West Virginia football entered November with hopes of playing spoiler in the Big 12 Championship race. To do so, they knew they needed to close out the final third of their schedule without another loss.
They took the first step with a gritty road win over Cincinnati to begin the month, a victory which relied on defensive turnovers. The next step was getting a home win against a scrappy Baylor team with an explosive offense on Saturday.
Unfortunate for WVU was the fact that the Baylor came into Milan Puskar Stadium looking to play spoiler as well -- they wanted to spoil those title dreams.
WVU wasn't able to repeat the turnover magic they came up with against Cincinnati, and Baylor's offense proved too hot to handle as the Bears ran away to a 49-35 victory.
The Mountaineers’ defense certainly didn't look nearly as sharp as they did when creating multiple takeaways against Cincinnati -- in fact, it looked as if the issue that cost former defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley to lose his job mid-season were rearing their ugly head in full force. The Bears managed a whopping 500+ yards of total offense in the win and ended the game with zero turnovers.
Despite Garrett Greene looking impress in his return after injury and the WVU offense managing well over 400 total yards themselves, it meant little as it resulted in just one second half score as the Mountaineers were outscored by 21 points.
WVU moves to 5-5 overall and 4-3 in Big 12 play and will move on to host UCF next week. Baylor moves to 6-4 overall and 4-3 in league play, winning their fourth consecutive game.