MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Each week in the Big 12 presents a different challenge.
 
One week it could be a team with NFL-caliber size, athleticism and speed such as Texas was last week or Oklahoma will be in a couple of weeks for the Mountaineers, or another week it could be a team with a unique scheme that can be very confusing.
 
That is what is currently confronting West Virginia's youthful football team as it prepares to face Iowa State this Saturday.
 
The Cyclones, under fourth-year coach Matt Campbell, are ahead of the curve in many aspects of their football program, most notably on defense.
 
Iowa State defensive coordinator Jon Heacock, who has some area ties having once coached at Steubenville (Ohio) High and also at West Liberty, is becoming a hot name in college football circles for the unique system he's running.
 
It's caused such a stir that Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables, coming off a national championship mind you, flew out to Ames, Iowa, last summer to study what Heacock is doing.
 
What his defense has done to date is very impressive. The Cyclones are giving up just 19.6 points in regulation, opposing offenses have not scored a first-quarter touchdown and they have surrendered only three rushing touchdowns and 3.2 yards per rush so far this year.
 
Why?
 
What makes the Cyclones so difficult to move the football against, as West Virginia fans so painfully discovered last year when Iowa State completely smothered the Mountaineers?
 
One word: confusion.
 
Last year's game in Ames was really the only time during Will Grier's two seasons at West Virginia when he was completely befuddled. What he thought he saw he didn't see and what he didn't see he thought he saw. 
 
Sounds confusing doesn't it? Well, that's just the way Heacock likes it.
 
"The first thing we talk about each week is we must affect the quarterback," Heacock said in a 2016 instructional video that Iowa State posted on its YouTube channel. "That's our No. 1 goal. His (Grier's) picture is on the front of our game plan, and it's on the front of our scouting report."
 
Of course, this week's Iowa State scouting report will have Austin Kendall's picture on the front of it. He's the guy Iowa State wants to confuse.
 
I recall years ago a very successful basketball coach once talking about something very similar - words to the effect that you can't confuse coaches, but you can sometimes confuse players.
 
When players are confused, they become vulnerable and Iowa State really feasts on that vulnerability.
 
So, what makes Iowa State's so unusual and different than the rest of the defenses West Virginia is going to face this year?
 
"It's that three-safety look," West Virginia quarterbacks coach Sean Reagan said. "Everybody is kind of tinkering with it and I think a lot of it is the RPOs (run-pass options) and the pass game in this conference. Basically, they're adding an extra defensive back to the secondary and yet he can still be a fast run-fitter. And they're pretty complicated with it.
 
"They will show you four in the box, but that extra guy in the middle is (6-foot-6, 285-pound defensive end Enyi Uwazurike) and then they've got two more edge guys who can make seven in a hurry. They can go from four to seven at the snap of a football."
 
In other words, when it looks like four you're supposed to run the ball and when it looks like seven you're supposed to throw it.
 
But when you're confused and you end up running into a seven- or an eight-man front as Grier often did last year, or worse, throw into seven- or eight-man coverages as Grier also did, it can be a recipe for disaster.
 
West Virginia ran just 42 offensive plays and had 152 yards of offense against the Cyclones, rivaling the Maryland debacle in 2013 as one of the worst offensive showings during Dana Holgorsen's eight-year tenure at WVU.
 
The Maryland performance could be chalked up to some bad players and some bad football; at Iowa State, it was a matter of the Cyclones being really good at what they do.
 
Count Neal Brown among those duly impressed.
 
"They've done a really nice job with it," he said Tuesday. "They've changed the league a little bit by what they're doing. They are playing a lot of 4I techniques (how they shade the tackles), a head-up nose, and they're playing a light box where they are presenting four- and a five-man box, but when the ball goes to the belly of the running back there is really six and seven in the box making it a totally false read.
 
"And then they're playing three high safeties a lot and they can get to every single coverage you can possibly imagine from that," Brown added. "They can drop a guy in the hole and play a two look and they can drop him straight back and get to a cover three look so it's really multiple. They do a really good job of confusing the quarterback."
 
Something else Heacock does masterfully in his scheme is he protects his best open-fielder tackler from oncoming blockers. This year his best open-field tackler is 6-foot, 205-pound junior Greg Eisworth, who wears No. 12. Incidentally, Eisworth got banged up a little bit in last Saturday's 49-24 win over TCU but Campbell said Monday he expects Eisworth to play against West Virginia.
 
Remember Eisworth's name and his number when you watch Saturday's game. He plays what Iowa State calls its Star position.
 
Co-offensive coordinator Matt Moore better explains how Iowa State uses Eisworth and his backup, junior Arnold Azunna.
 
"They have guys who will eat up gaps so No. 12 can make the play," he says. "They do a really good job of protecting him and letting him stay free to make tackles. He's a great tackler, and he's a really heady player and when you are game planning you want to try and account for that guy if you can from a hat-on-a-hat standpoint.
 
"But they keep him back there behind all of the defenders and so you run out of bodies to get to him."
 
Brown admitted Tuesday that he took some time over the summer to study what Iowa State does defensively because of its uniqueness, similar to what you would have to do when facing a team on your schedule that runs the option. Heacock was once an assistant at Army and he noted in his video the great difficulty teams had when they tried to prepare for Army's option offense in a week's time.
 
It's damn near impossible. Go back and watch last year's Oklahoma-Army game if you are skeptical. The same goes for some of the things Heacock does schematically on defense.
 
Fortunately for West Virginia, Brown said his players saw some elements of his system in what Texas did last Saturday, and the Mountaineers will continue to see it the rest of the season.
 
"We're such a copycat profession," Brown said. "Texas used a bunch of it last week so it's helpful to see some of the same coverage looks two weeks in a row. Baylor is using some of it, I know. I saw them as they played against Iowa State. I see Clemson doing it."
 
Brown said there is one other thing that makes Iowa State's defense so effective – good football players.
 
"They still get off blocks really well and they tackle really well, when it comes down to it," he said.
 
Iowa State is just three points shy of having an undefeated record. The Cyclones (3-2) lost 18-17 to in-state rival Iowa earlier this year and fell 23-21 at undefeated Baylor two weeks ago.
 
West Virginia, which leads the overall series against Iowa State 5-2, scored 49 points versus Heacock's defense in 2016. 
 
Two years ago it tallied 20 and last year it managed just 14 as Iowa State's scheme has evolved and the Cyclones have recruited better guys to play it.
 
Saturday's game will kick off at 4 p.m. and will be televised nationally on ESPN (Mark Jones, Dusty Dvoracek and Olivia Dekker).
 
The Mountaineer Sports Network's coverage will begin at 11:30 a.m. on affiliates throughout West Virginia leading into regular network coverage with Tony Caridi, Dwight Wallace and Jed Drenning at 3 p.m.
 
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.