Saturday's uneven performance at Texas Tech to "human instincts."
West Virginia (4-0, 2-0) began the game on fire, scoring touchdowns on five of its eight first-half possessions and generating 382 yards of total offense.
In the second half, WVU's lone touchdown came on a 51-yard interception return by Keith Washington Jr. and the offense managed just six first downs and 107 total yards during the second 30 minutes of play.
Two weeks ago in a 35-6 victory over Kansas State, the offense did the bulk of its work in three quarters by scoring all 35 of its points and accounting for 425 of its 464 total yards.
Holgorsen admitted Monday morning during his weekly teleconference with Big 12 media that he's still trying to get his team to play a full four-quarter game this year.
"I've got to do a better job of making sure they understand that it's a four-quarter game, and we've got to go out there and keep playing hard in the second half," Holgorsen said.
"I give Tech a lot of credit," he continued. "They could have folded their tent at halftime, and they didn't. They came out and played really well and played hard. They played harder than we did and played better than we did. We're a veteran team, and we've got to understand that if we want to continue to win we've got to put four quarters together pretty much every time we play moving forward."
What the Mountaineers did in the first half against Texas Tech, and what they did for three quarters against Kansas State, demonstrates how good this team can be when everything is clicking.
Now, it's just a matter of evening things out over a full 60 minutes of play.
"I was happy with the guys," Holgorsen pointed out. "It's a hard place to play, and we all know that. It was an early-morning game and we focused all week on starting fast, just because that's kind of been Tech's MO forever, especially in Lubbock … and we did that. I guess I just forgot to tell them they've got to play the whole game.
"But we felt good about what we did in the first half, no doubt. We play like that for a whole game and we're going to be tough to beat," he added.
Briefly:
* Holgorsen is now one victory shy of tying Art Lewis for third in all-time victories at WVU with 58. Lewis' 58 wins came during a 10-year period from 1950-59 when the Mountaineers won more than 60 percent of their games while playing in the old Southern Conference.
Holgorsen's win rate in the Big 12 Conference is now 60.6 percent heading into Saturday's game against Kansas. Three more wins will tie him with Rich Rodriguez for second all-time with 60 victories at WVU.
At the top of the West Virginia win list is Don Nehlen, whose 149 triumphs came during a 21-season span from 1980 to 2000.
Nehlen's WVU winning rate was also very similar to Holgorsen's at 61.4 percent.
* West Virginia earned a rare conference road win over a nationally ranked team last Saturday at then-25th-ranked Texas Tech. It was just the eighth road victory ever in conference play over a ranked team, according to football communications director Mike Montoro, and the third under Holgorsen.
The Mountaineers also won 48-45 at 11th-ranked Texas in 2012 and defeated 18th-ranked Cincinnati 24-21 during Holgorsen's first season coaching West Virginia in 2011.
* Nine of West Virginia's 22 wins against nationally ranked teams since 1999 have come under Holgorsen, representing 41 percent of those wins. Three other coaches have guided the Mountaineers since then: Don Nehlen, Rich Rodriguez and Bill Stewart.
* West Virginia made a return to the top 10 for the first time since the Nov. 13, 2016 poll when the Mountaineers were ranked 10th heading into their home game against No. 8 Oklahoma.
WVU jumped four spots to No. 8 in the coaches' poll and three spots to No. 9 in the Associated Press Top 25.
In the Football Writers Association of America National Football Foundation Super 16 Poll, which encompasses writers from all parts of the country and retired sportswriters, coaches and College Football Hall of Famers, the Mountaineers are just outside the top 10 at No. 11.
Barrett Sallee has West Virginia rated the highest at No. 6, while 2012 National Football Foundation Hall of Famer Charles Alexander, of LSU, doesn't have the Mountaineers in his top 16 this week.
Some others worth noting: Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic has West Virginia ranked 11ththis week, Mr. SEC Tony Barnhart has the Mountaineers No. 8, Ryan Black of the Manhattan Mercury has WVU No. 10, retired USA Today sportswriter Rudy Martzke has WVU No. 10, the Kansas City Star's Jesse Newell voted West Virginia No. 12 and retired Hall of Fame coach R.C. Slocum has the Mountaineers No. 10 this week.
A couple of other interesting names in this year's NFF Super 16 poll are Seattle Times sportswriter Stephanie Loh, who once covered the Mountaineers for the Morgantown Dominion-Post and ex-Syracuse quarterback Don McPherson, whose Orange teams split their four games with West Virginia from 1984-87.
For the record, Loh voted West Virginia No. 12 this week, and McPherson has the Mountaineers at No. 10.
*Will Grier threw his 51stcareer touchdown pass during last Saturday's 42-34 victory at Texas Tech, becoming just the fifth quarterback in school history with more than 50 touchdown passes to his credit.
What makes this so remarkable is the fact that Grier has done this in just 15 career games at WVU, which works out to an average of 3.4 touchdown passes per game.
It's by far the highest touchdown-pass ratio per game of any Mountaineer quarterback, including school-record holder Geno Smith, whose 98 career TD tosses came in 44 career games for an average of 2.23 touchdown passes per game.
Grier should jump the three immediately ahead of him, Pat White (56), Marc Bulger (59) and Skyler Howard (60) to finish second behind Smith.
Grier is tied with Oklahoma's Kyler Murray for third nationally this week with 17 touchdown passes, two behind Ohio State's Dwayne Haskins and seven behind Hawaii's Cole McDonald.
And finally, Saturday's homecoming game against Kansas will be West Virginia's 90thsince the Mountaineers first began celebrating homecoming on Nov. 24, 1921, a 13-0 loss to Washington & Jefferson.
W&J was West Virginia's homecoming foe four out of the first five times it was celebrated until the early 1930s when opponents began rotating.
This will be the Mountaineers' third homecoming game against the Jayhawks, the others coming in 1941 (a 21-0 WVU victory) and 2014 (a 33-14 West Virginia win).
Overall, West Virginia is 52-34-3 on homecoming for a .601 winning percentage. The last time WVU lost on homecoming was in 2015, a 33-26 Oklahoma State victory in overtime.
Holgorsen is 5-2 in homecoming games for West Virginia.
West Virginia (4-0, 2-0) began the game on fire, scoring touchdowns on five of its eight first-half possessions and generating 382 yards of total offense.
In the second half, WVU's lone touchdown came on a 51-yard interception return by Keith Washington Jr. and the offense managed just six first downs and 107 total yards during the second 30 minutes of play.
Two weeks ago in a 35-6 victory over Kansas State, the offense did the bulk of its work in three quarters by scoring all 35 of its points and accounting for 425 of its 464 total yards.
Holgorsen admitted Monday morning during his weekly teleconference with Big 12 media that he's still trying to get his team to play a full four-quarter game this year.
"I've got to do a better job of making sure they understand that it's a four-quarter game, and we've got to go out there and keep playing hard in the second half," Holgorsen said.
"I give Tech a lot of credit," he continued. "They could have folded their tent at halftime, and they didn't. They came out and played really well and played hard. They played harder than we did and played better than we did. We're a veteran team, and we've got to understand that if we want to continue to win we've got to put four quarters together pretty much every time we play moving forward."
What the Mountaineers did in the first half against Texas Tech, and what they did for three quarters against Kansas State, demonstrates how good this team can be when everything is clicking.
Now, it's just a matter of evening things out over a full 60 minutes of play.
"I was happy with the guys," Holgorsen pointed out. "It's a hard place to play, and we all know that. It was an early-morning game and we focused all week on starting fast, just because that's kind of been Tech's MO forever, especially in Lubbock … and we did that. I guess I just forgot to tell them they've got to play the whole game.
"But we felt good about what we did in the first half, no doubt. We play like that for a whole game and we're going to be tough to beat," he added.
Briefly:
* Holgorsen is now one victory shy of tying Art Lewis for third in all-time victories at WVU with 58. Lewis' 58 wins came during a 10-year period from 1950-59 when the Mountaineers won more than 60 percent of their games while playing in the old Southern Conference.
Holgorsen's win rate in the Big 12 Conference is now 60.6 percent heading into Saturday's game against Kansas. Three more wins will tie him with Rich Rodriguez for second all-time with 60 victories at WVU.
At the top of the West Virginia win list is Don Nehlen, whose 149 triumphs came during a 21-season span from 1980 to 2000.
Nehlen's WVU winning rate was also very similar to Holgorsen's at 61.4 percent.
* West Virginia earned a rare conference road win over a nationally ranked team last Saturday at then-25th-ranked Texas Tech. It was just the eighth road victory ever in conference play over a ranked team, according to football communications director Mike Montoro, and the third under Holgorsen.
The Mountaineers also won 48-45 at 11th-ranked Texas in 2012 and defeated 18th-ranked Cincinnati 24-21 during Holgorsen's first season coaching West Virginia in 2011.
* Nine of West Virginia's 22 wins against nationally ranked teams since 1999 have come under Holgorsen, representing 41 percent of those wins. Three other coaches have guided the Mountaineers since then: Don Nehlen, Rich Rodriguez and Bill Stewart.
* West Virginia made a return to the top 10 for the first time since the Nov. 13, 2016 poll when the Mountaineers were ranked 10th heading into their home game against No. 8 Oklahoma.
WVU jumped four spots to No. 8 in the coaches' poll and three spots to No. 9 in the Associated Press Top 25.
In the Football Writers Association of America National Football Foundation Super 16 Poll, which encompasses writers from all parts of the country and retired sportswriters, coaches and College Football Hall of Famers, the Mountaineers are just outside the top 10 at No. 11.
Barrett Sallee has West Virginia rated the highest at No. 6, while 2012 National Football Foundation Hall of Famer Charles Alexander, of LSU, doesn't have the Mountaineers in his top 16 this week.
Some others worth noting: Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic has West Virginia ranked 11ththis week, Mr. SEC Tony Barnhart has the Mountaineers No. 8, Ryan Black of the Manhattan Mercury has WVU No. 10, retired USA Today sportswriter Rudy Martzke has WVU No. 10, the Kansas City Star's Jesse Newell voted West Virginia No. 12 and retired Hall of Fame coach R.C. Slocum has the Mountaineers No. 10 this week.
A couple of other interesting names in this year's NFF Super 16 poll are Seattle Times sportswriter Stephanie Loh, who once covered the Mountaineers for the Morgantown Dominion-Post and ex-Syracuse quarterback Don McPherson, whose Orange teams split their four games with West Virginia from 1984-87.
For the record, Loh voted West Virginia No. 12 this week, and McPherson has the Mountaineers at No. 10.
*Will Grier threw his 51stcareer touchdown pass during last Saturday's 42-34 victory at Texas Tech, becoming just the fifth quarterback in school history with more than 50 touchdown passes to his credit.What makes this so remarkable is the fact that Grier has done this in just 15 career games at WVU, which works out to an average of 3.4 touchdown passes per game.
It's by far the highest touchdown-pass ratio per game of any Mountaineer quarterback, including school-record holder Geno Smith, whose 98 career TD tosses came in 44 career games for an average of 2.23 touchdown passes per game.
Grier should jump the three immediately ahead of him, Pat White (56), Marc Bulger (59) and Skyler Howard (60) to finish second behind Smith.
Grier is tied with Oklahoma's Kyler Murray for third nationally this week with 17 touchdown passes, two behind Ohio State's Dwayne Haskins and seven behind Hawaii's Cole McDonald.
And finally, Saturday's homecoming game against Kansas will be West Virginia's 90thsince the Mountaineers first began celebrating homecoming on Nov. 24, 1921, a 13-0 loss to Washington & Jefferson.
W&J was West Virginia's homecoming foe four out of the first five times it was celebrated until the early 1930s when opponents began rotating.
This will be the Mountaineers' third homecoming game against the Jayhawks, the others coming in 1941 (a 21-0 WVU victory) and 2014 (a 33-14 West Virginia win).
Overall, West Virginia is 52-34-3 on homecoming for a .601 winning percentage. The last time WVU lost on homecoming was in 2015, a 33-26 Oklahoma State victory in overtime.
Holgorsen is 5-2 in homecoming games for West Virginia.
Players Mentioned
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