MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Rich Rodriguez often harps on the importance of learning from mistakes so they can avoid being repeated.
The Mountaineers’ head coach has to hope the second half of Saturday’s season-opening 31-24 win against Coastal Carolina provides valuable lessons moving forward.
Save for a goal line fumble from quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. that resulted in a touchback, West Virginia did almost anything it sought out to in the first half while building a commanding 24-0 lead.
Starting with a three-and-out on the first second-half possession, however, the final two quarters showed the Mountaineers have a ways to go to make marked improvement on last season’s 4-8 record.
“I’m happy to win. It’s hard to win,” said Rodriguez, offering a more content approach than usual. “I’m happy to win, but I’m not happy with the way we played football at times. I don’t think it’s an effort thing, which is good. But there’s some execution-type stuff that happened repeatedly that shouldn’t have happened. I’m not going to go into to all of the detail, but I’m over on the sideline like, ‘what are we doing with this?’ I’m over there screaming on the sideline at this particular thing the whole second half and yet it still happened.”
The Mountaineers led 24-0 and had a chance to add to it late in the first half, but Rodriguez instead opted for a half-ending kneel down after his team took over at its own 14-yard line with 45 seconds remaining and three timeouts at its disposal. For a team that kept its offensive plan rather vanilla and rarely threw downfield, an opportunity to let Hawkins operate in hurry-up mode and put an early dagger into the visitors or get the Mountaineers into field goal range was passed up on.
Still, WVU was in complete control at that point, and even more so after forcing Coastal to punt on its opening second-half series.
That’s when the Mountaineers’ second-half long struggles surfaced. WVU went three-and-out on its first third-quarter possession, marking the second time on seven full possessions the Mountaineers failed to produce a first down.
A 74-yard net punt from Bryan Hansen left the Chanticleers pinned against their own goal line, but soon after, West Virginia committed three defensive penalties and the Sun Belt Conference squad scored its first points on a 34-yard touchdown pass from Deuce Bailey to Clayton Coppock.
Another three-and-out followed for West Virginia, as did a third straight to start the second half after the Mountaineers had sacked Bailey, forced a fumble and recovered it with Coastal approaching the red zone.
A team with 336 first-half yards on better than 7 yards per play had since been stymied and failed to maintain possession to either add to its advantage, or at the very least, chew up more clock.
“They had more people in the box towards the end of the game,” said tailback Cam Cook, who rushed for a game-high 142 yards on 30 carries, 72 of which came on his first touch. “We have to be able to adjust.”
Coastal’s second scoring drive covered 71 yards on three plays, two of which were passes of 58 and 13 yards as Bailey grew comfortable while causing the defense issues with his ability to escape the pocket and make throws on the run.
“All around, we could’ve done better as a team in the second half,” said defensive lineman Nate Gabriel, who recorded a sack and forced fumble.
The Mountaineers moved the ball well on their ensuing series, but a sack took them out of field goal range and led to Hansen punting inside the Coastal 40.
WVU immediately got the ball back and needed only 35 yards to reach the end zone. After the Mountaineers were stopped short of a first down across three plays, Cassidy knocked in a 47-yard field goal that was negated by a roughing the kicker penalty — one that directly led to Hawkins scoring two plays later on an 11-yard run.
Yet even after regaining a three-score lead with inside 3 minutes left, there were tense times down the stretch. The Chanticleers scored their third touchdown with 1:58 remaining and regained possession 24 seconds later before moving into the red zone and kicking a field goal on first down to pull to within one possession and save time in the event they got the ball back.
A second unsuccessful onside kick attempt ensured the Chanticleers would not have a last-second opportunity and sealed the result, but after being dominated over the first two frames, a team chosen fifth among seven in the Sun Belt Conference East Division Preseason Poll had its way the rest of the way.
Coastal had 17 of 22 first downs in the second half between the two teams and an astounding 311-77 advantage in total yards that led to the Chanticleers out-gaining the home team for the game, 425-413.
“We’re going to look at the film and say, ‘gee, we had some stuff there and just didn’t make it happen.’ I’d rather work off a win than a loss,” Rodriguez said. “Anybody that wants to cry about a win can cry about a win. But I’m glad we can teach off a win and get ready for next week.”