MORGANTOWN — The time for talk, the time for excuses, is over for West Virginia.
Coach Bill Stewart can talk all he wants about how he never saw a victory he didn’t like, and how he doesn’t understand that winning a Big East football game is anything but steak and potatoes, with cherry pie for desert.
The Mountaineers have run out of time to get away with mistakes, with below average performances.
If you are going to swim with the sharks, you’d better grow some sharp teeth because from here on out West Virginia’s season is on the line, beginning next Friday night in Cincinnati, when the Mountaineers take on the nation’s No. 4, No. 7 or No. 5 team, depending upon which poll you want to believe.
They may think they are playing all three teams.
They go in off a victory, an unimpressive, uninspired victory over a Louisville team that seems to be doing little more than going through the motions, winning 17-9 before 55,334 unimpressed and uninspired fans at Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium.
It was the second game in succession where the offense was off somewhere on vacation, the second game in a row when this team that once averaged 44 points a game for a season, could not score 20 points.
One could beg for mercy, pointing out that running back Noel Devine, the heart and soul of the offense, did not play in the second half after suffering an ankle sprain, but when he went out the Mountaineers’ offense had managed only seven points.
His day ended with 57 yards on 13 carries, his exit forcing slot receiver Jock Sanders into emergency duty as a tailback.
Sanders did a pretty fair imitation of Devine, gaining 66 yards on 12 carries, in addition to three catches for 20 yards, but he just doesn’t offer the explosiveness of Devine. When Sanders is handed the ball, you look on as an interested observer, while when Devine gets the ball you find yourself wiggling to the edge of your seat, expecting each play to break for a long gain.
Sanders was a high school running back in Florida but he says there really aren’t a lot of similarities.
“It’s a different level,” he said. “People here are faster. You can play around in the backfield in high school, not here.”
Sanders did have to get some help from running back coach Chris Beatty before heading onto the field for each series and quarterback Jarrett Brown had to give him some help on the field, but mostly Sanders knew what to do as he has worked as a backup at that position.
“Jock has tremendous balance,” Stewart noted, “a low center of gravity. He should have been a boxer because you never see anyone hit him. He slips the punches, but he doesn’t have Noel’s explosiveness.”
With Devine out, quarterback Jarrett Brown was unable to create anything through the air.
He completed just 9 of 17 passes for 94 yards and one touchdown, matched by one interception.
Fortunately, it hardly mattered, for Louisville was no match for the WVU defense. In fact, in what can only be called one of those oddities that you get in sports, both teams passed for exactly 100 yards in underwhelming performances.
“I’m not worried about the offense,” Jarrett Brown said.
In fact, he says he can hardly wait to get head to head with Cincinnati, for he knows that all the stops will be pulled in that game.
“That’s when you bring everything out of the bag,” he said. “I love it. It’s like a playoff.”
There’s certainly a lot left in there after this offensive performance, that saw WVU struggle throughout on offense, its line, in particular, showing very little.
At perhaps the most crucial part of the game, at the start of the second half, after Brown had avoided a pass rush and scrambled for 24 yards to the Louisville 7, then had four more yards added on after being hit late out of bounds, they had consecutive false starts from guard Josh Jenkins and tackle Don Barclay.
Those penalties were rendered meaningless moments later when tiny Tavon Austin, playing in the slot for Sanders, took a reverse and went nine yards into the end zone to give WVU a 14-6 lead.
From that point on the game was turned over to the defense, especially defensive end Julian Miller, who had two crucial sacks in the waning moments to clinch the victory.
WVU is now 7-2 and 3-1 and has consecutive games against the Big East’s two remaining unbeaten teams, Cincinnati and Pitt, coming up. To win the conference, they must win both games, which made this victory if not artistically pleasing, factually necessary.
“Since when is a Big East win no longer good enough?” Stewart asked. “If you don’t like, don’t bet on us.”
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
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