{"id":25922,"date":"2019-11-17T08:00:50","date_gmt":"2019-11-17T13:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordoncollegefootball.com\/?p=25922"},"modified":"2019-11-17T02:24:37","modified_gmt":"2019-11-17T07:24:37","slug":"mountaineers-win-their-fourth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2019\/11\/17\/mountaineers-win-their-fourth\/","title":{"rendered":"Mountaineers Win Their Fourth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Before Saturday\u2019s game in Manhattan, West Virginia Defensive Coordinator <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/coaches\/vic-koenning-1.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Vic Koenning<\/strong><\/a> wrote letters to his players asking them to play harder, faster, and stronger this week than they did last. The defense responded. And during the week, Head Coach <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/coaches\/neal-brown-1.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Neal Brown<\/strong><\/a> told fans and media that he \u201chad a plan\u201d concerning quarterback. He refused to reveal that plan until Saturday. That plan\u2014to start <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/jarret-doege-1.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Jarret Doege<\/strong><\/a>\u2014worked. And the Mountaineers win their fourth by a final score of 24-20 over Kansas State Wildcats.<\/p>\n<h2>Mountaineers Win Their Fourth<\/h2>\n<h3>Signature Win<\/h3>\n<p>In a season where expectations were low, and even <strong>Shane Lyons<\/strong> preached patience before the season, a conference road win against a ranked Wildcats team offers an early \u201csignature win\u201d for Brown and his youthful team. The Mountaineers left everything on the field in earning that win, too. Some, unfortunately, left literally everything. Standout senior <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/joshua-norwood-1.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Josh Norwood<\/strong><\/a> nabbed an interception in the second quarter. He extended his fully body and grabbed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/skylar-thompson-1.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Skylar Thompson\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> well-placed pass out of the air. But Norwood broke his collarbone on the play, effectively ending his college career.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the play.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">HE SOARED FOR THIS INT \ud83d\ude32 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/CtAp7CgFR6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/CtAp7CgFR6<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; ESPN (@espn) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/espn\/status\/1195819666234626048?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">November 16, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Despite giving up some critical third down plays&#8211; and West Virginia gave up seven of the first 12 third-down attempts by Kansas State&#8211;the Mountaineers defense settled in and held Kansas State to 20 points and a meager 3.2 yards per carry on the ground. And it gave up only one first down on the Wildcats\u2019 final five third down plays. Senior <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/hakeem-bailey-1.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Hakeem Bailey<\/strong><\/a> sealed the win with a red zone interception with just over thirty seconds left.<\/p>\n<h3>Doege Leads The Offense<\/h3>\n<p>Doege played his way into the starting quarterback conversation last week against Texas Tech. And Brown rewarded him with the start against the Wildcats. And that decision paid dividends. Doege threw for three touchdowns against a Wildcat team that only surrendered five touchdowns through the air in their first nine games. He threw no interceptions either.<\/p>\n<p>And Brown\u2019s tight lips on the plan probably helped with Doege\u2019s third touchdown. On 3<sup>rd<\/sup> and 22, Kansas State, per their tendency, dialed up serious pressure. But Doege used his athleticism to evade that pressure. The Wildcats\u2019 secondary, however, swallowed up the shallow and intermediate routes when the pressure hit Doege. Based on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/austin-kendall-1.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Austin Kendall\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> scouting report, this was the right thing to do. Kendall tends to dump off his passes when facing pressure. This movement by the secondary left <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/bryce-wheaton-1.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Bryce Wheaton<\/strong><\/a> wide open. Doege evaded the pressure and found him, and Wheaton jogged in untouched for what proved the game-winning touchdown.<\/p>\n<p>Doege finished with 234 yards, three touchdowns, and zero interceptions while completing 67% of his passes. And his efficiency helped the run game, too. Not counting the yardage lost on the sacks, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/leddie-brown-1.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Leddie Brown<\/strong><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/kennedy-mckoy-1.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Kennedy McKoy<\/strong><\/a> combined for 103 yards on 25 rushing attempts. The backs doubled the Mountaineers\u2019 season average of just over 50 rushing yards per game.<\/p>\n<h2>Trusting The Climb<\/h2>\n<p>Earlier this week, while some fans were doubting the climb, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordoncollegefootball.com\/2019\/11\/14\/reevaluating-the-climb\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">we reevaluated\u2014and reaffirmed\u2014that climb<\/a>. Brown is a measured and effective young coach. He told us he wanted the Mountaineers <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordoncollegefootball.com\/2019\/08\/10\/mountaineers-building-blue-collar-team\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">to play blue collar football<\/a>. They did. And the climbed a little higher as the Mountaineers win their fourth game this season.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before Saturday\u2019s game in Manhattan, West Virginia Defensive Coordinator Vic Koenning wrote letters to his players asking them to play harder, faster, and stronger this week than they did last. The defense responded. And during the week, Head Coach Neal Brown told fans and media that he \u201chad a plan\u201d concerning quarterback. He refused to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2744,"featured_media":25935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[4952,4796,3391,588,1712,4491,3366,3650,237],"class_list":["post-25922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-big12","tag-hakeem-bailey","tag-jarret-doege","tag-joshua-norwood","tag-kansas-state-wildcats","tag-neal-brown","tag-vic-koenning","tag-west-virginia","tag-west-virginia-football","tag-west-virginia-mountaineers"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2744"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}