WVU football finally got back into the win column for the first time since Week on Saturday, as the Mountaineers pulled off a huge upset in a 45-35 shootout win over the No. 22 Houston Cougars.
For WVU fans who have spent nearly two months watching their team play like one of the worst teams in the Big 12, things likely feel brighter after seeing the Mountaineers pull off a win against a conference championship contender and put an offense on display that looked much more like the Rich Rodriguez offenses from his first tenure with the Mountaineers. It was a much-needed victory for West Virginia, and Rodriguez found himself questioning after the game exactly where this effort has been in previous weeks after he felt like his team has had the ability to do it all season long.
“I was like, where’s this been? But it's been there, we just hadn’t put it all together," Rodriguez said in his post-game press conference.
Rodriguez had lamented the intensity of his team in earlier games, particularly after a blowout loss to UCF two weeks ago, and it appeared that the issue was being worked on after a much more competitive showing against TCU last weekend. Now, the win against the Cougars showed that the Mountaineers can come out of the gate strong – after not scoring in the first quarter for six straight games, WVU led 14-0 in the first period Saturday – and that they can use Rodriguez and his staff's game plan to play a bit more competitively than everyone had previously thought.
“It’s been frustrating because we’ve been starting off so slowly," Rodriguez said. “They came out with confidence today…for the most part, they just executed better.”