Week 8 College Football Power Rankings

The team that no one is talking about: the West Virginia Mountaineers.

West Virginia has been flying under everyone’s radar all year long, and the reason for that is their schedule. Take a look at their schedule and think to yourselves; is this team legit?

They have played Missouri, Youngstown State, BYU, Kansas State, Texas Tech and TCU, not exactly a bunch of quality opponents. Although, after their bye week this team seems to be hitting their stride. They went to Texas Tech and won rather easily 48-17 before coming home and beating TCU on Saturday 34-10.

After doing a lot of research I still can’t even answer the question I asked you all above; is this team legit? To be honest I really don’t have a clue. Their defense has improved drastically in the last couple of weeks. After giving up on average 20 points per game in their first four games, they have cut that number to 13.5 in the following weeks. There’s no question that their offense can put up points, failing to put up at least 26 points just once all year (17 Week 5), but can they keep this up?

The Mountaineers have a rather generous schedule to finish off the season. Yes, they play more quality opponents in Oklahoma and Baylor, but both of those games come at home. The game to really watch out for is this week, when they travel to Stillwater to play Oklahoma State. I think this could be a so-called “trap game” for the Mountaineers, and it will be important for their offense to come out fast and silence the crowd early, as it is only their second road game of the season.

Next Matchup: at Oklahoma State