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There is always one game on the schedule against an FCS opponent which afford Mountaineer football fans a relaxing afternoon and enable players who normally don't see game action to get playing time. Saturday was no exception as West Virginia easily dispatched Towson State 65-7.
The offense piled up 624 total yards, almost evenly balanced between running and passing. Four quarterbacks saw action, and the second half saw mostly players two and three deep on the depth chart on the field. Running backs Tony Mathis and CJ Donaldson both gained over 100 yards and tallied five touchdowns between them.
Eight receivers caught passes, three of them scoring.
The defense held Towson to zero points, with the Tigers lone score coming on a 96 yard kickoff return early in the game.
Few conclusions can be drawn from a game against an opponent so completely overmatched, but it was nice to get one in the win column and WVU fans left Morgantown in a somewhat better frame of mind. The hope is that this team can still find some success but there are no walkovers left in the remaining nine games on the schedule. There was at least some mild encouragement that perhaps the upset loss to Kansas the previous week wasn't quite as embarrassing as we thought at the time, as the Jayhawks showed it was no fluke when they garnered a 48-30 road win at Houston.
With road games, a bye week, and only a Thursday night home game against Baylor on October 13th, Mountaineer fans will not return to Morgantown for a Saturday home game for nearly six weeks (October 29th vs TCU). It's a shame that through some of the nicest fall weather we don't have an opportunity to enjoy a football Saturday afternoon. One fourth of the WVU schedule is played on Thursday. College football is meant to be played on Saturday, but I guess we have to accept that television dollars rule.
THIS THURSDAY: West Virginian travels to Blacksburg for another of those Thursday night contests. The Hokies are 2-1, with a solid defense yielding less than 300 yards per game. Their offense is not prolific, however, ranking only 97th nationally in total yards and essentially cost Virginia Tech its lone upset loss to Old Dominion with four interceptions.
This will be a tough road environment and a game which very well could signal the direction of the rest of the 2022 season. The Mountaineer defense, so maligned after the Kansas loss, has an opportunity to step up. The Hokies will be a slight favorite but I'm looking down and still see just a little bit of the Kool Aid left in the bottom of my glass. WEST VIRGINIA 26 VIRGINIA TECH 20