MORGANTOWN — The West Virginia University football team will enjoy a home game for the first time in nearly a month when they host Baylor at 4 p.m. today at Milan Puskar Stadium. But it’s not that the Mountaineers’ odyssey since mid-October hasn’t been fruitful.
WVU picked up a pair of Big 12 road wins – at Arizona and Cincinnati – sandwiched around a bye week. Neither one was easy, and they kept the Mountaineers (5-4, 4-2 Big 12) in the hunt for a spot in the conference title game.
Yet, in an uncommon situation, WVU is hoping to keep its road energy rolling when it returns to its home turf, a place that hasn’t exactly been too kind to the Mountaineers this year.
West Virginia is 2-3 so far at home and 3-1 so far on the road, and the visiting Bears (5-4, 3-3 Big 12) have won their last three games, posing a difficult test for the Mountaineers in their march through the regular season’s home stretch.
WVU players and coaches have said that road games are a different animal, an opportunity for the players and staff to be on their own and focus without outside forces influencing their schedules.
“I use the word ‘distractions,’ but not as a negative,” WVU coach Neal Brown said. “ There are just more things surrounding the game when you play at home. And so I think we’ve got to do a better job of tuning those things out and focusing on the main thing
“The other thing too is, our last two home games, we played against teams that are really good, and we didn’t play as well.”
The two losses to which Brown is referencing came against now-No. 20 Kansas State and an Iowa State team that spent much of the season in the top 25 before dropping out this past week. WVU’s third home loss came at the hands of No. 4 Penn State.
The Bears aren’t in the echelon of those three teams, but they have been playing very well in the past three weeks. Baylor has knocked off Texas Tech, Oklahoma State and TCU in consecutive games to go from a foundering team in danger of watching the season slip away to one on the cusp of bowl eligibility.
Brown said one factor in that turnaround is the improvement of Baylor’s offense. Much of that, he added, has come from first-year offensive coordinator Jake Spavital – a former WVU offensive coordinator – getting more comfortable with his personnel. Another factor has been the emergence of redshirt freshman running back Bryson Washington, who has run for 390 yards and six touchdowns in Baylor’s last three games.
The WVU defense, maligned for most of the season and sitting at the bottom of the Football Bowl Subdivision in several categories, showed a new spark against Cincinnati. The Mountaineers forced three turnovers – after forcing just six in the previous eight games – and returned two for touchdowns in Jeff Koonz first game as defensive coordinator, replacing the dismissed Jordan Lesley.
Nose tackle Fatorma Mulbah, who led the Mountaineers with 13 tackles against Cincinnati said the way to transfer WVU’s road fortunes back home was simple.
“I just think we keep that same energy that we had on the road,” he said. “Play like we’re on the road. Obviously we’re not on the road, but just have that same energy on the sideline. It was fun, so just play like that.”
WVU still has an opportunity to reach the conference title game, but needs two things to happen. Utah must beat Colorado, which the Mountaineers can’t control. And WVU must win out, which it can control.
While WVU’s track record at home this year isn’t great, Brown hopes the changes that have been made and the results they produced last week will turn things around.
“We’re glad that we got two games in a row at home,” he said, “and our plan is to put a much better product on the field than the last time we were out there.”
— Story by Derek Redd
