Box Score The Black Diamond Trophy will be staying in Morgantown indefinitely. West Virginia used offensive touchdowns from Sam James and Justin Johnson Jr., a defensive score from Jacolby Spells and four Casey Legg field goals to defeat Virginia Tech 33-10 before a sellout crowd of 65,632 tonight at Lane Stadium in Blacksburg, Virginia.
 
The two former Big East rivals played annually from 1973 until 2005, met again in Landover, Maryland, in 2017, and once more last year in Morgantown. Tonight's game is likely the final meeting between the two for the foreseeable future with the Hokies' schedule filled up through the rest of the decade.
 
"I felt really good about our preparation coming into this game," West Virginia coach Neal Brown, now 2-0 against Virginia Tech, said afterward. "We've been close, and I don't know if our record really tells our story. I feel like we've got a good football team.

"The Black Diamond Trophy is coming back home with us and it can stay in our Hall of Traditions for a long time," Brown added.
 
West Virginia (2-2) got on the scoreboard first, marching 92 yards from its own 2 before stalling at the Hokie 6. Legg came on to boot a 23-yard field goal to give WVU a 3-0 lead.
 
Virginia Tech answered early in the second quarter when Grant Wells fired a 28-yard touchdown pass to Kaleb Smith, who was covered on the play by Wesley McCormick.
 
The Hokies were hunting for more points later in the quarter when they marched the ball to the West Virginia 18. On fourth-and-1, Tech chose to go for it, but Wells was stopped short by defensive tackle Jordan Jefferson.
 
West Virginia couldn't turn that stop into points, but one possession later the Mountaineers got another field goal with 1:50 left when Legg punched in a 35-yarder.
 
Tech called timeout ahead of Legg's field goal hoping to preserve clock to get points, but it ended up giving West Virginia enough time when it punted the ball back to the Mountaineers with 50 seconds left.
 
JT Daniels, taking over at the WVU 30, completed a pair of passes to tight end Mike O'Laughlin to get the ball to the Tech 49, and then a Kaden Prather 14-yard reception moved the ball to the Virginia Tech 37. Another Daniels pass to Prather got 13 yards to Tech's 26 when West Virginia called timeout with 17 seconds remaining.
 
On the next play, the Mountaineers got slot receiver Sam James isolated on Hokie linebacker Dax Hollifield down the middle of the field and Daniels fired a perfect strike for a 24-yard touchdown with 11 seconds showing on the clock. Legg's conversion kick made it 13-7.
 
After a Tech punt on its opening possession of the third quarter, West Virginia marched 79 yards to the Hokie 9 but was unable to get into the end zone when Daniels' third-down pass to O'Laughlin in the corner of the end zone fell incomplete, leading to another Legg field goal.
 
The Hokies matched the three points with William Ross' 44-yard boot on their ensuing possession.
 
At the beginning of the fourth quarter, West Virginia, aided by two critical third-down penalties by the Virginia Tech defense, reached paydirt when backup running back Justin Johnson Jr. slipped through a crease for a 6-yard touchdown run. Legg's conversion kick boosted WVU's lead to 23-10.
 
Legg's fourth field goal, a 38-yarder, made it 26-10 and then the defense came up with the play of the game 40 seconds later when freshman Spells stepped in front of a Wells pass and returned it 27 yards for a touchdown. 
 
That score came with 9:36 to go.
 
West Virginia, with mostly Mountaineer fans remaining in the stadium, had an opportunity to put more points on the scoreboard but opted to take a knee and run out the clock with the football at the Hokie 13-yard line. The "Let's go Mountaineers" cheer could be heard as the final seconds ticked off the clock.
 
WVU controlled the line of scrimmage, rushing 46 times for 218 yards and a touchdown against a Hokie defense that came into tonight's game ranked third in the country against the run.
 
Meanwhile, the Hokies managed just 35 yards on 18 carries and finished with 228 total yards.

"I thought coming in we could control the line of scrimmage, which we did, but we didn't get deterred offensively because we made some mistakes early and we settled in defensively and covered them better," Brown said. "We were the better team and we came out here, executed and showed it."
 
Daniels completed 20 of his 30 pass attempts for 203 yards, while Donaldson topped the 100-yard mark for the third time in four games this year with 106 yards on 23 carries.
 
Johnson contributed 83 yards on 11 totes and Prather was the top pass catcher with six receptions for 69 yards.

"The Pitt game, I felt like it was louder than this game," Prather said. "We practiced all week with their theme song and it just came normal to us. It was nothing new."
 
WVU had 421 yards of total offense and possessed the football for 17 more minutes than the Hokies.
 
Legg's four successful field goals tonight make him eight-for-eight for the season.
 
Wells, a Marshall transfer and Charleston native, completed 16 of his 35 pass attempts for 193 yards.
 
Virginia Tech was penalized 15 times for 132 yards.
 
West Virginia continues Big 12 play next Saturday at Texas. A game time will be announced this weekend following the Longhorns' game at Texas Tech.