WVU offense starts to answer questions in opener

Make no mistake about it, Georgia Southern is no slouch and the performance West Virginia had in Saturday night’s blowout victory to kick off the season is nothing to scoff at.

The Mountaineers were sharp on both sides of the ball, emphatically dominating a GSU offense that is as tough as any to prepare for with a defense that has high expectations for itself in 2015.

The offense worked out the kinks in an up-and-down first half and buried the Eagles with a solid showing in the final two quarters to run away with the comfortable win.

But that’s not to say there aren’t still questions that need to be answered as the season continues to progress, even though Saturday’s game gave a bit of a glimpse of what could be for this group and where they could excel.

It was a little bit of what was expected. The defense set the tone and made the plays it needed to make to give the offense the field position and number of opportunities it needed to be able to put points on the board.

Offensively, the Mountaineers set the tone with the running game, using Wendell Smallwood and Rushel Shell to steadily set the table and help open things up to allow Skyler Howard to throw the ball downfield and let Jovon Durante and Shelton Gibson work from there.

That looked great in the first quarter as the Mountaineers were able to connect for some big plays, highlighted by Durante’s 41-yard touchdown grab, and jump out 10-0 on the first two drives of the game.

Then things tended to stall for the offense as the Georgia Southern defense settled in and gave the Mountaineers some trouble to keep the ball moving in the red zone.

The Mountaineers gained 13 yards on nine plays when inside the Eagles’ 20-yard line in the first two quarters of the game and had to settle for three field goals and turned the ball over on downs once. When it looked like that, you saw the bad — the room to improve for an offense that is still learning to play with one another and figure things out.

But then you saw in the second half the good that this group could be.

West Virginia looked confident, marching down the field quickly and crisply and wrapping up long drives with touchdowns, not field goals, to put the game away.

So, as a whole, what you saw from West Virginia on this opening Saturday night of the college football season isn’t a finished product — nowhere near that even.

You saw an offense that has a lot of growing left to do and still plenty of time to do it before they get into the real meat of their schedule. Chances are that next week’s game against Liberty will be a lot of the same with the Mountaineers showing some improvements over what they did this week.

Howard will have to be more efficient and prove that he can continue to manage the unit with the confidence that he did against Georgia Southern, finishing 16-of-25 for 359 yards and two scores — but more importantly no turnovers — despite struggling a little bit with accuracy at times.

The pieces seem to be there, and with a defense that looks like it is going to be as tough to move the ball on as any in the Big 12 there will be plenty of chances to put enough points on the board to win a lot of games.

With Howard throwing the ball, Smallwood and Shell leading the ground game and Durante and Gibson emerging as potentially dangerous threats in the air, the Mountaineers started to show glimpses of what could be Saturday night.

But now comes the hard part. Now they have to show they can do it on a consistent basis.