MORGANTOWN — The West Virginia University football team’s locker room has a different mood about it these days as opposed to a few weeks ago. Players admit that. The Mountaineers went from riding high on a pair of wins to open the Big 12 schedule to two disappointing losses against nationally ranked teams.
The opportunity to show the country that WVU belongs in the mix at the top of the conference slipped through their fingers like a missed third-down tackle or a dropped pass. It’s a tough situation to stomach, but some of the team’s veterans said that, indigestion or not, it’s a predicament the players must digest.
The way to start, right guard Ja’Quay Hubbard said, was to engage in some self-reflection.
“Just looking in the mirror, you know?” he said. “Seeing what went wrong, what went good, continuing what we did good on, and what we did bad on, really harp on it. Look in the mirror and try to fix it.”
Linebacker Reid Carrico added that simply acknowledging there are issues isn’t enough. After that look in the mirror, the players must actively work toward correcting the problems.
Yet there’s also a need to remain as positive as possible. Sure, there are struggles, but the players can’t sink into a morass because of them.
“You’ve got to own the loss and the mistakes that were made,” he said. “And then you’ve got to look ahead. Because if we go into Arizona and we are too focused on, you know … we’re down in the dumps about what we did against Kansas State, then that’s going to be a real problem for us.”
What WVU has in its favor is a slew of veterans who can carry the team forward. Seasoned players can be found up and down the roster. There are plenty to be found in Hubbard’s offensive line room, where the entire starting lineup are redshirt juniors and older. And it’s not just longtime Mountaineers like defensive lineman Sean Martin, left tackle Wyatt Milum or spear Aubrey Burks. There are plenty of older players who have arrived in Morgantown from other schools who have been through plenty of battles.
Senior defensive lineman Fatorma Mulbah spent two years at Penn State before transferring to WVU last year. Both corner Garnett Hollis and cat safety Jaheem Joseph arrived this year from Northwestern where they were both starters in 2023.
“Leadership’s huge right now,” Hubbard, a fifth-year senior, said. “We have a lot of great leaders. Every position room has at least one leader that the whole team can look up to. So really, we’ll just lean on the older guys and take the challenge ahead. This five game stretch, they’re very winnable games. We’ve just got to put our head down and execute.”
Unless any of those next five opponents sneak into the top 25 later this season, West Virginia’s run of ranked foes has come to a halt. That should give the Mountaineers a better shot at stacking up wins to finish the year. If they want to qualify for another bowl, they’ll need to win at least three of those last five games.
That starts Saturday with Arizona, and Carrico, who spent three years at Ohio State before transferring to Morgantown this year, said traveling the path back to better days must start now.
“I’ve been a part of some tough losses,” he said. “I don’t like to lose. I hate losing. I hate losing more than I like winning.
“But basically, the only thing that you can do is you’ve got to own it. So, we’ve got to look ahead. We’ve got to get ready to play Arizona. It’s all about going 1-0 every single week, no matter who we’re playing.”
—Story by Derek Redd
