No. 22 Houston looks to stay in Big 12 title race against West Virginia

Houston football is sitting at 7-1 and ranked No. 22 nationally. Now the Cougars are hosting an opponent at TDECU Stadium as a ranked team, a position they haven’t been in since 2021.

It’s another benchmark for a program, now in its second year of the coach Willie Fritz era, that has continued to rewrite outside expectations.

Meanwhile, West Virginia is off to an 0-5 start in conference play, and is one of two schools in the conference to have not won at least one game against another Big 12 team.

“They’ve had a tough schedule, but we’re gonna have to play great,” Fritz said. “I told our guys it’s a good ball club that we’re playing.”

As Houston looks to further its momentum following different benchmarks in consecutive weeks, here are some of the storylines heading into Saturday.

Homage to coach Hester

Before Fritz’s weekly press conference on Monday, UH announced that Saturday’s home game against West Virginia will be a ‘blackout game’ in honor of the late director of strength and conditioning Kurt Hester, whose favorite color was black.

Hester passed away Saturday prior to Houston’s upset win over No. 24 Arizona State, following an eight-month battle with stage IV melanoma. 

The Cougars will also don Hester’s “unbreakable” motto on their helmet bumpers. He channeled the slogan for the final eight months of his life.

The Spirit of Houston marching band will honor the late Hester with a special halftime performance that will spell out his “unbreakable” slogan on the field.

Weigman’s wheels

Heading into this season, there was an understanding that junior quarterback Conner Weigman would be used in designed run packages, fitting into coach Willie Fritz’s mold of dual-threat quarterbacks.

After all, at Texas A&M under coaches Jimbo Fisher and later Mike Elko, Weigman had already shown flashes of his ground game, rushing for 261 yards across 15 games and scoring two touchdowns.

But those flashes were merely a preview of the array he would start showcasing in Houston.

Through his first eight starts this season, Weigman has run for 354 yards, averaging 44.3 yards per carry. His eight rushing touchdowns lead the team, and are the 12th most nationally amongst all FBS quarterbacks.

Weigman is also off the heels of his two top rushing performances of the season: 14 carries for 98 yards against Arizona, and a pair of career-highs against No. 24 Arizona State the week after, with 21 carries for 111 yards.

West Virginia yields one of the bottom-third rushing defenses in the Big 12 conference, surrendering four yards per carry and allowing the fifth-most rushing yards per game.

Weigman’s volume of rushes has alleviated pressure on senior running back Dean Connors, who has a Big 12 Conference-leading 135 carries heading into Saturday, and on a battered position room that has been without sophomore Re’Shaun Sanford II and senior Stacy Sneed, who could be made available against WVU.

Staying in the title race

Houston is one of four Big 12 programs currently in a deadlock for the conference title. 

Though No. 10 BYU and No. 17 Cincinnati are tied for the lead with a 5-0 in-conference record, No. 13 Texas Tech and Houston are right behind at 4-1 setting up for a crucial final month of the regular season.

A loss would effectively take Houston out of contention for the conference crown, given it already yields a loss, handed by then-No. 11 Texas Tech in early October.

But a win would keep the Cougars right in the fold, with BYU still having matchups against both Texas Tech and Cincinnati down the stretch. 

As of week 10, Houston does not have any other ranked opponents on its schedule, and only one opponent in TCU boasts a winning record in conference play (3-2).

West Virginia’s quarterback fiasco 

The Mountaineers’ quarterback carousel has been spinning all season, but it may have just come to a halt. 

Five different quarterbacks have seen snaps with West Virginia this season, including four different starters. 

The past two games however, West Virginia has called on freshman Scotty Fox Jr., who is coming off his top performance of the season, throwing for 301 yards, two touchdowns and completing 28 of his 41 passes in a 17-23 loss to TCU.

“He seems to understand what they’re doing, and they were within a whisker of winning last week,” Fritz said.

Fox became the first true freshman to start for WVU since 1952, in a world where they are hardly ever thrusted into a starting role.

Despite the age and lack of experience at the college level, his 301 yards through the air were the most by a true freshman in program history. 

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