Cobourne has record-breaking day as WVU routs Pirates
MORGANTOWN, W. Va. – West Virginia center Zack Dillow wasn’t completely satisfied with the offensive line’s performance against East Carolina Saturday. “You always miss blocks,” Dillow, an Albert Gallatin graduate, said. “It’s like (offensive line) Coach (Rick) Trickett says, when you watch film, you see that you never play as well as you think you did and you never play as poorly as you think either.”
Yada, yada, yada …
Missed assignments and all, Dillow and his fellow offensive linemen played superbly, as did running backs Avon Cobourne and Quincy Wilson, in a 37-17 victory over the Pirates before 54,497 at Mountaineer Field.
When the dust settled, Cobourne had accumulated 260 yards on 30 carries, but it was a three-yard scamper with roughly 10 minutes remaining that ensured the elusive running back a place in the WVU record books.
Cobourne passed former Mountaineer and current Pittsburgh Steelers running back Amos Zereoue (1996-98) as West Virginia’s all-time career yardage leader with 4,093 yards.
“I didn’t know I was close,” said Cobourne, who also scored a pair of touchdowns. “I only knew I had a lot of yards. It didn’t seem like it was coming easy, and I was a little fatigued in the third quarter. The line kept playing well and opening those holes that anybody could run through.’
Well, not just anybody, but Wilson for sure. The junior superback stepped, juked and darted out of Cobourne’s shadow often enough to amass 198 yards of his own on 14 carries, one of which went 73 yards for a touchdown.
As a team, West Virginia rushed for 536 yards, bettering Virginia Tech’s previous Big East high of 500 against Pittsburgh in 1993. Both Cobourne and Wilson set single-game career highs, as Cobourne picked up 210 of his yards in the opening half, and Wilson accounted for all but 12 of his in the final two quarters.
Coming into Saturday, Cobourne needed 254 yards to break Zereoue’s record. He had 114 after only one quarter, including a 52-yard touchdown run on his first carry after a fumble on WVU’s opening possession was returned 80 yards for an East Carolina score.
By halftime, Cobourne was well within reach of the record, amassing 210 yards on 18 carries. His halftime totals fell four yards short of breaking Armin Mahrt’s mark set against Marietta in 1922.
“Avon’s the hardest worker I know,” Dillow said. “He stops at no end … words can’t describe his work ethic. He’s a superb back. He makes our blocks easier because he might cut a certain way, then come back.
“Usually, when you can nail your fundamentals, you can bust him out of the gate real quick. I’ve never played with anybody close to his level.”
Wilson, who had just 12 yards on five carries at the half, answered an East Carolina touchdown with the longest run of the game, a 73-yarder which started as a fake to Cobourne. The run also marked the longest play from scrimmage under Rodriguez, in his second season.
“I told him last night (Friday), ‘Q, you’re going to have a big game’ because this was the first time I had seen Quincy work as hard has he did in practice. He actually made me want to give something extra because he was doing great in practice.
“We put the two of us in the backfield and they didn’t know which way we were going. That really messed them up. They knew what side I was going to run to if I was just in the game. But when we put Quincy in the game too, it equaled it all out.”
After falling behind on Kelly Hardy’s fumble return, West Virginia scored 27 unanswered points. Cobourne’s first touchdown tied it, then WVU’s Arthur Harrison recovered a loose ball in the end zone when East Carolina’s Terrance Copper failed to handle a punt. West Virginia quarterback Rasheed Marshall put the hosts ahead, 20-7, when he called his number at the Pirates’ 1, then recovered his own fumble in the end zone.
Cobourne’s second touchdown, a seven-yarder, made it 27-7 with 42 seconds left in the first half.
“They were just a lot faster than we were,” said East Carolina coach Steve Logan. “They beat us off the ball on both sides. We could not stop the run, and we could not run ourselves.”
While West Virginia was running rampant, the Pirates (1-3) were struggling mightily, finishing with 65 yards on 24 carries. More than half that total, however, came on Chris Gilliam’s 37-yard run on a fake punt.