MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia ended its two-game Big 12 losing streak last weekend at Central Florida.
 
This week, it can start another winning streak with national brand BYU making its first-ever appearance at Milan Puskar Stadium. Earlier this week, Cougars coach Kalani Sitake said during his weekly Zoom conference that he was looking forward to hearing John Denver's song "Take Me Home, Country Roads," which is only sung by WVU students and players after victories.
 
And while it's understandable he wouldn't know that being two time zones away, it is commendable that he is aware of the tradition.
 
West Virginia coach Neal Brown is certainly aware of BYU's great football tradition dating back to the days of LaVell Edwards and prior. The Cougars have won 436 games over the last 50 years, which ranks eighth among all college football programs, and captured the national championship in 1984.
 
BYU played in its 40^th bowl game last season, 20^th among all programs, and its players have won the Heisman Trophy, Maxwell Award, Doak Walker Award and Outland Trophy.
 
Seven Cougars are members of the College Football Hall of Fame, including Edwards.
 
"It's a national brand and a very proud program," Brown pointed out earlier this week. "We're going to need our fans to show up, especially our students, because we need it to be loud. They will have their fans here because they travel. It's one of the few East Coast games they play, so they will definitely have some fans here, and we need to be able to overcome that."
 
This year's BYU team is currently 5-3, 2-3 in the Big 12 and is coming off a 35-6 loss at Texas last week that was closer than the score indicated. BYU is unbeaten at home this year but has lost three out of its four games on the road. The lone victory was a come-from-behind, 38-31 triumph at Arkansas back on Sept. 16.
 
Quarterback Kedon Slovis is a name familiar to Mountaineer fans, not only for what he did in last year's game at Pitt, but also for what he said about West Virginia during the Panthers' pregame pep rally.
 
"Yeah, we're aware," Mountaineer senior linebacker Lee Kpogba said earlier this week.
 
Kpogba is also aware that Slovis has thrown for more than 11,000 yards during a career that includes stops at USC and Pitt. He is completing 57.5% of his pass attempts this season for 1,716 yards and 12 touchdowns.
 
Slovis has a couple of big, pass-catching targets in 6-foot-4, 205-pound sophomore Chase Roberts and 6-foot-3, 205-pound senior Darius Lassiter. Those two have combined for 61 catches for 806 yards and eight touchdowns through eight games.
 
Sixteen different players have caught passes and seven have scored touchdowns through the air.
 
UNLV transfer Aidan Roberts got the start at running back last week against Texas after recovering from a rib injury that kept him out of four games. He's a 6-foot-3, 240-pounder who rushed for 1,011 yards and nine touchdowns last year for the Rebels.
 
The bulk of the carries and the yards have come from true freshman LJ Martin, a 6-foot-2,205-pounder, who shows 438 yards and four touchdowns through seven games. His 55-yard run against Texas Tech was by far the longest carry for a BYU player from scrimmage this season.
 
"Offensively, they want to establish the run, but they're extremely talented at receiver. That's going to be an issue for us," Brown said. "Slovis, we played against him last year at Pitt, and he's playing some of his best football right now."
 
Up front, starting left tackle Kingsley Suamataia was a preseason All-Big 12 choice.
 
Defensively, the Cougars are one of the most opportunistic units in the country, forcing 18 turnovers, which ranks third nationally this week. The BYU secondary has come up with 12 interceptions so far, led by cornerback Jakob Robinson's four picks. Opposite corner Eddie Heckard has three interceptions, including an impressive one-hander in the TCU loss.
 
Senior linebacker Max Tooley leads the Cougars with 55 total tackles, a pair of tackles for losses and a sack. Defensive end Tyler Batty is BYU's top pass rusher with 3½ sacks and six tackles for losses.
 
Ranked 85^th overall in total defense allowing 391.4 yards per game, BYU excels in turnover margin (eighth nationally), red zone defense (13^th) and fourth down defense (16^th).
 
"It's a team that's really disciplined," Brown noted. "On defense, you know where they're going to be but they're good at defeating blocks, they don't miss tackles, they're really good in coverage and they've got length up front."
 
Punter Ryan Rehkow leads the Cougars' special teams with half of his 48 punts traveling longer than 50 yards and having 15 of his kicks land inside the opponents' 20-yard line.
 
West Virginia is looking to extend its streak of consecutive 140-yard-plus rushing games to 12, which is currently the longest among power conference programs. Last week at UCF, the Mountaineers rushed for 286 yards and scored all five of their touchdowns on the ground, three coming from quarterback Garrett Greene.
 
CJ Donaldson Jr. came off the bench to rush for a season-high 121 yards, his best performance since the Pitt game. True freshman Jahiem White contributed 85 yards on just nine carries, while Greene added 55 yards on 11 totes.
 
Greene was 14-of-23 passing for 156 yards against the Knights and is looking to improve his 53.5% completion percentage.
 
The receivers can help by latching on to more of his passes. Drops continue to be an issue with the Mountaineer receiving corps.
 
Defensively, West Virginia generated the most turnovers (four) in Brown's 55 games at WVU and the most since 2017.
 
Cornerback Beanie Bishop Jr. picked off two passes last Saturday and now has as many (four) as the entire WVU team produced last season. He is also ranked No. 1 in the country in passes defended, averaging two per game.
 
Kpogba continues to pace the defense with 59 tackles, four tackles for losses, two sacks and six quarterback hurries. It was Kpogba's third quarter strip-sack resulting in Jalen Thornton's fumble recovery that changed the complexion of last Saturday's game at UCF.
 
"We've got to continue to tackle better. The takeaways were big, but we've got to do a better job of limiting the explosive plays," Brown said.
 
Fans are encouraged to wear all blue as part of Saturday's True Blue game against the Cougars. At the end of the first quarter, West Virginia will officially retire Chuck Howley's No. 66 during an on-field ceremony. Howley's son, Scott, will be on hand for the presentation.
 
The 7 p.m. kickoff is the sixth for West Virginia this year after 5 p.m. and the third at Milan Puskar Stadium. FS1 will televise the game nationally with Alex Faust and Robert Smith on the call. If the World Series goes to a seventh game, the telecast will be moved to the main Fox Sports channel and FS1 will pick up the Utah State-San Diego State game, according to the Deseret News.
 
"We can't rest on our laurels; one win isn't good enough," Brown said. "We left points out there on offense and didn't play as good on defense as we can."
 
West Virginia, sitting at 5-3 overall and 3-2 in Big 12 play, is one of seven teams still in contention to get to Dallas for the Big 12 Championship at the end of the regular season.
 
"Championships are won in November and our league race is wide open," Brown pointed out. "There are seven teams that still have an opportunity to go play in Dallas and it's whoever performs the best in November that are the teams that are there. We've got four games left and it starts this week and we're thankful to be at home. We've got to redeem ourselves from that fourth quarter against Oklahoma State."
 
Mountaineer Sports Network coverage with Tony Caridi, Dwight Wallace and Jed Drenning begins at 6 p.m. on stations throughout West Virginia and online via WVUsports.com and the Varsity Network and WVU Gameday apps. Prior to that, the GoMart Mountaineer Tailgate Show on select stations kicks things off at 4 p.m.
 
The extended forecast is calling for temperatures in the high 50s on Saturday.
 
Tickets remain and can be purchased by logging on to WVUGAME.com.