No. 2 Baylor Defeats WVU 62-38
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WACO (AP) — Corey Coleman caught three more touchdowns and second-ranked Baylor won its FBS-best 19th consecutive home game, getting some measure of revenge with a 62-38 victory over West Virginia on Saturday.
Coleman matched and then broke the single-season school record for TD catches, his nation-leading 16 coming halfway through the regular season for the Bears (6-0, 3-0 Big 12).
Seth Russell became the only Baylor quarterback other than Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III in 2011 to throw for 300 yards and run for 100 yards in the same game. Russell was 20 of 33 for 380 yards and five TD passes and ran 14 times for 160 yards with another score.
Baylor's only regular-season loss last year was 41-27 at West Virginia, and the Bears wound up the first team left out of the initial College Football Playoff.
Skyler Howard, from Fort Worth, less than 100 miles from the Baylor campus, threw four TD passes for West Virginia (3-3, 0-3).
Coleman finished with 10 catches for 199 yards, his fourth consecutive game with multiple touchdowns and his seventh in a row with at least 100 yards receiving. The 5-foot-11 junior had catch-and-run plays of 50 and 42 yards without scoring.
His 2-yard TD catch, a play after Baylor converted a fourth-and-1 midway through the first quarter, put the Bears ahead for good at 14-7 and matched Kendall Wright's school record 14.
With an 11-yard score in the second quarter, Coleman surpassed Wright, the current Tennessee Titans receiver whose record season at Baylor came while catching passes from RG3.
After Coleman added a 33-yard score soon after halftime, on a short fourth-down pass when he quickly cut back and the defender slipped down trying to keep up, Russell threw two TD passes to Jay Lee in a span of just over 4 minutes.
Russell has an FBS-best 27 TD passes, well in range of Griffin's school record 37 in 2011.
The standout rusher in the game featuring the Big 12's top two running backs was Russell, who put the Bears up 7-0 with his 16-yard score on the game's fourth play.
West Virginia needed only three plays to score after that, with Howard's 70-yard TD to Shelton Gibson, who was wide open near midfield by the Baylor sideline, then cut across the field and ran untouched to the end zone.
That quickly brought back memories of the 2012 game, though they didn't keep up the pace of West Virginia's first conference game after moving into the league. The Mountaineers beat Baylor 70-63 at home then in the highest-scoring game in Big 12 history.
Gibson added a 100-yard kickoff return with 1:05 left, right after Baylor surpassed 60 points for the fifth game in a row on backup quarterback Jarrett Stidham's 9-yard TD pass to tight end Trevor Clemons-Valdez.
Shock Linwood had 19 carries for 84 yards for Baylor, well below his league-best 143.8 average, and breaking his string of four consecutive 100-yard games.
Wendell Smallwood was held to 89 yards on 12 carries, including a 52-yard run, after three 100-yard games in a row for West Virginia. He came in the game second in the league at 117.8 yards per game.
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