MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — To defeat Colorado and win consecutively for the first time this season, West Virginia would almost certainly have to find success on the ground at some point.
Although the Mountaineers never trailed in the 29-22 victory, they had a tough time establishing the run for three quarters against a Buffaloes’ team that entered with the third worst rush defense in all of FBS, allowing north of 215 yards on average. Colorado had allowed 626 rushing yards its previous two games, while being outscored by 81 points in losses to Utah and Arizona.
So after CU failed to pull even or go ahead and punted back to the Mountaineers with 9:48 remaining, the visitors were tasked with seeing if they could continue containing West Virginia’s run-first attack.
Instead, WVU followed with a 10 play, 57-yard drive that ended with a 4-yard Curtis Jones Jr. rushing touchdown for his second score of the day. The Mountaineers kept the ball on the ground for all 10 plays of the pivotal possession, which enabled them to hold a 10-point lead with 4:15 left.
“That’s hard edge,” said WVU tailback Diore Hubbard, coining the phrase head coach Rich Rodriguez demands from his team.
In a game where WVU had too often been plagued by negative yardage plays prior to its final touchdown drive, the Mountaineers avoided any on the key 10 play series that saw quarterback Scotty Fox Jr. break off a 13-yard gain and Hubbard account for one of 12 before Jones made it a two-score margin.
Colorado got back to within one score courtesy of a field goal at the 1:16 mark, and though the Mountaineers recovered the ensuing onside kick, there was still faint hope for CU, which had two timeouts.
Instead, for the second straight week, WVU picked up a first down in an obvious run spot while trying to take time off the fourth-quarter clock, and did exactly that to finish the game with the ball. This time, Hubbard gained 7 yards on third-and-3 to prevent the Buffaloes from having a chance to get the ball back, with Rodriguez indicating afterward he would have gone for it in a fourth-and-short situation.
“That’s the key. When we get to a point where everybody knows you’re going to run it and you run it and get first downs, then you have what you want,” Rodriguez said. “At least at the end of the game, that was a positive sign.”
WVU managed only 92 rushing yards on 37 tries through three quarters, though two sacks that netted minus-13 yards factor into both figures.
“A couple things that hurt us were some really negative yardage plays on the perimeter stuff — 6, 7 yard losses are hard to overcome in the run game,” Rodriguez said. “We have to take a look at that.”
In the fourth, the Mountaineers totaled 75 yards on the ground on 16 tries, and that included a loss of 2 yards on a knee that came about as a result of Hubbard’s first down run on the previous play.
“We just put our heads down. It was about who was being more physical,” Hubbard said improvement in the run game as the contest progressed. “We didn’t run the ball in the first half as we much as we wanted to.”
Hubbard was the team’s leading rusher with 64 yards on 16 tries, while Fox added 58 yards on 17 attempts.
Tailback Cyncir Bowers was effective and gained 33 yards on nine runs, while Jones scored twice on three carries, all of which came inside the CU 10-yard line as the bandit handled an offensive role for the first time in college.
“It’s not a foreign concept to me, but it is different,” said Jones, an all-state tailback at Cabell Midland High School. “I had to shake the dust off a little bit in practice.”
WVU leads the Big 12 by a wide margin with 462 rushing attempts this season, while the Mountaineers are third in the conference with 1,822 rushing yards but 13th with an average of 3.9 yards per tote.
“What helps Scotty is if we can run the ball better, which we didn’t do for the first three quarters,” Rodriguez said. “Diore battled. He wasn’t 100 percent and ran hard. We’ll figure out some stuff there. I’m not going to apologize for any win at this point. This is the first time I’ve mentioned it to them, but believe it or not, we have a chance to go to a bowl game. We have to win out, but you’re telling me there’s a chance.”
The post Patience with ground game pays off in Mountaineers’ second straight victory appeared first on WV MetroNews.
Patience with ground game pays off in Mountaineers’ second straight victory
