MORGANTOWN — There’s no sugar-coating this one, no positive spin to put on it, no bright side to look on.
West Virginia was embarrassed during Saturday’s 31-14 loss to Iowa State in Ames. The Iowa State program is currently at its lowest point of coach Matt Campbell’s six-year tenure — last place in the conference prior to beating WVU — and yet the Cyclones had their way with the Mountaineers Saturday.
The Mountaineers have not played well in road conference games this year, but Saturday’s pitiful performance was the worst. It’s one thing to get off to a dreadful start at Texas and show a little bit of fight at the end or to squander chances while sleepwalking at Texas Tech, but it’s another thing entirely to barely even show up when taking on the worst team in the league. Or the former-worst team, as WVU has surely taken up that mantle now.
The West Virginia team that fought tooth-and-nail against Big 12-leading TCU last week must have missed the flight on Friday because those Mountaineers were nowhere to be seen.
“The story of our game was the inability of our offense to move the ball at all,” WVU coach Neal Brown said after the game. “The stats are putrid, we gave ourselves no chance to win the game.”
There is a bevy of stats that can demonstrate how thoroughly helpless the Mountaineers’ offense was in Ames, but my favorite is this — with starting quarterback JT Daniels, WVU punted the ball nine times, went three-and-out eight times and gained just seven first downs.
“Outside of the drive at the end of the half and at the end of the game, I’m not sure we had multiple first downs on more than one other drive,” Brown correctly pointed out.
There’s not much more that needs to be said after that. Those are not the numbers of a winning football team, those are not the number of a competent football team, but they are the numbers of WVU, who was neither on Saturday.
“To say I’m disappointed in how we played offensively would be taking it lightly,” Brown said.
I do not think Iowa State played a dominating football game on Saturday, rather West Virginia just played that poorly. Yes, Iowa State has the best statistical defense in the Big 12, but they’re not Alabama or Georgia.
In my mind, a dominating defense performance includes either a lot of turnovers or a lot of negative plays. The Cyclones had just one takeaway, an interception, and two sacks, on back-to-back plays in the fourth quarter.
“There’s not much good I can say offensively,” Brown said. “You watched it. (It was) as bad as I’ve been a part of.”
During his mid-week press conference leading into this game, WVU coach Neal Brown was asked about the number of close games Iowa State has lost this season, as four of the Cyclones’ five Big 12 losses came by just one score. One of the factors Brown pointed to for deciding close games was scoring in the redzone. The teams that do it, win, those that can’t, don’t.
WVU didn’t have to worry about that in Ames as the Mountaineers did not even get into the redzone until backup quarterback Garrett Greene got them to the eight-yard line with 1:04 left to play.
“We just haven’t played complementary good ball at all this year,” Brown said. “We haven’t been able to play both sides of the ball very well.”
WVU has three games left this season. An optimist might say there’s still a chance for the team to win-out and make a bowl game. A pessimist might ask to end the season right now so as to not risk having to watch another performance like Saturday’s.
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