MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The Gold & Blue Lunch Report typically hates Mondays, but football season is different, because we rewatch the Mountaineers’ game to take stock of the ups-and-downs. Watch to see who was rising and falling after West Virginia downed Missouri 26-11.
Dana Holgorsen gave the retooled defense sterling marks for holding the Tigers out of the end zone until garbage time.
“They looked like the same defense that I’ve been going against the last five weeks,” Holgorsen said Monday. “I never doubted our guys. It’s the third year in the defense we currently have with Tony Gibson, who is asserting himself as one of the top defensive coordinators in the country.
“We lost a lot of guys, but we had a lot of guys who had been playing here for three or four years that were backups, and it was time for them to step in and start doing things.”
Mike linebacker Al-Rasheed Benton, who made his second college start, sounded less impressed than his head coach.
“I’d give us a high C, maybe a B. There were a lot of plays where some guys were out of position, myself included,” Benton said. “We did what we had to do to win, but it wasn’t the perfect game.”
It wasn’t a perfect weekend for West Virginia’s conference brethren, but Texas sure made a splash. Everyone with short attention spans can get caught up in our new feature, “Around the Big 12 in 12 Seconds.”