ATHENS, Ohio — Many of the questions surrounding West Virginia’s 2025 football team went unanswered last Saturday as the Mountaineers rolled to a 45-3 victory against Robert Morris.
Regardless of the outcome, the Mountaineers figure to discover much more about themselves in a Week 2 matchup at Ohio. Kickoff is 4 p.m. for the contest at Peden Stadium, which can be seen nationally on ESPN+.
“There’s going to be some interesting challenges and we have to be mature enough to handle them,” WVU head coach Rich Rodriguez said.
The Bobcats have posted three consecutive 10-plus win seasons and finished 31-10 from 2022-24. The reigning Mid-American Conference champion is led by head coach Brian Smith, whose first game with that title came last December in a 30-27 victory against Jacksonville State — the same Gamecocks’ program Rodriguez departed a week earlier to begin his second stint as head coach at West Virginia.
The Bobcats fell short 34-31 in their 2025 opener last Thursday at Rutgers, rallying from a 17-point first-half deficit to pull even in the fourth quarter, but never leading.
Still, OU finished with 440 total yards and got a strong showing from dual-threat quarterback Parker Navarro, who passed for three touchdowns, rushed for another and combined for 332 yards through the air and on the ground.
“Their quarterback is one of the best in the country,” Rodriguez said. “He’s really good, really talented. He can take the play that’s off and make something happen out of it.”
Tailback Sieh Bangura, back for a second stint at Ohio after he was previously the Bobcats’ featured ball-carrier, gained 86 yards on 16 rushes. Chase Hendricks appears to have assumed the role of No. 1 wide receiver and was in on nine receptions for 115 yards at RU, while a pair of tight ends combined to bring in all three of Navarro’s touchdown passes.
The Bobcats’ have inexperience on both lines and across the front six defensively in their 4-2-5 scheme.
The defense surrendered 399 total yards at Rutgers and provided little in the way of disruptiveness with one sack, five tackles for loss and no turnover.
Rutgers quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis, with a completion percentage south of 54 throughout his college career, was an efficient 18-for-23 with 252 yards and a pair of touchdowns.
Efficient was also a description that could fit West Virginia quarterback Nicco Marchiol in his team’s season opener. Never announced as a starter in the lead-up to the season, Marchiol earned the job throughout preseason camp and was 17-for-20 with 224 yards and a 46-yard touchdown pass to wideout Cam Vaughn.
Were it not for losing three fumbles over a stretch of four first-half plays, WVU almost certainly would’ve entered halftime with a bigger lead than 10-3, but the Mountaineers upped their level of play over the final two quarters to win comfortably. It marked West Virginia’s first win with four lost fumbles in 16 years.
“In the second half, we were running the same plays and just didn’t put the ball on the ground,” Rodriguez said. “Sometimes there’s turnovers that they force because they put a hat on it and you’re not holding it high and tight enough, but on top of that, we had some loafing going on during the fumbles, because you could see the ball on the ground and our guys speeding up to try and recover it. If they’d been running full speed beforehand, maybe you have a chance to recover it. Some lessons learned about that with fumbles and ball-security, but also playing hard where you’re around if something bad happens and we have to learn from that.”
Vaughn, a Jacksonville State transfer who logged a career-high 183 receiving yards in last year’s Cure Bowl, went for 126 on seven receptions in his WVU debut.
Tailback Jahiem White has led the Mountaineers in rushing each of the last two seasons and did so again against RMU with 93 yards and a pair of scores on 18 carries.
WVU was able to shutdown the Colonials with a generic defense that limited the Colonials to 123 total yards, though packages are expected to be more complex and exotic under coordinator Zac Alley in his second game with the program.
“Some of the tempo stuff on offense is going to be challenging,” Smith said. “That’s a big thing for our defense. Offensively, for us, they’re very multiple. They’re going to give you a lot of different looks, so just being able to compartmentalize what all those things are — coverages, pressures, fronts — they’re going to move the front, stem and things like that. There’s a lot that they give you that you have to handle at the line of scrimmage.”
The Mountaineers could also look to disrupt Ohio’s special teams units as a poor snap on a punt at Rutgers led to it being blocked for what proved to be a critical second-quarter touchdown.
Saturday marks the 18th meeting between the Mountaineers and Bobcats in a series that dates back to 1897. WVU is 13-4 against Ohio, but 0-2 in Athens, where it has not played since 1949.
The last time the Mountaineers played OU was back in 2001 — the second game of Rodriguez’s first tenure in Morgantown.
A sellout crowd of 25,000-plus is expected at a venue where Ohio has won seven straight and 17 of 18.
“We’ll talk all week about the environment and all that, but a lot of times, believe it or not, it’s easier to get your team focused for a road game, because it’s just us and there’s not all the other stuff going around with families and recruits,” Rodriguez said. “Hopefully that’s what our guys will get dialed in on this week.”
Smith is hopeful his team can rise to the occasion in a rare opportunity against a power conference program.
“It should be an electric experience,” he said. “We’re talking about that with the players and how exciting it should be for them. We’re expecting it to be the largest capacity that we’ve had in the stadium. It’ll be unique, because there will be a good group from Morgantown and it should be very exciting. It’s a great time for our football program coming off of a championship year having the opportunity to play in a game like this with that type of atmosphere at home.”