Quick Hits: Injury Update, Facing Ollie Gordon II, Oklahoma State Scout and more

West Virginia University head coach Neal Brown looks ahead to Oklahoma State

West Virginia University head coach Neal Brown. / Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI

The West Virginia Mountaineers (2-2, 1-0) will travel for their first Big 12 Conference road matchup Saturday against the Oklahoma State Cowboys (3-2, 0-2). Kickoff is set for 4:00 p.m. EST and the action will broadcast on ESPN2.

Injury Update

West Virginia is relatively healthy after its bye week. Cornerback TJ Crandall left the game against Kansas and is questionable heading into this week.

Receiver Justin Robinson is also questionable after missing the Kansas contest.

Safety Aubrey Burks is expected to return after leaving Mountaineer Field on a stretcher against the Jayhawks.

Linebacker Reid Carrico is expected to return to the field after his absence against Kansas and receiver Preston Fox is expected to be a full participant after he was limited to a couple of punt returns for a fair catch versus Kansas.

Oklahoma State’s 0-2 Big 12 start

They’re coming into this game off two losses, but if you look at what they did last year, playing in the Big 12 Conference Championship game, they had two losses in a row too. They lost to South Alabama and Iowa State, and they rebounded to get all they way to the conference championship game. And so, for coach (Mike) Gundy, and a lot of that staffs been together for a long time, they’ve dealt with adversity before, and they’ve come back. We fully expect to get their best.

Facing reigning Big 12 Player of the Year RB Ollie Gordon II

I think he got banged up a little bit, but he played really well early [last week] against Kansas State (72 yards on nine carries in the first quarter. Finished with 16 carries and 76 rushing yards)

Last year’s game, we did some really nice things defensively. What hurt us is we missed some tackles on third down, a couple of them on Pressley. In the fourth quarter, we tried to force the issue. We got behind after we had the error where we rant into our own punt returner and then we got in a game where we were playing a little bit of catch up and we had to gamble a little bit on defense and then we didn’t split the fit the split zone a couple of times and that’s what hit us. He hit three explosive runs and I think two of them were on split zone and we didn’t fit it very well. He’s a great player. He’s going to be an NFL Player. He’s got great size and speed. We got to make sure we get multiple hats to the ball. We can’t ask our guys to be in multiple one on one situations and always get him down.

He's played well this season. I don’t think his numbers completely tell the story. He’s going to have breakout games - I just hope it’s not against us.

Oklahoma State defense

Theres some stats their struggling in but there’s some statistics theyre doing really well in too. Where they really stick out is takeaways, third downs and redzones. They’ve done a really good job in those three areas. Traditionally, regardless of who the defensive coordinator is at Oklahoma State, they’ve done a really good job in those three areas.

OSU QB Alan Bowman

He’s sneaky [athletic]. They’ve called some quarterback runs. He’s hurt people with quarterback draw. They ran some quarterback power last week. They have some plays for him.

The thing that he does that is unique is he gets the ball out of his hand really fast. They’ve only given up one sack all year and that’s as much credit to him, probably more credit to him than the offensive line and the offensive line has done a really good job in pass protection, but he gets the ball out of his hand. He makes it really difficult to get to him.