West Virginia to play Minnesota in bowl
Team qualified by winning final two vs. Texas, Kansas
West Virginia had to work to become bowl eligible.
Entering the second-tolast week of the season, the Mountaineers sat at 4-6 with Texas and Kansas in front of them.
Still, West Virginia made it, defeating both the Longhorns at home and the Jayhawks on the road to reach six wins and achieve bowl eligibility. Now, the team’s assignment for the bowl season is known.
The Mountaineers will head to Arizona to play in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl at 10:15 p.m. Dec. 28 in Phoenix. WVU will face Minnesota, which was 8-4 this season in the Big Ten West.
The game marks West Virginia’s second bowl game in a row and seventh in the past eight seasons, missing out only during the 2019-20 season.
“Bowl games are rewards to me, and this has been an up-and-down year for us. I think it’s been challenging at times,” coach Neal Brown said Sunday evening. “I’m proud of our kids responding. I felt like they handled adversity. There were several times where I feel like people counted us out, and we were able to get up off the mat and get bowl eligibility. These games are rewards, and we’re going to treat them as that. Not only when we’re out in Arizona but when we’re over here in Morgantown in prep, we’re going to do everything we possibly can to make this a great experience.”
The matchup here is an interesting one. Minnesota has struggled all year offensively, ranking 98th in Football Bowl Subdivision in total offense. At the same time, the Golden Gophers were relatively prolific rushing the ball, averaging 193.8 yards per game. That’s good for the 31stbest mark in FBS, filing in just behind playoff-bound Georgia.
That sort of attack does play into the Mountaineers’ hands, who have a top-40 rush defense.
Really, though, Minnesota’s game plan has typically been to control the clock and let its defense take care of business. That has led them well, as the Golden Gophers boast the No. 4 defense in FBS in terms of yards allowed per game.
So, then, this will be an interesting test for West Virginia, who struggled mightily against some of the better defenses in the Big 12.
“The misconception is in the Big 12 there’s not defense, but in the last three years that’s really not been the case,” Brown said. “Oklahoma State has been as good as any defense in the country. Baylor has played at an extremely high level. Those are the two that played in our championship game, and they’re there because they can run the football and play great defense. So I think Minnesota is very similar to those two programs in their ability to stop the run.”
This matchup is also unique in its coaching staffs. Brown and Gophers headman P.J. Fleck have known each other for a while, and their main connection is Kirk Ciarrocca. Ciarrocca was Fleck’s offensive coordinator at Western Michigan and Minnesota before leaving after the 2019-20 season. Now, Ciarrocca is an offensive analyst on West Virginia’s staff.
As it turns out, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported recently that Fleck plans to bring Ciarrocca back to his program after parting ways with his offensive coordinator from this season. Brown was asked whether Ciarrocca would be on staff for the bowl game and acknowledged just how strange of a situation this is.
“It’s a good question,” Brown said. “It’s a unique situation. We’re going to work through that. This is maybe a first in my career, and we’re going to work through that. I don’t have a good answer for that right now, and so it’s a unique matchup and we’ll figure it out here in the next day or so.”
That is more of a sideshow for the main course. West Virginia has the opportunity to finish the season with seven wins for the first time since Brown took over the program in 2019. That opportunity took some doing to earn, and now the Mountaineers will need to topple Minnesota to take advantage.