MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia’s most glaring weakness throughout the 2024 season has been the inability to limit opposing teams from passing.
However, entering Saturday’s home finale against Central Florida, the Mountaineers had a goal in mind of containing the run above all else, and for good reason. UCF entered the matchup at Mountaineer Field with the top rushing attacks of any Power Conference team and second among all FBS squads at better than 262 yards. Tailback RJ Harvey has been among the nation’s most productive players at his position, and came in with 1,328 yards and 19 touchdowns on the ground.
As a result, West Virginia often strayed from its normal defensive alignment to utilize a look with four down linemen and three linebackers, allowing the Mountaineers to play with more size in favor of more speed.
Linebackers Trey Lathan, Josiah Trotter and Reid Carrico each had at least five tackles and the trio combined for 18, while safety KK Tarnue saw a reduction in snaps from the 67 he had played a week earlier when the defense struggled mightily in a 49-35 loss to Baylor.
“We played a lot of 4-3,” WVU head coach Neal Brown said. “A couple reasons behind that. They’re a really good rushing team and we wanted to get bigger. Reid and Trey are both quality players. We’ve been up and down at spear since Aubrey [Burks] got hurt. KK played too many snaps last week. We really split those and played a 4-2-5 when KK was in the game. Him playing fewer snaps, he played better. When we went 4-3 personnel, we did the same things out of both. That got us bigger to the field. It’s hard to throw those perimeter screens when you have a 235-pound guy out there. It’s harder to move. That was the thought process.”
Excluding its 3-yard run to end the first half, UCF had nine possessions and produced touchdowns on three of them. The Knights punted four times, lost a fumble and turned it over on downs on their penultimate possession.
On UCF’s four series that ended with a punt, the Knights ran 21 offensive plays and amassed only 50 yards.
Central Florida finished with a 348-318 advantage in total yards, but the visitors ran only 55 offensive plays to WVU’s 75. That amounted to a better than 15-minute time of possession difference in WVU’s favor, with the Mountaineers holding the ball for 37:50 of the matchup.
“We kept the ball away from them and we put them in some must-pass situations, which is not necessarily who they want to be,” Brown said. “They’re really good on offense. Look at the statistics in the national rankings and they’re really high. I have utmost respect for [UCF head coach] Gus Malzahn. I’m confident in saying he has his hands on the game plan even though he’s not calling it. [Offensive coordinator] Tim Harris is a really good football coach. He’s been doing it for a long time and he’s earned the opportunity to call plays.
“We were able to get them in some third-and-longs and get ahead. We kept the ball away from them, so they didn’t have a whole lot of opportunities. That was as big a factor as anything.”
West Virginia’s splashiest defensive play was a fumble recovery from cornerback Dontez Fagan after Knights’ quarterback Dylan Rizk mishandled the ball on the Knights’ second series.
WVU’s T.J. Jackson increased his team-leading sack total to 6.5 when he pressured Rizk into an intentional grounding penalty during the second quarter. Three plays later, the Knights punted, and the Mountaineers proceeded to drive 71 yards for a pivotal touchdown and a 21-7 advantage late in the opening half.
Harvey finished with 130 rushing yards on 16 carries and two touchdowns. UCF rushed for 176 yards as a team.
Rizk completed 11-of-21 passes for 172 yards — the lowest passing total the Mountaineers have surrendered this season.
It marked the second solid defensive effort in three games since Jeff Koonz was appointed defensive coordinator. On November 9, WVU forced a season-high three takeaways and scored a pair of defensive touchdowns in a 31-24 win at Cincinnati. A week ago, the Mountaineers had perhaps their worst defensive showing this season in allowing 512 yards and seven touchdowns against the Bears.
“Defensively, we bounced back. Really proud of those guys. Proud of the staff. We tackled well,” Brown said. “We contained the run game. I didn’t have any pre-conceived notions that we were going to stop it, but we contained it. They hit us on a double move, which credit to them. We were really close to sacking him. They had one explosive pass play that really hurt us. We played soft coverage that last drive trying to get them to eat some clock. But other than two drives, pretty pleased with how we played. We had one takeaway, which was huge.”
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West Virginia’s regular season finale Saturday at Texas Tech will kickoff at noon and be shown nationally on FS1.
The Mountaineers (6-5, 5-3) and Red Raiders (7-4, 5-3) are both bowl eligible and enter the contest in a five-way tie for fifth place in the Big 12 standings.