West Virginia football heads to Orlando to face UCF on Saturday. The Mountaineers are looking to break a two-game losing streak, while the Knights are looking to break a four-game losing streak.
For the Mountaineers, the focus is fixing what has plagued them over the past two games — slow starts on offense, and the inability to finish on defense.
“Small margin for error in the Big 12; fine line,” head coach Neal Brown said. “We could be 6-1 but we’re sitting here at 4-3 and the reason behind that is we had leads in the fourth quarter the last two weeks and we haven’t finished.”
The Mountaineers have given up 48 points in each of their last two fourth quarters, holding a 24-20 lead this past week, and holding a 39-35 lead with just seconds to play against Houston. Brown says it’s getting back to playing with good fundamentals on that side of the ball.
“If you look at it, when we played good defense in the stretch we had Pitt, Texas Tech, and TCU, all three of those games we played quality defense… We played really good fundamentals and that’s where it’s really fallen apart against Houston particularly in the fourth quarter and last week in the fourth quarter,” Brown said.
West Virginia’s defense has been torched in the fourth quarter, giving up a combined an average of 88 yards per quarter through quarters 1-3, compared to 179 yards on average in the fourth quarter the past two weeks.
“It’s pretty elementary stuff, it’s things that we’ve done well and that’s why it’s really frustrating and it’s disappointing because we’ve done it well on tape and we didn’t do it well in the last two fourth quarters and it’s cost us. We got to get back to some of the basics this week,” Brown said. “It’s not going to get any easier from a tackling standpoint.”
It certainly won’t be easy against the Knights this weekend who have the fifth-best rushing attack in the nation with 232.4 yards per game on the ground, led by RJ Harvey who ranks seventh in the Big 12 in rushing this season.
On the offensive side of the ball, while they have played better in their last two contests, the Mountaineers are still trying to get better coming out of the gate.
“The first quarter, that’s something that’s really one of the more head scratching deals. We’re attacking that. One of the things we’ere going ot do this week is the opening drive of the game, we’re going to work it from tomorrow on. We can give them every single look they can potentially get on the opening drive and hopefully we feel better about that.
“I think part of it is there’s a little bit feeling out process of how people are going to play us,” Brown said. There’s a little bit of cat and mouse there.”
This past week against the Cowboys, the Mountaineers dug themselves into an early 10-0 deficit due to two turnovers, and a quick series on offense.
“There’s some of a cat and mouse there where once you figure out what they’re doing, then you got better answers. And there’s some just where we got to execute better,” Brown said of the first quarter struggles. “It’s noted, we’re making some changes, and hopefully we don’t have to talk about that on Monday next week.”
West Virginia kicks off against UCF on Saturday at noon from FBC Mortgage Stadium in Orlando.
