WVU football silenced in second half, falls to No. 11 Iowa State in Coal Rush game

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — For two drives, West Virginia was in control against No. 11 Iowa State Saturday night.

The Mountaineers were in position to go up by two touchdowns before the Cyclones reached 50 yards of total offense, but several WVU mistakes compounded throughout the game as Iowa State (6-0, 3-0 Big 12) rallied to beat WVU (3-3, 2-1 Big 12) 28-16 at Milan Puskar Stadium in the Mountaineers’ first Coal Rush game.

“Two things that stick out are that we had two turnovers, [and Iowa State] had zero,” Brown said. “That resulted in 14 points. We had seven penalties, they had one.”

Neal Brown’s scripting skills were on display once again Saturday night when WVU ran 14 plays, took over seven minutes off the clock and scored a touchdown on the first drive of the game after electing to receive the opening kickoff. The Mountaineers ran the ball on 11 of the 14 plays, and Jahiem White scored his fifth touchdown in as many games on an eight-yard carry to give WVU an early 7-0 lead.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the Mountaineer mascot’s musket sounded to signal the end of the first quarter with WVU driving once more after Iowa State missed a field goal on its first drive.

The Mountaineers opened the second quarter with a chance to start running away with Saturday’s game with the ball deep in Cyclones territory. On its first set of downs of the quarter, WVU failed to move the sticks after a third-down completion was overturned when video review showed that Rodney Gallagher III dropped the pass from quarterback Garrett Greene.

That mistake loomed even larger when WVU kicker Michael Hayes missed his first field goal of the season on a 36-yard attempt one play later. It was Hayes’ first miss from under 40 yards since 2022, and he had made his last seven attempts from 30-39 yards.

As if on cue, Iowa State took less than a minute to march 80 yards down the field on just three plays to knot the score at 7-7. The Cyclones found the end zone on a 60-yard completion from quarterback Rocco Becht to receiver Jaylin Noel down the seam, splitting the WVU defense.

“[It] hurt that we didn’t convert, and [it] hurt because we missed the field goal,” Brown said. “We had really poor miscommunication on an explosive play, and that’s what happened on the long touchdown.”

WVU entered Saturday’s game coming off arguably its best defensive effort against the run since Neal Brown took over the program in 2019. Last week, Oklahoma State rushed for just 36 yards on less than two yards per carry against the Mountaineers.

Jordan Lesley’s defense largely carried that momentum defensively into the first half of Saturday’s game. Iowa State rushed for just 14 yards on their first two drives of the game, but late in the second quarter, after WVU’s first punt of the night, the Cyclones took control on the ground with 56 rushing yards on their third drive.

The sequence took over eight minutes off the clock on a 91-yard drive that ended with an 11-yard rushing touchdown from sophomore tailback Carson Hansen to give Iowa State a 14-7 lead. Hansen alone recorded 37 rushing yards on the drive.

That left two and a half minutes on the clock for Greene and the WVU offense, and the Mountaineers took advantage of the extra time. A 24-yard completion to tight end Kole Taylor and a 13-yard hookup with Traylon Ray set up WVU and Greene in field goal range, which gave a Hayes a shot at redemption before the half. He then nailed the ensuing 43-yarder to cut Iowa State’s lead to four points at 14-10 just before halftime.

A quiet third quarter produced no points on either side after the best scoring opportunity of the frame, which came from WVU, ended when Iowa State intercepted an errant pass from Greene to Kole Taylor deep in Cyclones territory.

Iowa State took over and drove down the field as the game flipped to the final quarter. Becht led Iowa State inside the WVU 10-yard line on a strong drive before the Cyclones faced a critical third-and-medium from the six-yard line. Lesley opted to send just three pass rushers as the WVU defense played an eight-man zone relatively successfully, but as Becht’s pass fell incomplete, WVU cornerback Ayden Garnes was flagged for defensive holding.

One play later, Hansen logged his second touchdown of the day on a three-yard rush to put the Cyclones up by two scores in a 21-10 game.

And then two plays later, Greene threw his second interception of the game, and his sixth of the year, which seemingly ended any shot at a WVU comeback.

“I thought one of ’em was 100 percent pass interference,” Brown said. “A hundred percent, and the second one was just a bad decision.”

Greene threw just four interceptions all of last season.

Hansen silenced any hope from WVU with his third rushing touchdown of the game shortly after to give the Cyclones a 28-10 lead. The sophomore running back scored just two touchdowns in Iowa State’s first five games.

By game’s end, the Cyclones narrowly outgained the Mountaineers 395-354, but 195 (55.1%) of WVU’s yards came on their first two drives of the game and their final possession in garbage time when Greene found White for White’s second score of the game to make it a 28-16 ballgame.

WVU will have another home game next week when it takes on Kansas State, who is currently ranked No. 18 in the country, at 7:30 p.m. ET Saturday night.

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