United Bank Playbook - Youngstown State - West Virginia University Athletics

Saturday, September 8

Morgantown, W.Va.

6:00 p.m.

West Virginia University

Youngstown State

Tickets

Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks

United Bank Playbook - Youngstown State

September 05, 2018 02:16 PM | Football

Youngstown State Game Notes

By: John Antonik

Tale of the Tape
Points Per Game	20.0	40.0
Points Against	23.0	14.0
Rushing Yards Per Game	235.0	118.0
Rushing Yards Allowed Per Game	86.0	129.0
Passing Yards Per Game	234.0	429.0
Passing Yards Allowed Per Game	253.0	172.0
Total Yards Per Game	469.0	547.0
Total Yards Allowed Per Game	339.0	301.0
First Downs For	20	26
First Downs Against	23	19
Fumbles/Lost	1/1	1/1
Interceptions/Return Ave.	0/0.0	0/0.0
Net Punting	33.0	38.2
Field Goal/Attempts	0/2	2/2
Time of Possession	27:48	32:23
3rd Down Conversions	5-12	5-9
3rd Down Conversion Defense	8-16	5-14
Sacks By/Yards Lost	2-18	2-4
Red Zone Scoring	1-3	4-4

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – There are two ways to view West Virginia's home-opening opponent Youngstown State.

You can look at it as the Penguin team that came in here two years ago with a pair of NFL defensive ends and led West Virginia 14-7 in the second quarter, or, the one last week that blew a 21-7 fourth-quarter lead and lost, 23-21, to Butler in its home opener.

West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen chooses to look at the former instead of the latter.

"We faced them two years ago, and they gave us everything we wanted," Holgorsen noted. "It was a challenge, and we know what their program is all about.

"In my opinion, they're in the best FCS conference that exists with North Dakota State, UNI and South Dakota State and that group," he continued. "That's good football now. They have national championships; they've been playing good football at Youngstown State for a long time."

The Penguins also have a coach with a proven Power 5-level pedigree in Bo Pelini, who won 10 games three times at Nebraska and led Youngstown State a 12-4 record and an appearance in the FCS national championship game in 2016.

He's a Youngstown guy who played at Ohio State and later coordinated some outstanding defenses at Oklahoma and LSU before taking over Nebraska's program in 2008.

His teams are known for being tough and playing fundamentally sound football.

"Obviously, I have a lot of respect for Bo Pelini," Holgorsen said. "He's as good of a defensive coordinator that exists out there."

Pelini and his defensive coaching staff will have a challenge this week trying to slow down West Virginia quarterback Will Grier, who passed for 429 yards and five touchdowns in the Mountaineers' 40-14 win over Tennessee last Saturday at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Grier completed 73.5 percent of his pass attempts, including 16-of-19 in the second half in registering the most passing yards the most passing yards and touchdowns a Tennessee defense has permitted since Kentucky's Tim Couch (476 yards in 1997) and Kentucky's Andre Woodson (six TDs in a four-overtime game in 2007).

Eleven different players caught passes and four different guys nabbed touchdown passes. The tight end position even got into the act as senior Trevon Wesco and Miami transfer Jovani Haskins combined for three catches for 44 yards and looked smooth doing so.

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Grier has weapons across the board, and he knows how to use them.

"He's a confident kid," Pelini said. "He has good receivers. He's decisive. He knows where to go with the football, and he can make all of the throws.

"He's very elusive," Pelini added. "He makes a lot of people miss in the pocket, and he's obviously a big, strong kid because he's hard to bring down in the pocket. He creates a lot for them off of his scrambles, and they're a dangerous football team when he breaks contain and their receivers do a really good job of finding open areas when the quarterback is running around. He's a good player."

Last week, West Virginia, now ranked 14^th, was one of only three Power 5 teams to have two 100-yard receivers in David Sills V and Gary Jennings Jr.

Sills V picked right up where he left off last year by catching seven passes for 140 yards and two touchdowns, giving him 22 touchdown catches in 22 career games. He is already tied with Chris Henry for fourth in school history in that category.

Jennings Jr. also got into the end zone last Saturday against Tennessee and finished the afternoon with seven catches for 116 yards. Jennings is 14^thin now school history in career receptions with 120.

West Virginia's four running backs - Martell Pettaway, Kennedy McKoy, Leddie Brown and Alec Sinkfield - combined to rush for 111 yards and average 5.0 yards per carry against Tennessee's stout front four.

"Their front was good now, don't kid yourself," Holgorsen said. "They're all four- and five-star guys. They started to outnumber us, and I thought Will did a good job of getting us into appropriate plays."

Pettaway got the starting nod and responded with a team-best 56 yards, including a tough, 22-yard burst that helped WVU to one of its three third-quarter touchdowns.

Brown, a true freshman, also looked good carrying the ball while McKoy caught one of Grier's five touchdown passes, a 14-yarder out of the backfield.

"I was disappointed Kennedy fumbled (in the fourth quarter), but he was good. He went out there and caught a touchdown pass. Pettaway, I thought, played great," Holgorsen said. "Sink looked explosive when we threw it to him, and I think Leddie is a powerful guy that's going to keep getting better. So, all four of them have a role, and we're going to need all four of them, for sure."

Defensively, West Virginia performed better than many outsiders expected by limiting the Volunteers to just 301 total yards and 14 points. The Mountaineers had 12 negative-yardage plays, including 7 ½ from their defensive line.

"They were disruptive all day long," veteran defensive coordinator Tony Gibson said. "Early on in the game, I thought we did a really good job of blitzing and getting pressure on the quarterback. I think those guys stemming and moving, slanting and angling and all of the things they were doing was confusing that quarterback and their O-line.

"After we hit him a couple of times, they moved the pocket all day long," Gibson pointed out. "They didn't trust him sitting back in the pocket. That's the first time in a few years that we've been able to get a quarterback to move."

Gibson has been experimenting with a 4-2-5 look that he utilized a little bit on Saturday. He said it's something they will continue to look at as the season progresses because he's finally got enough defensive linemen to do it.

"We might go to a 5-1-1 this week," Gibson joked. "It's been in the plans, and I thought a lot about it in the offseason, and I didn't want to do it too quickly because I wasn't sure how (his new defensive linemen) were going to turn out. I knew after spring ball, with (Brendan) Ferns and (Quondarius) Qualls out, that we needed to do some different things just to help us as a football team to play our best 11 guys."

Gibson said he studied what Bud Foster did to West Virginia last year with his 4-2-5 look and also what Appalachian State has done in the past with a similar defense.

"My initial thought was with our three-down was walk linebackers up like Qualls or (Charlie) Benton that are good edge guys," Gibson said. "That's how we first got into it. Obviously, we lose Qualls in spring ball and then I had to teach Charlie our base stuff, so we kind of got away from it."

But then late last spring Kenny Bigelow Jr. parachuted in from USC and Jabril Robinson followed from Clemson. That gave Gibson an additional nudge to continue toying with the four-man front.

Gibson said right now the four-man fronts are only a part of certain defensive packages.

"I can't teach linebackers three-down fits and four-down fits so we've got to try and make it simple," Gibson explained. "What we try to do is keep it as simple as we can right now and the only way it's going to get really different is if we scrap the three-down and go all four-down and right now that's not in our plans."

Gibson admitted it's not really something to throw the other teams off or give them more things to prepare for.

"I wouldn't care as much about what they're preparing for if it didn't help us," he said. "And I'm more worried about what helps us over what they have to prepare for.

"Most teams might say 'there not going to do it.' Who knows what we're going to do? We might come out with five this week," Gibson added.

Tickets are still available for Saturday's game, although Senior Associate Athletic Director Matt Wells says all 12,500 student tickets will be distributed and Family Day ticket requests have also remained steady this week. He anticipates a crowd approaching 58,000.

Fans interested in purchasing Family Day tickets may do so by calling the Mountaineer Ticket Office toll-free at 1-800-WVU GAME or by logging on to WVUGAME.com.

West Virginia's first undefeated, untied football team in school history in 1988 will be back on campus this weekend for their 30^thanniversary celebration. Returning team members will be recognized on the field during Saturday's game.

AT&T SportsNet (Rob King, Rasheed Marshall and Meg Bulger) will televise the game locally and the Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG's radio coverage will begin at 2:30 p.m. with the GoMart Mountaineer Tailgate Show (Dan Zangrilli, Dale Wolfley and Jed Drenning) on affiliates throughout West Virginia and online via WVUsports.com as well as the popular mobile app TuneIn.

MSN's award-winning game coverage with play-by-play man Tony Caridi, analyst Dwight Wallace and sideline reporter Jed Drenning takes over at 5 p.m., one hour prior to Saturday's 6 p.m. kickoff.

This will be West Virginia's third-ever meeting against Youngstown State with both prior games occurring in Morgantown.

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