MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia’s first drive of the season Saturday against Robert Morris about went to script. The Mountaineers moved 83 yards between eight rushing and two passing plays and quarterback Nicco Marchiol scored on a 10-yard run for the game’s first points.
While that enabled the Mountaineers to play from in front throughout a 45-3 victory, the remainder of the first half was rather forgetful offensively in Rich Rodriguez’s return to the WVU sideline.
Over six remaining series in the opening half, the Mountaineers managed a field goal, punted twice and lost three fumbles over a stretch of four scrimmage plays in the second quarter.
“If we played better in the first two quarters, we’d have played more people,” Rodriguez said. “That was disappointing we didn’t get to play as many guys as I’d have liked to have played today.”
Both first-half drives that ended in punts were three-and-outs with a loss of yardage on four of the six plays.
The series that produced WVU’s only other first-half points outside of its touchdown spanned 75 yards over 13 plays but had an unfulfilling ending in the red zone with Kade Hensley converting a 27-yard attempt.
In between Hensley’s field goal and the second punt, wideout Cam Vaughn lost a fumble that rolled into the end zone for a touchback and Oran Singleton and Grayson Barnes did the same on successive plays. In between Singleton and Barnes’ lost fumbles, the Colonials got a field goal as a result of field position for their only points.
“The fumble part, I go back and say should I have had more live practices with guys tackling and helmets on the ball,” Rodriguez said. “You think, gosh, we probably should’ve had a couple more, so that’s a lesson learned with that one.”
While WVU was in control statistically, it settled for a seven-point halftime lead as a result of self-inflicted mistakes.
Frustration was evident, but Marchiol felt the team never lost its way.
“Cool as a cucumber. Trust in our guys. Fumbles are part of the game,” Marchiol said. “Coach Rod kind of had the same message to us at halftime — we got them out of our system. We just need to keep playing what we’ve built or program on — discipline, clean football. Once we got back to that, it went a certain way.”
WVU started the second half with a 64-yard touchdown drive on nine plays and after its third and final punt on its second series after halftime, the Mountaineers generated four more touchdowns, including three on consecutive drives to turn into a two-score game into a runaway win.
West Virginia gained 391 yards after halftime and 264 in the fourth quarter to finish with 625 yards — 502 more than RMU.
Perhaps the most glaring negative over the final two quarters was West Virginia committing seven of its nine penalties during that time.
“I didn’t try to scrape paint off the wall or anything like that,” Rodriguez said of his approach at the intermission. “I said, ‘we have to take care of the ball and play a little bit smarter.’ The penalties are really frustrating. I’m as frustrated or more frustrated with that, because that’s a lack of discipline. We’re going to get that fixed right away. We have to. We have to correct the penalties, correct the turnovers, just relax and run the offense.”
By Monday, WVU will have flushed its lone matchup this season with a FCS opponent and turned its attention toward a Week 2 matchup at Ohio.
The Bobcats had a 31-10 record and produced three season with double-digit wins from 2022-24.
Ohio opened its 2025 campaign last Thursday with a 34-31 loss at Rutgers. The Bobcats gained 351 yards over the middle two quarters, 440 for the game and ran off 17 unanswered points to pull even at 31 after falling behind by three scores as a result of a blocked punt that amounted to a Scarlet Knights’ touchdown.
“The self-inflicted mistakes we made [Saturday], we have to fix in a day by tomorrow,” Rodriguez said. “Then we’re going to play a really good Ohio team on the road. It’s going to be a very uncomfortable situation. We just have to get better, but I don’t think anybody got hurt and a lot of guys got experience for the first time in our systems, which is a good thing. We’ll get better from it.”