West Virginia almost played Oklahoma twice but the games were never played due to the Chinese coronarvirus. So the Mountaineers never faced Oklahoma quarterback Spencer Rattler.

“I don’t think it’s an advantages or disadvantage,” said Mountaineer coach Neal Brown. “We did prepare twice, one game postponed and the other canceled. I was impressed with his growth from the beginning of the season to the end, and that’s a credit to Lincoln (Riley) and the offensive staff.

“The thing he does that shows up on film, because we saw Oklahoma a lot on crossover film, so we watched him a lot as we went through our Big 12 season last year, he’s got elite arm talent. He has the unique ability to buy time and create with his feet, he’s a creator. And he has great players around him, and that’s not going to change.”

Brown expects another strong West Virginia defense.

“I thought we had one of the best defensive units in the Big 12 Conference last year and nationally, and our statistics back that up,” said Brown.  “Offensively, we made growth,” he said. “We struggled, didn’t play very well the last two games of the season offensively, I think that skewed the stats. But for the first time we have experience on that side of the ball, especially up front. For us to make a step in our league, and we went from kind of the bottom in 2019 to the middle of 2020, for us to make the next step to the top tier is we have to be more productive on that side of the ball. Starts at quarterback. Jarret Doege returns. He probably had the best spring of anybody on the offensive side of the ball.”