Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
West Virginia, K-State Primer
September 17, 2018 01:33 PM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – It's never too early to put the primer on Saturday's Big 12 opener against Kansas State at Milan Puskar Stadium.
The Wildcats come to town on the heels of last Saturday's 41-17 rout of Texas San Antonio at Bill Snyder Family Stadium to improve to 2-1.
In the process, it looks like veteran coach Bill Snyder has finally settled on sophomore Skyler Thompson as his starting quarterback after using Thompson and sophomore Alex Delton in the first two games of the season.
Thompson completed 13 of 18 passes for 213 yards and two touchdowns whole running for another score in K-State's 24-point victory on Saturday.Sophomore Isaiah Huber caught seven of Thompson aerials for 144 yards and both scores, giving the Wildcats an effective pass-and-catch combo they lacked in their opening two games against South Dakota and Mississippi State.
West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen said Monday morning that the Skyler Thompson his team is going to face on Saturday in Morgantown is vastly different than the one WVU went up against a year ago in Manhattan.
"We faced him exclusively last year as a freshman and it's tough to play as a freshman in this league so he's gotten a lot better and will continue to get better moving forward," Holgorsen opined. "I'm not discarding seeing Delton out there either. He's played a lot of Kansas State and he brings a whole other element to the game as well. We'll prepare for both of them but it does look like they've settled on Thompson and I think he's a really good player that's going to keep getting better."
Holgorsen and his staff also have to prepare for different K-State coordinators on both sides of the football.
Last year, it was offensive coordinator Dana Dimel, now UTEP's head coach, and defensive coordinator Tom Hayes, who hung up his whistle after 40 years in the coaching business.
Snyder promoted Andre Coleman to offensive coordinator and Charlie Dickey and Collin Klein to co-offensive coordinators last January, and he promoted Blake Seiler to defensive coordinator after spending the last nine years on the K-State staff.
"They've still got a ton of continuity with their coaching staff," Holgorsen explained. "Nobody has more than coach Snyder does. The guys that are coordinating for them are guys that have been there and I think that's the ideal way of doing things if you lose coordinators due to head coaching opportunities or retirement as they have."
K-State is dealing with some injury issues in the secondary that includes the loss of starting safety Denzel Goolsby and backup cornerback Kevion McGee for multiple games, including Saturday's trip to Morgantown.
Snyder said Monday the timing is not right being undermanned in the secondary facing West Virginia's Heisman Trophy contender Will Grier, who passed for 372 yards and four touchdowns in last year's 28-23 Mountaineer victory in Manhattan.
"That's probably one of the worst teams that you can lineup short-handed against," Snyder said. "Being short-handed is not something that you want but we're no different than anybody else. If somebody has to step up and play in place of someone then they have to be well-prepared to do as well as the other ones.
"But that's what you do when you coach – you get guys prepared to step into those situations."
Meanwhile, 12th-ranked West Virginia's Saturday afternoon was unexpectedly spent idle when Hurricane Florence caused the cancellation of the Mountaineers' game at NC State.
Holgorsen said he tried to keep the team on a regular schedule as much as possible last week.
"We had to keep playing so we practiced all week and then I gave them Saturday off in hopes of them just trying to get away from it and be as normal as they can for a day," he said.
Will losing the NC State game have an impact on the remainder of West Virginia's season, should the Mountaineers continue to play the way they have in the early going in blowout victories over Tennessee and Youngstown State?
Holgorsen doesn't believe it will.
"It was a game everybody wanted to play. It was such an outstanding week for the Big 12 and that matchup was going to add to that," Holgorsen admitted. "There were a whole bunch of people that wanted that game to be played, but at the end of the day you can't play when there were natural disasters going on.
"I don't think it's going to hurt our football team. We've already had a marquee matchup game against and SEC school and we've got nine big Power 5 games ahead of us," he added.
That includes a big one coming up on Saturday against the Wildcats. The last four West Virginia-Kansas State games have been hotly contested affairs going down to the wire each time.
All four were decided by a touchdown or less with K-State winning two and West Virginia winning the last two.
"They were really, really good back in 2012. They got up to No. 1 in the country, if I'm not mistaken, but the rest of the time we have been pretty evenly matched," Holgorsen noted. "I've got all of the respect in the world for coach Snyder, that program and what they've been able to do and accomplish.
"They're widely known year in and year out as one of the best coached teams out there and this team they've got right now is no different. It's Big 12 football and I'm not expecting this game to be any different than the way it's been," he concluded.
Saturday's Stripe-The-Stadium game will kick off at 3:30 p.m. and will be televised nationally on ESPN. According to a tweet sent out by Senior Associate Athletic Director Matt Wells earlier this morning, more than 10,000 student tickets have already been claimed for this weekend's game.
There are a number of general tickets still available 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.
10,000+ requests from @WVUStudents for Saturday's #StripetheStadium matchup with @KStateFB! The request deadline is 11:59 p.m. tonight. Request now at https://t.co/zgezjJhQkC pic.twitter.com/ITGIOnHFoD
— Matt Wells (@wmattwells) September 17, 2018
Players Mentioned
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