John Pennington's tenure as West Virginia State's football coach couldn't have gotten off to a much better start than it did Saturday afternoon as the Yellow Jackets rolled to a 51-28 win over the University of Charleston at Dickerson Stadium.
It was WVSU's first victory over the Golden Eagles since 2008 and just the fifth time since 2011 that the Yellow Jackets scored more than 40 points in a game.
"This is the way we had envisioned it being. It doesn't always work out that way, but we knew that they've had the upper hand on us for a while and we wanted to turn that around this year," Pennington said. "We knew if we did our job and worked hard then things could work out in our favor. Our guys did an incredible job of just focusing on their jobs and that's why we got the outcome we needed."
It took three plays for West Virginia State to get on the board in the first quarter, as Matt Kinnick found Quinton Gray for a short pass that Gray turned into a 59-yard touchdown pass that was the first of four on the day for Kinnick.
The senior signal caller started the day completing his first eight passes and finished with 311 yards on 22 of 27 passing while spreading the ball around to 10 different receivers.
"Matt was incredible today. His decision making and his leadership out there is exactly what we know he's capable of," Pennington said. "He knew exactly what he was doing, he's so prepared. And it's not a surprise to us because we see him do it every day.
"He had never beaten UC before and this was a game he had circled for a long time, and it was great to see him perform like he did."
While the WVSU offense was clicking on all cylinders right away, the Yellow Jackets were feeding off of that momentum and using it to put together a strong defensive showing as well. The Yellow Jackets held the Golden Eagles to just seven points in the first half in their first game under new defensive coordinator George Shehl and the unit's new 3-3-5 stack defensive scheme.
With the two teams battling the elements on the rainy, muddy day in Institute, Pennington was pleased with the way that his defense was able to keep the team's momentum rolling and not allow Charleston to do much damage early on.
"George has helped to change the mindset of this defense. In the past, when teams would drive on us we'd get frustrated and it would unravel but our guys were locked in today," Pennington said. "They played with great fundamentals and we tackled well. If you tackle well and you pursue the ball, you're going to have a pretty good chance to win most of the time."
Charleston refused to go away without a fight though. After falling behind 44-7 when State opened the second half with a touchdown run from Juawan Etheredge and a pass from Kinnick to A.J. Barrette, the Golden Eagles continued to fight to cut into the deficit.
UC scored 21 unanswered points, getting two touchdown runs and a passing score from quarterback Mason Olszewski and made it a 16-point game with less than five minutes to play.
And even though the Yellow Jackets were able to get a late score from Etheredge to seal the game late in the fourth quarter, the Golden Eagles were able to settle into a groove on both sides of the ball at times and work their way back into it when they could have quit.
"I knew this group wasn't going to quit and I was proud of the way they kept fighting," UC coach Pat Kirkland said. "It was just unfortunate that we couldn't get things going and couldn't get stops on defense. I'm still really excited about this group, we just had a lot of mishaps in this really tough environment. We didn't do a very good job of playing in these conditions today."
Redshirt freshman Calil Wilkins ran for XXX yards on XX carries in his WVSU debut, scoring on a 7-yard touchdown run in the second quarter. Quinton Gray led the deep West Virginia State receiving corps with six catches for 79 yards and two touchdowns while Zach Pate caught five passes for 77 yards.
Olszewski had a big day offensively for the Golden Eagles. The junior quarterback completed 10 of 15 passes for 78 yards and a touchdown and carried the ball 19 times, gaining 182 yards with two more scores.