Why We Lost to Oklahoma State

MORGANTOWN, WV - OCTOBER 12: A dejected West Virginia Mountaineers fan in the stands during the third quarter of the college football game between the Iowa State Cyclones and the West Virginia Mountaineers on October 12, 2019, at Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown, WV. (Photo by Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) | Icon Sportswire via Getty ImagesTheir Defense was significantly better than ours

Neither the Oklahoma State or WVU defense is going to want to watch film from this game, but in the 2nd half the OKST defense got some key stops when it had to. After getting an interception on the first drive of the 2nd half here is what the next 4 OKST offensive possessions produced: Touchdown, Touchdown, Field Goal, Touchdown.

Game over.

In all OKST racked up 609 yards of total offense, and averaged 14.4 yards per pass attempt. What surprised me the most was the success that OKST had running the ball. They carried it for 220 yards and averaged 5.4 yards per carry.

To me it looked like our defensive game plan was to not pressure the QB or load up the box against the run. We had 4 safeties on the field which is not something we have done in other games this year. Saying it didn't work is the understatement of the century. The OKST quarterback was only truly under pressure on 1 drop back and OKST was more than happy to run the ball for 5 yards per play.

Their Offense was more balanced

When you look at our offensive stats you would expect these to be part of a WVU win:

• 29 first downs
• 9/17 on 3rd down
• 335 rushing yards

But then you get to the passing yards:

• 10/22 132 yards and 1 interception

Those rushing stats will be enough to win some games in the Big 12, but not this one. In the 2nd half the OKST defensive line started making running the ball much more difficult and WVU did not have an answer. Michael Hawkins was sacked 4 times all of which were on key 3rd or 4th downs. The passing game never had the chunk plays that we were seeing in the previous 3 games.

Meanwhile OKST could do whatever it wanted pretty much the entire game. We held them to 2 field goals and got one interception in the red zone, or this game would have been ugly very early.

Key Moment

In the 2nd quarter we were up 14 - 6 and were asserting our will on offense. The previous drive was a 16 play 75 yard touchdown drive and this one was going to exact some way. On a 3rd down in the red zone with a chance to go up 21 - 6 Michael Hawkins rolled to his right and threw towards the end zone. An OKST defender made a great play by deflecting the ball and it went right into the hands of a different OKST defender. OKST would score a touchdown on that possession to bring it to 13 - 14 at the half.

It felt like were dominating the game at that point. They were settling for field goals and we were running the ball down their throats. For a visiting team to go down 21 - 6 would have been a completely different mindset for them going into halftime than the 14 - 13 score. We had a chance to step on their throats early and we didn't.