Week two saw the Mountaineers defending yet another border of their state. This week the challenge would come from long time rival Maryland, a team the Mountaineers have had much success against in recent years. Pre-season, this looked like the first of several easy games for the Mountaineers followed by by creampuffs Tulsa, Navy and Temple. But Maryland and Tulsa had early success and now the schedule looked much more difficult.

     Maryland opened the season with a close win over Div 1-AA James Madison and then had a great game against #12 rated Virginia last week, losing in the final moments of the game 31-19. The word out of College Park was that they saw many positive things come out of that loss. Had they turned the corner? If they played number #12 that close then how would they do against #20 West Virginia.

     For West Virginia, it was time to put the Ohio State loss behind them and get on with the second part of the season. The Mountaineers had an off week after the initial game so this was like starting the season all over again. During the off week they had to find a replacement for Rush Linebacker Gary Stills who will be out for about 4 weeks with a broken knee cap. Another Ohio State casualty was backup FS Ricky Sherrod who is out for the season with a torn ACL. Replacements were need for both players and in addition the Mountaineers decided to move John Thornton from defensive NG to Tackle and switch him with Charlton Forbes to put more pressure on Maryland's quarterback.

     This was another night game and the fans were in rare form when the Mountaineers took the field. Little did we know "how rare"! While WVU was being picked to win by at least 20 there were many questions to be answered on the evening. Was Maryland an improved team? How good was this Mountaineer team that got preseason rankings as high as #5? How good was the re-vamped defense? Had something really happened to the offense or was Ohio State that good when they shut them down along with preseason Heisman hopeful Amos Zereoue?

     West Virginia proved its offense is more than just Amos Zereoue. Marc Bulger passed for 293 yards and three touchdowns and Zereoue rushed for 135 yards and two scores as No. 19 West Virginia rolled over Maryland 42-20 Saturday night.

     Zereoue (shown at right), the nation's third-leading rusher last season, was held to 77 yards in a season-opening loss to Ohio State. He had 91 yards by halftime against Maryland (1-2) and went over 100 on his first carry of the third quarter. As good as Zereoue was, it was Bulger who guided the Mountaineers to their first three touchdowns as he completed 18-of-21 passes for 274 yards in the first half.

     "Amos was going to have a good day regardless, but once we got a couple of big passes, that really opened it up," Bulger said.

     West Virginia (1-1) had a week off after the loss to Ohio State and entered the game as the only Top 25 team without a victory. The Mountaineers had lost five of their last six games dating back to last season.

     "If felt kind of funny getting the win. It's a shame to say, but we haven't had a win in a long time," said West Virginia defensive tackle John Thornton, who had two sacks.

     West Virginia took a 7-0 lead as time expired in the first quarter when Bulger found Khori Ivy with a 9-yard scoring pass. Bulger and Ivy had connected for 28 yards to the Maryland 25 five plays earlier to set up the touchdown.

     Maryland failed to capitalize on two West Virginia turnovers in the first quarter -- fumbles by Bulger at the Maryland 28 and Zereoue at midfield. Maryland, however, gained just 20 total yards on both possessions and was penalized twice for 15.

     After Maryland pulled within 7-3 on the first of two 43-yard field goals by Brian Kopka, West Virginia went up 14-3 on Zereoue's 5-yard touchdown run. It was the first touchdown of the season for Zereoue, who scored 18 in 1997. West Virginia took a 21-3 lead on its next possession when Bulger hit Shawn Foreman with a TD pass on a 14-yard fade to the corner of the end zone.

     The Mountaineers went up 28-3 when David Carter blocked a punt by Maryland's Russ Edwards inside the Terrapins' 5. The ball rolled into the end zone, where Carter picked it up for a touchdown with 1:33 left before halftime.

     After giving up 549 yards in the loss to Ohio State, West Virginia held Maryland to 262 yards, much of it coming after the Mountaineers had put the game out of reach. The Mountaineers held Maryland starting quarterback Ken Mastrole to 3-of-9 passing for 27 yards. West Virginia recovered a fumble on the Maryland 13 and Zereoue scored his second TD from 3 yards out for a 42-3 lead.

     "It was tough. I had a rush in my face most of the time and I was scrambling around there trying to make some plays," Mastrole said. "But in a situation like that, when things break down, it kind of all collapses on you."

     Running back Matt Kalapinski scored fourth-quarter touchdowns for Maryland on runs of 15 and 2 yards.

     WVU set a Mountaineer Field record with 14 penalties, passing the prior high of 13 set three times. They were good (bad?) for 141 yards. The Mountaineer record for most penalty yards in a game is 170 against Drexel in 1945 and Colorado State in 1978.

     More Records For Amos:

     Running back Amos Zereoue became the WVU career leader in rushing attempts with 547, passing Robert Walker.


    Amos Zereoue wound up with 135 yards rushing and two touchdowns. Saturday’s effort marked his school record 14th career 100-yard rushing game and breaking the previous record held by Artie Owens.


    In three career games against Maryland, Zereoue has rushed for 425 yards and four scores.

     The victory did snap a four-game losing streak dating back to last season. WVU’s last victory was a 41-21 thrashing of Temple on Nov. 15, 1997.

    Junior linebacker David Carter broke a 14-year drought for West Virginia when he blocked a punt by Russ Edwards of Maryland and recovered it for a touchdown. The last time the Mountaineers turned a blocked punt into a touchdown was Sept. 8, 1984 against Louisville. Fred Smalls blocked the kick and Cam Zopp recovered it.

    Maryland's 97 passing yards was the first sub-100-yard passing performance by the West Virginia defense since Sept. 28, 1996, when WVU did the same to Maryland.

    Quarterback Marc Bulger passed Darren Studstill for eighth in career passing yards and now shows 3,342 yards. Bulger's 308 total yards was his third career 300-yard day of his career.

    For his performance in the Maryland game, quarterback Marc Bulger was named Big East Co-Offensive player of the week. Bulger threw for 308 yards and 3 TD's and hit and incredible 20-25 passes (80%).

    Wide receiver David Saunders passed Danny Buggs and Darrell Miller to move into fourth in career receiving yards with 1,824.

     Plain and simple, we liked the fact we won and won convincingly. This was a very bad Maryland team and anything less than the performance put on by the Mountaineers would have meant this Mountaineer team was in for a very long season.

     Our players of the game go to Marc Bulger on offense and John Thornton on defense. Many players had good games against Maryland but these two were under additional pressure. Going in we knew that if we were to have success we needed another heady game from Marc and on defense we needed John to take up some of the slack left by the injury to Gary Stills. They both came through when the chips were on the table. Marc hit an incredible 80% of his passes and threw for 308 yards. John had 2 sacks, 10 tackles and numerous hurries. Moving him to DT was just what the defense needed in Gary Stills absence.

     The play of the special teams is worthy of note. We blocked one kicked and turned it into a touchdown. We were within a block or two of getting a couple great returns broken. And the kicking game is as good as we've seen in years. Remember, it was only two years ago that special teams were costing us games (Miami 1996 comes to mind!). The thing about special teams is the plays they make are generally game breakers. After WVU scored the TD on the blocked punt the game was over. Hopefully this group will keep up their intensity.

     Without a doubt, though we liked the fact that many of the younger kids got some valuable playing experience. This is a thin team, in terms of depth, and some of these kids are going to be called upon to play for injured players. We would have liked to see more meaningful play for Brad Lewis at quarterback but hopefully he'll have a chance, along with Seider, to get some PT in the next few games.

     Most everyone had a decent game and did as we thought they were capable. The O-line should grade out well and the D-Line maybe a little better. It's been a long time since we've seen the Mountaineer offensive and defensive lines push an opponent around all night like they did against Maryland. Mark Thurston did an outstanding job at Rush Linebacker for his first start and Antwan Lake was superb in backup there. At the MLB position, it appears that Kyle Kayden is the man that's going to win out there. He got the start in this game and we think he played better than backup Mark Plants, although neither had a bad game. Overall, it looked like the Mountaineers just lined up a faster and better conditioned team.

     Oh, and did we mentioned play calling and clock management? "Good job" to the Mountaineer coaching staff on this one. It looked like they had a good game plan coming in and adjusted well on the fly. We cut back on some of the 4 wide receiver plays to something more conventional and that was all that was needed against Maryland.

     This was a needed win and it was convincing, yet there are areas to improve. Giving up 141 yards in penalties is too much, regardless of the fact that 30 of them came from unruly fans. You've heard enough about them so we'll pass on that topic! But that left over 100 yards that this team was flagged for and that's been the norm the past year or so. Coach Nehlen complained about poor officiating but few are the games for any team when you don't get a call or two that doesn't go your way. Bottom line is that we need to work on cutting that total in half.

     The injury to Nate Terry is going to hurt down the road. Actually, it may even be a problem this week as Tulsa is reported to run a wide-open offense. But when we get into the Big East games we better have someone talented to replace him. Preliminary reports are that Nate is gone for the season and that Scooter Davis will fill in for him. That also means that our buddy Perlo is going to see more PT. Perlo has the talent to be a good player but something is wrong there. Twice against Maryland he had the coverage on his man but simply did not put up his hands to defend the play.

     Nate Terry suffered a dislocated clavical in the second quarter and will most likely be lost for the season. Replacing him will be backup Scooter Davis. Gary Stills remains out for another few weeks and as reported, Ricky Sherrod will be lost for the season with a torn ACL. And while on the topic of injuries, Andy Keating is practicing but has really been set back by the pre-season "virus" he had. We expected Andy to be in the hunt at the QB position this year but think now he will be lucky if he even gets to play a single down. He's lost a lot of weight and is too far behind to catch up. Andy did not dress for the Maryland game.

     For further injury details and updates, see Kevin Kinder's Football Injury Report page.

     You probably heard all the hype about how the Maryland game serves as a barometer for successful Mountaineer seasons. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at our schedule and figure out why that has been. At best, Maryland has been "average" in recent years and if you can't beat an "average" team during the season you'll probably not get to play in a bowl game. So really what can you draw from the whipping we put on the Terps this weekend?

     About the only conclusion we can draw from this game is that they can do a number on an "average" team. It really doesn't show us how we'll do against the Syracuse's and Tech's of the world but it gives us a chance to "fine tune" things and move on. It was a "solid" win but not an "awesome" win. We sputtered early and we folded late, the later due to the play of our second and third team. In short, we played two good quarters of football on offense and three on defense. This 4 game stretch may be just what the doctor ordered...in more ways than one. But we can't continue to have key players go down or we are going to be in deep trouble down the road.

     Next up is 2-0 Tulsa from the WAC. The Golden Hurricane will be in Morgantown this Saturday after a week off. They soundly defeated Div 1-AA SW Missouri State 49-14 and had their way with cross-state Oklahoma State 35-20. This is a team that was 2-9 in 1997 but appears to be a much better team in 1998. Be sure to see our game preview.