Bears Maul Mountaineers, Dropping WVU to 2-4

West Virginia drops their third straight game.

Waco, TX - The Baylor Bears defeated West Virginia 45-20 on Saturday, marking the third consecutive loss for the Mountaineers as they head into the bye week.

After being "embarrassed" by a poor first-half performance a week ago against Texas Tech, WVU head coach Neal Brown felt like his guys would be ready to come out and start this week's game at Baylor with better effort/energy. That did not happen.

On the 2nd play of the game, there was a busted coverage in the back end which allowed for a 75-yard touchdown catch and run by Tyquan Thornton. To continue the theme of the prior loss, West Virginia had to burn a timeout on their first offensive snap of the game to avoid a delay of game. The Mountaineers looked unprepared, to say the least. However, they would end up scoring on the opening drive. Jarret Doege hit Sam James for a big 53-yard play with the drive being capped off with a 12-yard touchdown to Sean Ryan that was tipped off a Baylor defender's hand. 

Baylor answered quickly on their next drive and would score 21 unanswered before West Virginia added on a field goal from Casey Legg to make it 28-10 going into the half. 

West Virginia's defense had a lot of miscommunication at all three levels but especially in the secondary. The Mountaineers gave up gains of 75, 44, 22, and 58. Not only did the secondary struggle, but WVU's front seven did not get to Baylor QB Gerry Bohanon at all in the first half. Zero sacks, zero QB hits makes life fairly easy for a quarterback. Bohanon eclipsed his previous career-high for passing yards in a game in the first half alone, throwing for 272 yards along with three touchdowns. 

Aside from the opening drive of the game, the Mountaineer offense was completely out of sync. They were unable to sustain drives much of which had to do with poor pass protection. Doege was sacked three times and hit five times in the first two quarters of play. 

WVU produced a defensive stop near the end of the half but with the offense stagnant, Neal Brown elected to not use a timeout to stop the clock on 4th down. West Virginia ran one play and was content with the 28-10 score going into the break.

Baylor really poured it on in the in the third quarter scoring touchdowns on each of their first two drives, pushing the lead out to 42-13. Meanwhile, the Mountaineers couldn't get anything established offensively and had to punt on their first three drives of the half.

Late in the 4th quarter, Neal Brown trotted out Garrett Greene at quarterback and he led the team on a 12-play, 85-yard drive that resulted in a 13-yard rushing score by the redshirt freshman quarterback.

West Virginia will ride into their bye week with a 2-4 overall record including 0-3 in Big 12 play. The Mountaineers will be back in action on October 23rd at TCU.

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