Saturday, October 13
Ames, Iowa
7:00 p.m.
West Virginia University
at
Iowa State
Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
United Bank Playbook - Baylor Preview
October 23, 2018 12:45 PM | Football
| Tale of the Tape |  |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Points Per Game | 33.1 | 36.8 |
| Points Against | 31.0 | 20.5 |
| Rushing Yards Per Game | 161.7 | 143.8 |
| Rushing Yards Allowed Per Game | 189.9 | 141.3 |
| Passing Yards Per Game | 313.3 | 320.5 |
| Passing Yards Allowed Per Game | 218.0 | 218.5 |
| Total Yards Per Game | 475.0 | 464.3 |
| Total Yards Allowed Per Game | 407.9 | 359.8 |
| First Downs For | 185 | 139 |
| First Downs Against | 136 | 124 |
| Fumbles/Lost | 14/3 | 8/3 |
| Interceptions/Return Ave. | 5/4.4 | 7/18.3 |
| Net Punting | 41.4 | 38.2 |
| Field Goal/Attempts | 13/18 | 4/6 |
| Time of Possession | 33:15 | 28:28 |
| 3rd Down Conversions | 51/106 | 34/68 |
| 3rd Down Conversion Defense | 42/96 | 29/81 |
| Sacks By/Yards Lost | 15/119 | 12/74 |
| Red Zone Scoring | 25/27 | 21/24 |
The Cyclones dominated every aspect of play in their 16-point victory over then-sixth-ranked West Virginia. The Mountaineers have since tumbled seven spots in the rankings, and their coach is curious to see how they respond on Thursday night against improving Baylor.
"A lot of eyes will be on us to see how we respond to what happened out at Iowa State, so I'm looking forward to seeing us as well," West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen said earlier this week.
It's a rare Thursday night game for West Virginia, the first in Morgantown since 2014 when the Mountaineers lost 26-20 to Kansas State. It remains the only midweek regular season night-game loss at home for West Virginia since it began playing these in 1994, and the Mountaineers have won their other 10 nocturnal midweek encounters at Milan Puskar Stadium.
This one on Thursday night against 4-3 Baylor pits two teams with opposing psyches.
West Virginia, 5-1, 3-1, is looking to regroup from its worst regular season offensive performance in five years. The Mountaineers got off just 42 snaps and totaled 152 yards against a very good, but not great Cyclones defense.
The Mountaineers' longest drive against Iowa State spanned just five plays and if not for a first-quarter Will Grier-to-David Sills V touchdown pass after the defense came up with a turnover in Iowa State territory, the offense would have been completely shut out.
West Virginia's other score came on Kenny Bigelow Jr.'s blocked field goal that Derrek Pitts Jr. scooped up and returned 72 yards for a touchdown.
It was a performance that had everyone scratching their heads looking for answers, including Holgorsen.
"I don't really want to go back and discuss it, honestly," he said. "But when you get right down to it, this game is about blocking people and tackling people. You have to have a proper mindset and, hopefully, we'll have a better mindset."
Sort of like the mindset second-year coach Matt Rhule is developing at Baylor, just as he once did at Temple.
Five years ago, Rhule blew up the Owls' program and watched his Temple team struggled to just two victories in 2013. A year later he won six, and his last two seasons on Broad Street saw the Owls win 20 and lose just seven with a pair of AAC first-place finishes.
Well, the pattern is repeating itself at Baylor. The Bears won only one game last year, but they've already got four wins this season, including two in Big 12 play against Kansas and Kansas State.
"You can see a lot of the resemblances in what he accomplished at Temple," Holgorsen noted. "When I saw Coach Rhule over here in Philadelphia, they were tough, they were physical and they played good defense and that's what I see Baylor turning into at this point."
Ten days ago at now sixth-ranked Texas, Baylor knocked starting Longhorn quarterback Sam Ehlinger out of the game and proceeded to take the Big 12 leaders right down to the wire. A couple of missed field goals kept Texas from putting Baylor away, and the Bears, trailing by just six, marched 80 yards in 10 plays right to the doorstep of Texas' goal line with 12 seconds remaining.
Quarterback Charlie Brewer had three shots to win it, but all three passes fell incomplete in a 23-17 defeat.
Afterward, Baylor wasn't treating the loss as a moral victory, but after winning just one game last season and getting throttled 38-7 by the Longhorns in Waco, it was clearly a moral victory for the Bears.
Brewer, a 6-foot-1-inch, 202-pound sophomore from Austin, Texas, is considered one of the top, up-and-coming, young quarterbacks in the Big 12. He's passed for 1,798 yards and 10 touchdowns so far this year, while rushing for an additional 138 yards with four scores.
"He's a good football player who came from a great high school in Texas," Holgorsen said. "He was coached the right way, and he's played a lot of ball."
Brewer was a big factor in last year's game against WVU in Waco when Baylor nearly came back from a 25-point third quarter deficit. Brewer's passing and running led to 23 fourth-quarter points, and West Virginia needed a Xavier Preston sack on the two-point conversion try to avoid a tie game late in the fourth quarter.
Brewer completed 8-of-13 passes for 109 yards, and he also ran 10 times for 61 yards. West Virginia has had issues in the past with mobile quarterbacks and struggled 10 days ago to contain Iowa State's Brock Purdy, who passed for 254 yards and three touchdowns and also ran for 39 yards.
Numerous times, WVU defenders left their feet in response to Purdy's pump fakes, allowing him to get out of the pocket and either run for first-down yardage or buy time to throw the ball down the field to Iowa State's big, physical receivers.
Baylor, too, has a physical pass-catching target in Tennessee transfer Jalen Hurd, who leads the team with 47 catches for 622 yards and three touchdowns. West Virginia is going to have to use a defender to account for Brewer's ability to run the football, and it's also going to have to use an extra man to help overtop on Hurd when Brewer lobs the ball up in the air to him - just as Iowa State did with Hakeem Butler.
"All of the talk about the Hurd kid is legit," Holgorsen noted. "He's a tall, lean kid that plays hard."
The Bears don't have a physical running threat to match Iowa State's David Montgomery, but junior JaMycal Hasty is improving and shows 301 yards and three touchdowns on just 55 attempts for a 5.5 yards-per-carry average.
Hasty is also outstanding catching the football out of the backfield and currently leads all Big 12 backs with 19 receptions heading into Thursday night's game.
"They run a lot of plays, they'll tempo you a lot and they'll throw it all over," Holgorsen said. "They'll go four- or five-wide, and then they'll turn around and they will be in three tight-end sets and try and pound you a little bit so they are very, very multiple with what they do offensively."
Defensively, Baylor has given up some points and yardage, including a two-week stretch when Oklahoma and Kansas State combined to score 100 points, but Holgorsen said some of that is misleading."The stats, I don't think, are an indication of what they do defensively," Holgorsen noted. "They're giving up some points and they're giving up some yards, but I see a bunch of improvement. They play hard, they're very sound and they play a bunch of different stuff.
"They're a four-down front that at the blink of an eye will be a three-down front," he said. "Whether that's moving a linebacker or a defensive end back – they have a couple of undersized defensive ends that they move around as linebackers, or just putting their nickel and dime packages in there."
Holgorsen anticipates seeing more of what Kansas and Iowa State did with defenses walking their linebackers off the line of scrimmage and forcing Grier to throw into seven- and eight-man coverages or identifying late-coming blitzers.
"Based on the success Iowa State had against us in that situation then we better be ready for that as well," he said.
Junior middle linebacker Clay Johnston is Baylor's top defensive playmaker with 36 total tackles, a sack and a pair of tackles for losses.
The Bears have been most successful in the red zone where they have allowed the fewest red-zone touchdowns in the Big 12 this year with eight. Complementing the defense is a strong kicking game led by junior punter Drew Galitz, who is averaging 43.9 yards per punt this year.
"He's probably the best punter we've seen all year," Holgorsen said. "He gets it off quick and he gets it downfield as well. He's also their kickoff guy."
If Galitz is the first guy to kick off on Thursday night, it will happen right around 7 p.m. EST. FS1 (Justin Kutcher, DeMarco Murray, Petros Papadakis and Jennifer Hale) will televise the game nationally.
The Mountaineer Sport Network from IMG's coverage begins at 3:30 with the GoMart Mountaineer Tailgate Show leading into regular game coverage at 6 p.m. on stations throughout West Virginia and online via WVUsports.com and the popular mobile app TuneIn.
There are tickets still remaining and those can be purchased by calling the Mountaineer Ticket Office toll-free at 1-800-WVU GAME or by logging on to WVUGAME.com.
West Virginia and Baylor will be meeting for the seventh time, with the Mountaineers holding a 4-2 advantage in series play dating back to 2012. The home team had won all of the games until West Virginia snapped the streak last year in Waco.
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