The Good and the Bad of WVU v. Kansas
November 19, 2013 by Mike CasazzaTheir sniper game was not on point this year like it was last year, and maybe that was an isolated incident last season or perhaps both realized it was a bad look and they didn’t need to wear it again. Whatever the case, absent that noise, I was compelled to look elsewhere and, though I’m not certain why, I truly started to think Kansas was going to win the game come Friday. (I have witnesses.)
Charlie Weis was on a mission with his message and WVU’s “I’ma let you finish, but Kansas is no joke” seemed genuine, which seemed unusual if you’d seen that team saunter through the season. The Mountaineers were carefully cautious about the Jayhawks and it seemed like Kansas was absolutely going to go with Montell Cozart and about 27 different run plays and, well, that started to sound like trouble.
The one thing I circled was the first quarter. WVU’s been terrible there, and this was the team’s first 11 a.m. CST start since joining the Big 12, whereas Kansas has been suspiciously competitive in the first half before collapsing in the second. At home, desperate for a win and putting a whole lot of stock into a game that, quietly, they’d been building toward with the way the offense and Cozart had been trending, the Jayhawks were more dangerous than they deserved to be.
And then they were terrific. Everything is relative, I know. Kansas wouldn’t have beaten Baylor or Oklahoma and I’m not sure it would have taken down TCU because, even in this lost season, TCU takes every play seriously. In the Mountaineers, the Jayhawks met their perfect foil. I’ll get into this in a little bit, but I have to think that game went about as well as it could have gone for Kansas, from WVU’s score at the start to the students ransacking the field at the finish. Honestly, it’s the sort of thing that can happen late in the season.
So why this picture? Well, Dana wears a damn clock on his wrist, and Weis just looks like he ate the canary. And no crow was served later. How did we get here? Let’s find out by taking a look at the good and the bad of WVU v. Kansas.
Good: Smack!
Oh, you’re burned, Mountaineers.
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