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MORGANTOWN -- Believe or not, but not all turnovers are bad. Just ask West Virginia football coach Dana Holgorsen.
"We were moving the ball," Holgorsen said following the No. 12 Mountaineers' 35-6 victory over Kansas State in the Big 12 opener for both. "What did we have, four turnovers or something?
"This is two years in a row that we've turned the ball over against these guys and our defense has stepped up and not let them score. We turned it over twice in the first two possessions, but field position wise, it didn't hurt us.
"One's on the two and one's on like the 20. At the end of the day it's just like punting. We talk about that a lot. You turn the ball over, that's one thing. What happens when you turn it over? I think our mindset as a team right now -- and this means we've got a chance to be a good team -- is play together and feed off each other when it comes to that. We've got to clean some things up when it comes to the turnovers. We finally got one on defense. A fourth-down stop is just like a turnover. We capitalized on that offensively. I'm proud that we played together as a team. We'll keep working on that."
The Mountaineers received just enough of a running attack to keep the opposition's defense on its toes.
Redshirt junior Kennedy McKoy led the ground attack with 73 yards on 12 carries (6.1 ypc) while true freshman Leddie Brown chipped in 23 yards on eight totes of the pigskin and redshirt junior Martell Pettaway added 18 on six carries. Brown's fumble on the Mountaineers' second offensive possession of the game was one of the four turnovers -- redshirt senior quarterback Will Grier had two of his passes picked off by the K-State secondary while backup signalcaller Jack Allison witnessed his only attempt of the day bounce off the hands of redshirt senior wideout William Crest's hands and into the waiting arms of the KSU defense.
"It's only Game 3 and we haven't played in two weeks, so we needed to get out there and play," Holgorsen said when asked which unit the coaching staff learned the most about. "There's going to be things on all three sides that we learn. It's still relatively early in the season. We're a veteran team and we have great continuity with coaches, but I still think we're trying to figure out who we are."
That may happen on Saturday when WVU (3-0, 1-0 Big 12) travels to Jones AT&T Stadium (60,454) in Lubbock, Texas, to take on a Texas Tech squad (3-1, 1-0 Big 12) that is coming off a huge 41-17 win over Oklahoma State in Stillwater and is 2-4 against West Virginia since the Mountaineers joined the Big 12 in 2012.
In other Game Notes:
∫ WVU's game against TTU will kickoff at noon and will be televised on either ESPN2 or ESPNU.
∫ The Mountaineers have won back-to-back games at AT&T Stadium (48-17 in 2016 and 37-34 in 2014) but lost to the Red Raiders in Lubbock by a 49-14 margin in its first visit in 2012.
∫ Grier continued to rewrite the history books in Morgantown when he threw for five touchdowns for the fifth time in his short career at WVU. Grier has thrown for four or more touchdowns seven times in his 13-game Mountaineers career.