Box Score MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Casey Legg's 22-yard field goal with 33 seconds left lifted West Virginia to a 43-40 victory over Baylor Thursday night at Milan Puskar Stadium.
 
It was a wild, wonderful and entertaining game for the 45,293 who showed up for tonight's contest.

"We overcame adversity," West Virginia coach Neal Brown said. "I said this after the Virginia Tech game, and I'll say it again, the demise (of the program) is getting ahead of itself. We've won three of four and this league is going to be wide open."
 
Tony Mathis Jr. ran for a career-high 163 yards, while quarterback JT Daniels completed 24 of his 37 pass attempts for 283 yards. 
 
In a back-and-forth game reminiscent of the first one these two teams played here in 2012, WVU's first as members of the Big 12 Conference, the two teams combined for 1,090 yards of offense and 83 points.
 
Explosive plays against West Virginia's young and inexperienced secondary played a big role in Baylor's 24-point first half. The Bears got 294 yards through the air, 160 of those coming after the catch, including a pair of Blake Shapen touchdown aerials to Gavin Holmes.
 
Holmes also caught a 56-yard pass down the near sideline to set up tight end Ben Sims' 1-yard end-around touchdown run.
 
Speedster Monaray Baldwin, coming off a season-high 174-yard performance in the Oklahoma State loss, was the receiver getting a lot of the pregame WVU attention. However, it was Holmes, a sixth-year senior, who did most of the first-half damage with his four catches going for 157 yards. He finished the night with seven catches for 210 yards and a touchdown.
 
WVU began the game impressively with an eight-play, 65-yard march that ended in Baylor's end zone when Mathis bounced in from the 7. 
 
Baylor scored the next 17 points in a span of just 10 minutes, however, before Legg answered with a 23-yard field goal with 6:30 left in the second quarter. 
 
WVU's other first-half tally came on Jasir Cox's 65-yard scoop and score after defensive end Sean Martin knocked the football out of Shapen's hand. This happened one play after Shapen connected on a 46-yard pass play to Holmes.
 
The Bears' other first-half score came on a John Mayers' 40-yard field goal early in the first quarter.
 
As it did on its opening possession, West Virginia's offense marched nearly the length of the field to get into the end zone to begin the third quarter. 
 
Mathis carried the ball four times for 23 yards and Daniels was 4-of-5 passing, including a pretty 24-yard hookup to Kaden Prather for a touchdown. The sophomore caught the ball at the Baylor 10, eluded a tackle attempt by safety Devin Lemear and scampered into the end zone for his third touchdown reception of the season.
 
Baylor answered six minutes later when backup quarterback Kyron Drones entered the game to replace Shapen at quarterback. Shapen was injured on Andrew Wilson-Lamp's personal foul penalty that was ruled targeting by the replay official.
 
Drones misfired on his first pass attempt but connected on his second to Hal Pressley for a 2-yard touchdown on fourth and goal. Pressley got inside freshman cornerback Jacolby Spells on a rub route. That scoring drive consumed 74 yards on 13 plays, giving the Bears a 31-24 lead.
 
WVU once again knotted things up on its ensuing possession. Daniels completed a 32-yard pass to Sam James down the far sideline, moving the football to the Bear 32. Another Daniels pass to James gained 11 to the 19, where sophomore Justin Johnson Jr. broke free for touchdown run, his third of the season.
 
It took the Bear offense only 2:57 to return to the end zone, Drones marching them 74 yards in six plays - 63 of that coming from Drones' arm. Qualon Jones culminated the drive with a 4-yard touchdown run, but Dante Stills blocked Mayers' conversion kick and Spells scooped it up and returned it for two points for West Virginia, making the score 37-33 Baylor. It was just the second defensive extra point in WVU history and first since 1994 at Pitt when Matt Taffoni intercepted a two-point conversion pass and returned it the distance.

WVU retook the lead eight plays after giving the ball to Baylor on downs at the Bear 45 when Mathis was thrown for a yard loss on a fourth and 1 play.
 
One play after Monaray Jones' 20 yard run, Aubrey Burks forced a Qualon Jones fumble that Cox recovered at the WVU 28.
 
Daniels flipped an 18-yard pass to Bryce Ford-Wheaton, connected on another to Prather for 18 yards on third and 8 to move the 34, and then Mathis took it in from there on a pretty touchdown run down the near side of the field. 
 
A couple of turnovers wound up giving Baylor three points when Mayers got his 44-yard field goal through the uprights with 1:46 left in regulation to tie the game 40-40.
 
The first Baylor turnover appeared to put West Virginia in good shape when Drones, under heavy pressure from Jared Bartlett and Dante Stills, threw a fluttering pass in the general direction of Drake Dabney that Aubrey Burks stepped in front of to pick off at the WVU 26.
 
A false start penalty on West Virginia moved the ball back 5 yards, and then linebacker Dillon Doyle picked off Daniels' pass that was intended for Ford-Wheaton. This came with 3:12 left and WVU wanting to milk some clock. 
 
Following Mayers' tying field goal, Jeremiah Aaron's 29-yard kickoff return set West Virginia up at its 34 with 1:33 left and all three timeouts remaining. Daniels got things going with a 12-yard pass over the middle to Prather, and then it was all Mathis. His first carry went for 9 yards, his second for 37 down the far sideline before he was finally hauled down from behind by Lemear at the Baylor 8.
 
Three Mathis runs and three Baylor timeouts later left the ball at the 5 with only 33 seconds left. Legg punched through the chip-shot field goal, and then the WVU defense protected the final 33 seconds.

"Things have a funny way of evening out," Brown pointed out. "If you play hard and do things the right way in preparation, the ball is going to bounce your way. Let's be honest, it didn't bounce many times our way this year until tonight. We got a couple of good bounces."
 
Prather finished the night with 109 yards on eight catches. WVU's ground game accounted for 217 yards against a Bears defense that came into tonight's game ranked 18^th in the country allowing just 96.8 yards per game.
 
Shapen was 14-of-22 passing for 326 yards before he left the game. Drones completed half of his 14 attempts for 95 yards.
 
The Bears (3-3, 1-2), still winless in six tries in Morgantown, fumbled twice, had a conversion kick returned for two points and threw a pick.
 
WVU's lone turnover was Daniels' interception late in the fourth quarter.

"I thought, to start the game, we came ready to play," Baylor coach Dave Aranda said. "I'm disappointed and we're all frustrated. Our execution, at some really critical points ... we could not make that next play. Whether it was a route and we had to make a play to stop a drive to halt the momentum, the emerging momentum, we never could do that. There were a whole bunch of reasons for that, whether it was alignment or assignment, so a fair amount to clean up."
 
West Virginia (3-3, 1-2) secures its first Big 12 victory of the season and travels to Lubbock to face Texas Tech next Saturday. The Red Raiders are idle this weekend.

"For us, I hope it sets us up for the stretch run," Brown said. "We won games three and four. We've got to go on the road to a tough place. They're coming off a bye week, but we've got a chance to get some wind behind us."