MORGANTOWN — The final chapter of a West Virginia story of intrigue ends today with the first chapter of another one as West Virginia University hosts Marshall at noon in Milan Puskar Stadium in the last scheduled game between the two bitter in-state rivals.

Perhaps the depth of the rivalry was captured best by Mountaineer coach Dana Holgorsen on his weekly radio show, when it was suggested that Marshall would be stealing his hand signals, leading him to answer quite pointedly that he had a hand signal for Marshall.

West Virginia has won all 11 prior meetings, last year taking down a 34-13 decision in a bizarre game that was interrupted by lightning on a couple of occasions and eventually called at 14:36 of the fourth quarter. The two delays totaled 4 hours and 22 minutes.

“It was definitely a weird game, but our coaches did a good job of keeping us in tune with what was going on while we were in the locker room,” Holgorsen said. “Our players were getting hungry, or they were lying down. The training staff was making sure that we stayed loose. Me personally, I don’t like bad weather games like that.”

“I’ve never been in a rain delay like that,” said WVU center Joey Madsen. “First time we just sat around and talked about plays. After the next one, the next one and the next one we were playing rock, scissors and paper, twiddling our thumbs.”

There will be no thumb twiddling on this day.

WVU comes in as the nation’s No. 11 team and with a pair of Heisman Trophy candidates in quarterback Geno Smith and Tavon Austin, while Marshall comes off a bowl victory and looking to avoid the long drive back home with another loss.

They have reportedly developed a new, uptempo offense, based off Oregon’s high-powered attack, behind quarterback Rakeem Cato, who made his collegiate debut as a freshman in this game last year, and with Aaron Dobson as his most dangerous receiver.

That offense will go against a new defensive staff and philosophy, WVU switching to a gambling, speed-conscious 3-4 concept led by defensive coordinator Joe DeForest. While it has some solid veterans, it also starts true freshman Karl Joseph at free safety.

The one thing certain is that both teams are eager and ready to go seven months after playing their last game, WVU’s being the memorable 70-33 dismantling of Clemson in the Orange Bowl while Marshall completed a 7-6 season with a 20-10 victory over Florida International in the Beef O’Brady Bowl.

Holgorsen, in particular, is chomping at the bit to turn his offense loose.

“I would have been ready a week ago,” he said. “We’ve been focusing on this team, which is our team, for a long time. We have gotten to the point where we know how to line up and what we’re going to do.

“We could’ve probably done it last week and been just fine. I feel good about where we’re at as a team and who we have plugged in there in the schemes that we have. From a coaching standpoint, we feel like we know enough about them, as much as we’re going to know about them prior to the first game, so it is our job to get the players as prepared as they possibly can.”

The question comes up whether his team is “too ready” to play a game, too hyped up to play smart football.

“I think that’s always an issue,” Holgorsen said. “Offensively, we have a lot of guys that have been in (tough situations) and are strong leaders, to the point that they can overcome adversity. Nobody overcame more adversity than we did last year. There was a whole bunch of stuff for a 12-month period that we overcame, and I was proud of how well we overcame it.

“A lot of those components are still here. We overcame a lot of adversity in that Orange Bowl, and we won by a considerable amount. We were down for a quarter and a half. Adversity hits all of the time, and you need guys to step up.”

The key to the team belongs to quarterback Geno Smith, who comes off the most prolific passing season in WVU history and a game for the ages in the Orange Bowl when he completed 32 of 43 passes for 407 yards and six touchdowns, four of them to Austin, who caught 12 passes for 123 yards.

The third member of the Mountaineer offensive triumvirate, wide receiver Stedman Bailey, set the school record last year for receiving yards and had a streak during the year of five consecutive 100-yard games and surpassed 100 yards in seven games.

Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com or follow him on Twitter @bhertzel.