WVSports – West Virginia defense putting stamp on season

The West Virginia defense had continued to put its stamp on the 2023 season and that was especially evident in the second half of the 24-21 win over TCU.

After allowing 21 points and 312 yards in the first two quarters with 8 explosive plays with a bundle of missed tackles, the defense was the difference in the final two.

West Virginia held the Horned Frogs scoreless with only 121 yards and only a pair of runs over 10-yards. In the third quarter, the Mountaineers permitted only one total yard.

First down was especially effective as the defense permitted just 3.9 yards which forced the Horned Frogs to slow on their tempo and allow the Mountaineers to rotate their defensive linemen.

“If we could get some stops on first down we could rotate our defensive line as the game went on. I felt good enough even though they were going to play really fast,” head coach Neal Brown said.

“We can just go hard three plays and rotate,” Mike Lockhart added.

Overall, West Virginia forced TCU into 16 third down situations allowing them to convert only 6 of those while keeping the average distance to go over 8 yards per attempt.

“They’ve got really good skill guys. We bent a little bit and we never broke. We’ve got to work on our hands during this bye week. We dropped four interceptions,” Brown said.

West Virginia was able to generate pressure on quarterback Chandler Morris which forced him into difficult situations over and over in the second half with the protection breaking down. The Mountaineers also only permitted 135 yards to TCU on the ground.

Through five games the Mountaineers have allowed just 19 points per game to go along with just 341 yards per game while holding teams to just 27-percent on third down. It’s been exactly the tough, physical brand of defense that West Virginia wanted to play this season. Over the past three games, West Virginia has permitted just 40 points.

“We just settled down. We’re better than what we played in the first half,” Brown said.

The only downside was that the Mountaineers started slow out of the gate and finished with 19 missed tackles while dropping at least five interception attempts. That will be a focus for the team during the course of the bye week as well as attempting to get healthy.

However, if there was any doubt on this defense the group kept the No. 11 offense in the country in check and made just enough plays to come out with a win.

“We just bowed up, we realized we didn’t have the best first half as a defense, we came in at halftime and realized we have to play harder if we wanted to win and that’s what we did,” linebacker Lee Kpogba said.