CHARLOTTE — West Virginia football coach Rich Rodriguez is eager to see if the Mountaineers’ defense can correct mistakes that have surfaced over the first two weeks of this season, while hopeful the team’s offense can force Virginia into some of its own when the two teams square off at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Duke’s Mayo Classic from Bank of America Stadium.
The contest is airing on ACC Network.
The 25th-ranked Cavaliers have allowed one touchdown and 11 points over two games, and though the WVU defense has shutout opponents in three of four halves to this point, it allowed an eye-opening 743 yards to the likes of Coastal Carolina and Tennessee Martin.
“We have to clean up some of the mistakes,” Rodriguez said. “There were some, I don’t want to say simple busts that we had, but there were some things we have to get corrected in a hurry. Our defensive coaches have a good plan and our guys are really conscientious. You get away with them against UT Martin. You’re not going to get away with them against Virginia.”
West Virginia’s pass defense, in particular, has been plagued at times by a lack of containment and communication issues that have caused coverage busts, as the team’s first two opponents have totaled 543 yards through the air.
Virginia, meanwhile, held North Carolina State and Norfolk State to a combined 391 yards, including 260 through the air.
Both teams have been stingy against the run, with the Mountaineers allowing 3.1 yards per rush to Virginia’s 2.4.
For two offenses that have been run-heavy to this point, that creates an interesting twist to their first regular season clash since 1985 and first meeting since 2002.
“They don’t make any mistakes,” Rodriguez said. “I saw a quote from [Norfolk State head coach] Michael Vick after they played them that said they make you earn every blade of grass that you get with how disciplined they are, and they are. They’re very well-coached. They’ll be in the right spot where they’re supposed to be all the time. Very rarely do you see something bust out for a big play because they’re a pretty experienced group that knows how to play.”
It’s the first power conference test for West Virginia, which has relied heavily on quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. and tailback Cam Cook.
The Mountaineers have rushed on 112 of 138 offensive plays, and Hawkins (26 carries, 199 yards, 3 touchdowns) and Cook (40-194-3) have been the featured ball-carriers with runs of 71 and 72 yards, respectively.
Hawkins has also been effective and efficient passing, albeit through a small sample size of 16 completions on 21 attempts for 287 yards with three touchdowns.
How West Virginia’s revamped offensive line measures up will go a long way toward determining the outcome, though the Cavaliers will be down an experienced and proven defensive tackle in Jason Hammond, who is out injured.
“It poses some significant challenges where we’re going to have to be gap sound, assignment sound and when we arrive, we arrive in swarms, because typically what happens with the quarterback or their backs, the first guy doesn’t get him to the ground,” said Virginia coach Tony Elliott, a former walk-on receiver at Clemson who played in a Rodriguez-led offense in 1999 and 2000. “He makes the first guy miss and a lot of times there’s not a second guy there, so now that extends for big plays and then if you’re staying ahead of the chains and not getting into third down situations, then you can be really aggressive with your play-calling and more creative, too, which poses more challenge for your defense.”
The Mountaineers could also have wide receiver Prince Strachan available for the first time this season, and if so, Strachan adds a different element at 6-foot-5.
“Prince is the biggest of all the wideouts and he was having a really good camp,” Rodriguez said. “We’re hoping he’ll have a good week of practice. He may have a little rust in there once in a while, but If we can get him in the game Saturday and he’s ready to go, it gives us a big body on the outside.”
Virginia has also gone to the ground often and on 95 of 130 plays thus far.
Tailbacks Xay Davis, Noah Vaughn, Jekail Middlebrook and Xavier Brown are also into double-digit carries and each has at least 54 rushing yards, led by Davis’ 120 on 18 carries.
Quarterback Beau Pribula, who previously played at Penn State and more recently Missouri, has made a strong early impression as a Cavalier, having completed 21-of-25 passes for 317 yards with five touchdowns and rushed 17 times for 102 yards, with nearly all of the rushing production against the Wolfpack.
“He probably had some unfair assessments and evaluations of him as a quarterback,” Elliott said. “He has a quarterback’s mind. He is a quarterback. He’s not just an athlete who plays the position. He thinks like a quarterback, he processes like a quarterback, he understands the nuances of the position, the game management, all of those things. That has helped him transition to this system to where he’s very comfortable.”
The Mountaineers are tasked with trying to limit Pribula’s comfortability, though there’s also no shortage of focus on fixing simple things within their control that can and have led to negative outcomes.
“I got on everybody on Sunday that a lot of the things we saw we did in practice to those calls, and then we get in the game and don’t do what we did in practice,” WVU defensive coordinator Zac Alley said. “It’s trying to keep the consistency of, ‘If we call this, we play this. We don’t make it up as we go along.’ That’s something that’ll be a point of emphasis this week that I felt like we didn’t do a good enough job of in the last game to execute to a higher level.”