Kansas and West Virginia enter Saturday night’s conference opener in Lawrence coming off hard-fought games against their biggest rivals.
The difference is that KU is now two weeks removed from its 42-31 loss at Missouri, while the Mountaineers will hope to have moved on sufficiently quickly following a 31-24 overtime victory against Pittsburgh last Saturday.
“If there’s any kind of hangover, whatever you want to call it, from the last game, I’ll probably notice it early in practice and get that corrected as soon as we can,” WVU head coach Rich Rodriguez said at the start of the week.
At least from an external perspective, the outlook for the Mountaineers looked much bleaker a week ago. They had just lost running back Jahiem White, arguably their most dynamic player, and wide receiver Jaden Bray to season-ending injuries. They had also just dropped a road nonconference game to MAC school Ohio in which they benched starting quarterback Nicco Marchiol and then brought him back into action later on, only to fall 17-10 anyway.
Well, against Pitt, the Mountaineers replicated that same routine with Marchiol, this time bringing in multiple backup quarterbacks in relief, but eventually Marchiol managed to lead them on two long scoring drives to rally them from down 24-14 and tie the game on a touchdown pass to Grayson Barnes with 11 seconds remaining.
“Nicco’s a guy who waited his turn,” said KU linebacker Trey Lathan, his former teammate at WVU. “He’s getting his turn now. He competes. He stays level-headed, even getting benched and stuff like that, he stays level-headed.”
Then running back Tye Edwards — a Northern Iowa transfer who came out of nowhere in relief of White to carry the ball 25 times for 141 yards — scored his third touchdown to give WVU the lead in overtime.
“Good thing for them, he’s fresh,” KU defensive coordinator D.K. McDonald said. “He didn’t have to go through two games and different things like that. You could tell he was a little fresher than a lot of guys out there. He was Freddy Fresh Legs running around.”
Finally, defensive coordinator Zac Alley’s unit got a quick stop against the Panthers to complete the emotional victory.
“It’s a big testament to their staff and their leadership in their program, because they had a disappointing loss on the road, OK, and then to get that group rallied obviously in a rivalry game and to play the way they did was highly impressive,” KU coach Lance Leipold said. “To be down two scores in the fourth quarter and to keep battling — it’s a physical, gritty bunch, and it’s a testament to the culture (Rodriguez) has established in his short time there.”
The conventional wisdom would suggest this could be a letdown spot for the Mountaineers after their big win, and indeed Rodriguez has clearly emphasized making his players move on to the next challenge. But KU has also had extra time to prepare for WVU thanks to its recent bye week, and has focused on areas that plagued it against Missouri like physicality, tackling and consistency on the offensive line.
“They’re coming off of a game fresh from the weekend before,” KU quarterback Jalon Daniels said. “They’re probably going to have a lot more soreness than a team who had a week to be able to, like I said, be able to rejuvenate the body and everything of that nature, but you also get an extra week to be able to focus on that exact team.”
Rodriguez suggested the Jayhawks also may break out some schematic wrinkles: “The key for us is to be able to adjust early because there’ll be some stuff early in the game that they have not done this year or even last year because they had time to do it.”
WVU’s own defense, led by the rising-star coordinator Alley, has put some complexity on film already.
“They’ve gotten to the quarterback and they’ve caused turnovers, two things we’ve got to make sure we don’t let happen,” KU offensive coordinator Jim Zebrowski said.
Indeed, the Mountaineers are fourth in the nation in sacks and 12th in interceptions.
“I think they run around, play really hard,” Zebrowski added. “They’re very multiple in what they do … You watch their games, you’ll see some three-down, some four-down, some three safeties, two safeties, one (safety). I thought their front seven runs around really well. They try to cause chaos.”
Meanwhile, on the other end of the field, with WVU trying to cram as many plays as possible into a short time frame, and with KU coming off a lackluster defensive effort in which it spent 40 minutes of game time on the field and struggled to get stops on third and fourth down, the Jayhawks will need to take a step forward in time for the start of conference play.
“Our job is to get out there and stop people,” McDonald said. “We can’t decide how we get on the field, we decide how we get off.”
Kansas Jayhawks (2-1) vs. West Virginia Mountaineers (2-1)
• David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, Lawrence, 5 p.m.
• Broadcast: FS1
• Radio: Jayhawk Radio Network (in Lawrence, KLWN AM 1320 / K269GB FM 101.7 / KKSW FM 105.9)
• Betting line: KU -12.5; over/under 55.5
• Series history: WVU leads 11-2
Keep an eye out
1. Help on the way: Defensive end Jimmori Robinson was one of a quartet of incoming transfers to West Virginia, including Edwards, who won eligibility in court in late August. He previously played at UTSA and a pair of junior colleges. Robinson, who is 6-foot-4 and 250 pounds, recorded 10.5 sacks and was the American Conference’s defensive player of the year last season, but he had not yet debuted this year, for what would be his seventh collegiate season, reportedly due to outstanding questions about his academic eligibility. However, Rodriguez said that Robinson would play this week. That adds another option to an already strong unit for the Mountaineers, and another element to which Zebrowski will have to adapt as the game proceeds: “Maybe you do some background check of where he’s from or what’s happening, and then sometimes figure it out on the run,” he said.
2. Battle in the trenches: On that note, Leipold was not happy with KU’s performance in the trenches against Missouri, particularly when it came to the Jayhawks’ offensive line against the Tigers’ front: “I think it became apparent that we did not win the battle in the trenches. They were more physical than we were. We struggled immensely to get a running game going.” Missouri may have the most talented group the Jayhawks will face all year, but WVU is off to a strong start, holding opposing rushing offenses to under 100 yards per game. The Mountaineers recorded eight tackles for loss against Pitt, and they earned defensive line of the week honors from the Big 12 Conference.
3. Quarterback shuffle: WVU has listed five quarterbacks on its depth chart this season, and while Marchiol is clearly the leader in playing time, he has at various times in the Mountaineers’ previous two games been benched for Texas A&M transfer Jaylen Henderson and true freshman Scotty Fox Jr. Fox completed a 56-yard pass but also threw two interceptions against Pitt. Henderson is 2-for-7 passing for 12 yards and has 39 rushing yards on the season. Leipold pointed out that WVU had packages for multiple quarterbacks in previous years under Neal Brown as well. He said that KU will need to try to get a sense of what the Mountaineers’ identity looks like with any of those quarterbacks in the game. Lathan put it bluntly: “Whoever they’re going to put out there, our goal is to run them into the turf.”
Spotlight on…
Cam Pickett: The Ball State transfer wide receiver had one of the best halves for any KU wideout in recent memory when he snagged six passes for 77 yards and a pair of touchdowns — including the first ever in the new David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium — against Fresno State on Aug. 23, but he got banged up at the conclusion of that same half. He said after the game he was fine, but he saw minimal playing time in the next two games, and Leipold acknowledged on Monday that Pickett is “not 100%.” Getting him closer to his season-opening comfort level could go a long way toward making things easier for quarterback Jalon Daniels.
Inside the numbers
66: The total number of WVU players who have seen their first action as Mountaineers this season.
4-1: KU’s record coming off of bye weeks under Leipold.
3.5: The sack total through three games for KU’s sophomore defensive end Leroy Harris III, a transfer from Chattanooga who has continued his momentum from fall camp into the regular season.
Prediction
KU wins 27-20. Leipold reflected this week on the series of close games his program has played against West Virginia, a group of contests that includes a six-point loss in the 2021 season finale, an overtime win in 2022 and a heartbreaker on the road last year. It feels like this one could go much the same way, even if oddsmakers seem to think KU will cruise.
That said, the Jayhawks’ run game is poised for a bounce-back effort, even against a WVU front that has been fierce thus far this season. If KU can reattain its offensive balance, it can control the clock, mitigate the effects of the Mountaineers’ own tempo and take a win to start off conference play.
