Game Info
Baylor Bears vs. West Virginia Mountaineers
Saturday – October 18 – 11:00 am
TV: FOX Sports 1
Milan Puskar Stadium – Morgantown
The defending Big 12 champion Bears (6-0, 3-0) are going from winning the highest-scoring game ever between Top 10 teams to their first trip to West Virginia since a 70-63 loss there two years ago. That’s the highest-scoring game in league history. Baylor overcame a 21-point deficit in the final 11 minutes last Saturday to beat the Horned Frogs 61-58 when Chris Callahan hit a 28-yard field goal on the final play of the game.
Baylor coach Art Briles started talking Monday about the significance of the fourth-ranked Bears’ wild comeback victory over TCU. Never once did he mention the playoff hopes for the Big 12’s only undefeated team.
“First of all, we got bowl eligible and secondly, it keeps us in the competition for a Big 12 championship,” Briles said. “From that standpoint, it’s a momentum win. The way that we are looking at this week is to ride the momentum six more days. …So we will take advantage of riding the high for five or six days. You can do that, but you can’t stay that way for an extended period of time. That’s what our plan is going to be (Saturday) going into West Virginia.”
Baylor quarterback Bryce Petty threw for 510 yards and six touchdowns with two of them coming in the fourth quarter.
West Virginia (4-2, 2-1) also is coming off a big fourth-quarter comeback at Texas Tech that ended with a field goal as time expired last weekend. The Mountaineers trailed by 14 points in the fourth quarter, and have now matched their 2013 victory total.
Baylor leads the country in scoring offense (52.7 ppg) and total offense (622.5 ypg) through the first six games of the season. Currently Baylor’s offense is the only one in the country to be in the top-five of total offense each of the last four years.
Baylor has won nine of its last 11 games outside of Waco (dating into the 2012 season), including a 3-0 mark this year. In that span, the Bears are 6-1 in true road games and 3-1 in neutral-site games (1-1 in bowl games and 1-2 vs. ranked opponents).
With that being said I predict Baylor to roll easy over West Virginia this week 48-27.
