MORGANTOWN — As West Virginia University’s defense trudged off the field following a heartbreaking 38-34 loss to Pittsburgh on Sept. 14, the group knew something needed to change.
The Panthers had just scored two touchdowns in the game’s last 5 minutes, 34 seconds to erase the Mountaineers’ 10-point lead. WVU’s defense failed to force a third down on either of those last two Pitt drives of 75 and 77 yards.
The Mountaineer defenders didn’t wait for the coaches to wrangle them together for a frank discussion. They took matters into their own hands.
A players-only meeting following the Pitt loss has seemed to do the trick. A stout showing in the last 5:39 against Kansas allowed the Mountaineers to erase an 11-point deficit and win 32-28. Then WVU throttled Oklahoma State’s offense in a never-in-doubt 38-14 victory.
The Mountaineers (3-2, 2-0 Big 12) will try to keep that going at 8 p.m. Saturday when they host No. 11 Iowa State (5-0, 2-0 Big 12) on a nationally televised Fox broadcast.
It was the Monday after the Pitt loss that the meeting happened, said safety Jaheim Joseph, and he believed the circumstances called for it.
“It was a hard loss to take,” he said. “Honestly, it’s probably one of the worst ‘L’s I’ll take in my life, being up 10 with five minutes left. We just knew we weren’t playing up to our standard.”
There was no screaming that evening, Joseph said. Several of the defensive leaders stood up and addressed the room. There was no beating around the bush.
“That’s the relationship we’ve built with each other,” Joseph said. “We always want to be real with each other, be blunt. Because it’s either we’re gonna win or we’re gonna lose.”
The crux of the message was accountability, Joseph said. Every player needed to be responsible for their specific role in the unit. And that responsibility had to start at practice, which is where the players felt they were really coming up short. The defensive leaders made it clear that the consistency and intensity of practice had to improve.
WVU head coach Neal Brown said it’s always good when players take the initiative to hold themselves accountable. When they’re proactive with it, that means the players are bought in.
“You hope you have older guys and veteran guys that hold people accountable,” he said, “whether it’s watching film on your own, whether it’s during workouts, doing stuff after practice. You want some accountability. I think that’s probably the most important piece of it.”
When WVU returned to the field the next weekend versus Kansas, the defense put words into action. Down 28-17 in the fourth, the Mountaineers scored a touchdown and two-point conversion to cut the lead to 28-25. Then the WVU defense forced a three-and-out that allowed the offense to score the go-ahead touchdown in just under two minutes.
Kansas got the ball back and got into WVU territory on a 36-yard Jalon Daniels throw to Lawrence Arnold, but on the next play, Tyrin Bradley got a strip sack on Daniels and came up with the ball with eight seconds left to clinch the game.
After Kansas’ last score, defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley called down from the coaches’ box to the sideline to get an idea of how the players were handling the adverse situation. The report he got made him happy.
“The guys were like, ‘Hey, man, they’re not blinking. They’re not missing a beat,’” Lesley said. “We were already into, when we get a stop, OK, this is what we’re going to do. The last five minutes of that game was the opposite of what happened the week before. And that was probably the biggest change to me.”
WVU followed that win with its best defensive performance of the season, allowing just 227 yards and only 36 yards on the ground to an Oklahoma State offense that featured 2023 Doak Walker Award winner Ollie Gordon II.
The competition steps up in quality with the nationally ranked Cyclones, but Lesley is confident his unit will rise to the challenge with the way it has responded since that Pitt loss.
“You have a chance when you’re player-led,” Lesley said. “If you’re coach-led, not that you can’t do it, it’s a lot harder.
“Nobody wants it more than them,” he added. “They’re taking it on their own and I think that’s definitely helping.”
