Devine intervention

Chester and I watched the West Virginia-Colorado football game last night. WVU won 35-24 but it wasn't--and should not have been--that close. The Mountaineers had a case of the turnovers in the first half and kept handing the ball over to the Buffaloes Luckily for WVU: 1) the Buffs failed to do anything with the ball in that first half missing two field goals within the 40 and just not advancing much on the goal line and 2) WVU had Noel Devine.

Devine ran for a personal best 220 yards on 22 carries and got a good chunk of the yardage in the first half which included a 77-yard TD run and another 56-yard run from scrimmage. In the fourth quarter, he carried nine times on one drive alone before WVU's red-shirt freshman running back Ryan Clarke scored on a one-yard play.

Take out those two big runs--77 yards and 56 yards--and Devine gained just 87 yards on his other 20 carries or a little over 4 yards a carry. The same thing happened last week against Auburn. Devine had 128 yards on 15 carries but 71 of them came on one play meaning he had just 57 yards on his other 14 carries. Again, that's about 4 yards per carry. Nothing to sneeze at but stoppable. Just DO NOT let him get passed the linebackers!

Devine's quick and he's fast, and when he's on his game, he's tough to stop. But that was against Colorado's defense. A defense that seemed to be pretty tough on the pass but very soft (or slow) on the run.

On defense, the Mountaineers had their problems but did a lot of bending without breaking. Except for a 36 yard run by Colorado's Rodney Stewart (who finished the night with 105 yards on 21 carries) and a 29-yard TD pass from Cody Hawkins to Scotty McKnight to make the score 21-17 WVU, the Mountaineers allowed little until the final drive of the game. Still, the stats show the Buffaloes ran 84 plays for 392 yards, 292 of which were through the air. I'd say they are vulnerable.

It will be interesting to see how WVU fares against Cincinnati and Southern Florida. They play at Rutgers in their final game of the regular season on December 5.

Tonight it'll be Pittsburgh vs. Louisville. I just hope Chester lets me have more of the love seat tonight. Did I mention he fell asleep last night with his head draped over my arm? What's worse is he snores--almost as loudly as he purrs.