The postgame read
Rodriguez didn’t call it a second-half collapse. He called it a failed plan.
West Virginia led Oklahoma State 24–21 late in the third quarter. That made the question after a 41–24 loss seem natural: What changed?
Rich Rodriguez wasn’t buying the idea that the defense had been fine before halftime.
“I don’t think it was good the whole game,” he said.
Oklahoma State’s 609 yards backed up his point. Drew Mestemaker threw for 389, and when Rodriguez was asked what made the quarterback difficult to handle, he credited the passer’s vision and deep throws. Then he identified what WVU hadn’t done: “We never got any pressure.”
The failure wasn’t confined to one side of the ball. WVU ran for 335 yards, but Rodriguez said he may have grown impatient with the run game as Oklahoma State kept moving the ball. Once the Cowboys pulled ahead, he felt the offense pressed instead of continuing to execute what had worked.
Still, he put the central responsibility on himself. “The plan we had failed,” Rodriguez said. He repeated that the head coach’s job is to give his players a plan that can succeed.
And when the plan wasn’t working? Rodriguez said WVU needed “the ability to, if that plan ain’t working, to go to plan B.” He acknowledged that the usual answers—Plan A, Plan B and Plan C—weren’t firmly in place Saturday.
That is more specific than a promise to play harder next week. Rodriguez described a defense that struggled throughout the game, an offense affected by the pressure to keep pace, and a staff that did not find an effective response in time.
The question heading to Iowa State is whether WVU can recognize a failing plan sooner, and have the next one ready.
West Virginia