MORGANTOWN — It is game day in Morgantown, a homecoming day at that, and somehow I still haven’t shaken how silly I feel.

See, a week ago I watched West Virginia University struggle against a Maryland team that seemed to be relatively average, unable to run and, worse yet, with quarterback Geno Smith displaying moments of imperfection he had not shown all year.

True, much of the time he was being bounced around by a veteran defense, and at other times his receivers actually had shadows wearing Maryland’s white, a situation that seldom existed in two previous ball games.

Still, the impression was that it had been a rather ordinary day for Smith, one that if repeated against today’s opponent, Baylor, would probably leave the Mountaineers in trouble. After all, this was to be the Big 12 opener, which was exaggerated in the mind’s eye into something just short of the Super Bowl.

It took Smith’s mentor, coach Dana Holgorsen, to slap us all back to reality on Tuesday when he offered the kind of support for Smith that Mitt Romney was wishing he was getting from his Republican teammates.

“Completing 70 percent of your passes, three touchdowns and zero interceptions is a pretty good day. I know we are spoiled around here, but that is a pretty good day against a pretty quality defense,” Holgorsen said.

“I sat here and told you these guys got six or seven guys that are seniors that have played a whole lot of football that are pretty good. Are we going to face better? Probably. Was it good? Yes. Did we do what we had to do to win? Yes, and I was proud of them for that. Was it average for our standards? Maybe. We will try to get better.”

As previously stated, it was almost embarrassing to realize that you had felt Smith had suffered through a difficult time when he did complete 70 percent of his passes, three for TDs, none for interception and for a victory.

This feeling led one to wonder what Geno Smith, the man in question himself, felt about any criticism of his play that might have come his way.

“I don’t care what anyone else thinks,” he said, quite defiantly, really.

Smith would admit, of course, that he had not matched the 83 percent completion rate from the first couple of games or that his 13 incomplete passes were four more than he had thrown incomplete in the first two games.

He also said in so many words, so what.

“Anybody who can say something like that obviously doesn’t know football. You can look at the NFL, guys never put up the same statistics because everyone is competing out there,” he said. “If you did good last week, they are going to be focusing on you.”

And make no doubt Maryland was focusing on Smith, although to use the verb focusing in that sense is much the same way Joe Frazier would have used the verb focusing when speaking of the way he landed the punch of the previous century on Muhammad Ali’s jaw.

Smith was targeted and did what he had to do, making the plays he had to make.

“I make mistakes. I’m the first one to admit it,’’ Smith said. “But at the same time, I try to improve on those mistakes every week, and what outsiders say doesn’t really matter to me. At the end of the day we won the game, and that’s all that really matters.’’

And that was last week, and this is this week.

Baylor is not Maryland. It is not the No. 8 defense in the nation … hardly.

The Bears rank 113th in the nation in pass defense, which would tend to make any passing attack like West Virginia’s salivate at the prospects before it.

If, indeed, Baylor’s pass defense ranks 16 places behind Marshall’s, one can theorize that Smith and Co. will be in for a rather productive afternoon … but there are reasons to question whether it will be enough for the Bears will be facing the 103rd leakiest pass defense in WVU’s with a rather talented quarterback of their own in Nick Florence.

With that as the setup and with the football figuring to be flying to all areas of Mountaineer Field, it is suggested that you bring dinner with you, for you might be there a while.

The over/under stands at 82, and the smart money says they will have that before three quarters are over … and that Smith won’t be hearing any more critical words.

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