Another Big 12 game, another blowout loss. WVU hosted Utah for a “throwback” game, which drew inspiration from 1965. The retro uniforms looked sharp, in my opinion. I liked the retro numbers on the scoreboard. And the throwback merchandise looks good. But the game??
Ugh.
The final score was 48-14 for Utah, which is awfully close to the 41-10 shellacking Kansas put on WVU last week. That is 89-24 in two Big 12 games that WVU has been outscored.
The first half of each game is worse: 48-3 is the combined score. So the Mountaineers have yet to score a first half touchdown in conference games so far.
Part of the issue with the Utah game was the number of offensive players out with injuries. Nicco Marchiol was out. Tye Edwards at running back was out. Starting center Landon Livingston was out. Others were banged up, too. But that’s not really an excuse. WVU was not effective on offense when everyone was healthy.
What has become clear is that this really is a “Year Zero” situation. What that means is that the change from one coach to another is so extreme, that the first year of the new coach is essentially a lost year, as the new coach tries to get players in place who are a better fit for his system.
The second year is a better case of “Year One”. In this day and age of easy transfers and paying players, you can have tremendous turnover and potentially rebuild quickly.
But remember that the transfer portal goes both ways: you can lose talent during a coaching change that could have helped. A lot of players who left after Neal Brown’s departure were probably not going to contribute to a decent Big 12 team. But there were some players who, if they had stayed, would have made things a little better.
Now what? You try to build for the future. You want to win games, sure, but you need to be more competitive.
Hopefully, you can give fans a glimpse of some positivity, so they can have hope for the future.
The incoming recruiting class looks pretty good, but WVU will need to have some portal success to supplement the freshmen.
And you want to see some of the players on the current roster step up and play well.
Khalil Wilkins came in the second half, and looked pretty good. Is he the future? Maybe – it’s really too early to tell. You have to remember that when he entered the game, Utah was up 35-0, so he might not have been facing a totally dialed in Ute defense.
He did have a long touchdown pass to Cam Vaughn, but in reality it was underthrown, and Vaughn made a good play on the ball.
So you don’t want to write off the rest of the season, but fans need to look beyond just the wins and losses, at least for now.
Next up is an unusual Friday night game at BYU. There is little reason to think that this will be the week WVU turns things around. The Cougars are 4-0, and are typically a tough team to play at home.
And WVU might be disadvantaged with the timing of the game: Friday night at 10:30 is a later than normal start, and the game could easily go past 1:30 or 2:00am.
Notes: As I just mentioned, the BYU game is a Friday night game. Kickoff is 10:30pm, and it is televised on ESPN…The women’s soccer team had a pretty successful road trip to Utah.
They upset #16 BYU, and then tied Utah…The volleyball team finally lost a match, and it was their Big 12 opener at Cincinnati. Still, they have had their best season start ever, and do look to be quite improved over last year.
