Texas Football: Ranking difficulty of every Big 12 game in 2019

7. West Virginia Mountaineers

Last season, West Virginia was a thorn in the side of Texas football for the entire game. But that was largely due to all the extreme skill position talent former head coach Dana Holgorsen had at his disposal. Holgorsen is gone and the West Virginia coaching staff is trying to find consistency heading into Big 12 play.

West Virginia is just as difficult to figure out as Kansas this season. Nearly losing to the FCS James Madison Dukes and getting thoroughly dominated by the Mizzou Tigers showed that West Virginia might have a lot of growing pains under first-year head coach, formerly with the Troy Trojans, Neal Brown.

Before beating West Virginia, Mizzou lost to the Wyoming Cowboys on the road in disappointing fashion. But where West Virginia really came to the forefront to represent the Big 12 was in a nice 44-27 home victory over head coach Dave Doeren and the NC State Wolfpack last weekend.

Former Oklahoma quarterback Austin Kendall and breakthrough wide receiver Sam James led the way for the Mountaineers in the three possession victory over NC State in Week 3. The ground game also isn’t a question in the slightest for West Virginia as they will ride star running back Kennedy McKoy as far as they can go.