My Fiver on WVU's loss to the Houston Cougars last night in Texas...
1. The interception on WVU's 2nd drive of the 2nd half is being downplayed. WVU leads 17-14, held Houston to a 3-and-out on UH's first series, and have the ball deep in UH territory. Going in for a 10-point lead. Ball is thrown perfectly to Jaylen Anderson, who evidently turned into a WVU linebacker because the ball bounced off of his hands and miraculously into the hands of a Houston DB for an INT. Huge, huge swing of momentum. Houston takes over, their RB Sneed tears off a 58-yard run, and then Houston's offense began shredding our "D", scoring on that drive and their next two drives afterwards. There's so many "IFs" with this team anymore. But, "IF" Anderson squeezes that ball in for a WVU touchdown to go up 24-14, I have a feeling this game turns out differently.
2. Our DL looked sluggish and lacked the intensity we've seen from them this season, for the most part. We did have 2 nice sacks by Bradley and Bartlett. But, otherwise, it looked to me like Houston's OL was having their way with our DL - and the UH running game averaging 5.4 ypc bears that out. I couldn't tell if we were slowing the DL's aggression by design to try to keep Donovan Smith contained, but it was a completely different look than the TCU, Texas Tech or Pitt games, when our DL was mauling the opposing OL for the majority of the game. In particular, Mike Lockhart was surprisingly uninvolved, ditto Fatomah Mulbah and Tomiwa Durojaye.
3. Garrett Greene will take a lot away from last night, some good, some bad. He made an epic bonehead move on our last touchdown, which directly led to Houston having great field position. He's a fiery kid, and you can't take that away from him. He'll learn from what he did - he needs to act like he's been there before like Major did, like Bulger did, like Pat used to do. The good he'll take away is that he was able to connect deep down the field, and made some great connections with Devin Carter. We're going to need to be able to move the sticks through the air, and not just the ground. Yes, Houston has a bad defense, but it's still a shot in the arm for Garrett to put up 393 and hit such a huge touchdown pass on a fourth-and-10 conversion. I believe he'll come back vs. Oklahoma State ready to make up for his mistake last night. Incidentally, I loved the wheel route pass to CJ Donaldson in the first quarter. I've been wondering when we would see that play call. It's going to be there.
4. Boy do we miss Aubrey Burks and Trey Lathan. Ben Cutter was not effective from his Mike position, and actually often overran contain. I would not mind seeing Lee Kpogba go back to Mike, and slide Cutter back to backup at that position, while going with a quicker Jairo Faverus at Will. There is no replacing Burks at free. When he is off the field, our coverage and run support seem to fall off of a cliff. Dana knew enough to throw at our exposed DBs and Marcis Floyd last night. Even their incompletions turned into 15-yard gains.
5. Last night was a fork in the road. If WVU is for real, you go down to Houston, win the game, come home 5-1 and undefeated in the Big 12. You get to soak in more praise over the next week, with tales being spun of WVU being the darkhorse candidate in '23 that the prognosticators thought Texas Tech was going to be. If WVU is a pretender, then we go down to Houston and lose.
Well, there's your answer. It's funny how you can get so ingrained in WVU's football and basketball programs that you can just feel something coming. And, I was dreading this game all week long. Shouldn't have been...but i was. Saw this "L" coming from a mile away. - felt a premonition of gloom surrounding this game similar to the one I had surrounding WVU's first round game vs. Maryland in the Dance this past Spring. Never dreamed that we would score on a 50-yard pass on 4th-and-10 with 20 seconds left to go up by 4, and then lose on a Hail Mary. Didn't see that particular sequence coming, but I will say that when we scored, got flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct, and I saw 20 seconds left...I said "Too much time left". I've endured too much to ever be comfortable until the scoreboard hits zeroes.
So, we're a pretender. Where do we go from here? Your guess is better than mine. Oklahoma State is getting better - just knocking off K-State last week. So, we'll have our hands full. But, a play like the last play in last night's game can knock an entire season off the rails. We're about to find out what sort of leadership we have from the top down, to the lockerrom and everywhere in that facility.
