The Longhorns knew keeping West Virginia wide receiver Kevin White from beating them Saturday would be crucial, and easier said than done. White entered the game one of the nation’s top receivers with 75 catches for 1,075 yards and eight touchdowns.
While he got his catches (16) and yards (142) against the Longhorns, he didn’t sniff the end zone and did little damage while the game remained in the balance. Texas jumped out to a 24-3 lead at the half and held that advantage through a sluggish third quarter. Senior corner Quandre Diggs, long regarded as the Longhorns’ best defensive back, drew the task of covering White throughout the game and more than held his own.
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Texas coach Charlie Strong didn’t admit to challenging Diggs to cover White wherever the WVU star went on the field, nor did Diggs say he went to the coaches and demanded to cover White. The Mountaineers’ standard alignment made the move an easy one, Strong said after the game.
“What West Virginia did, they just went right and left with their wide receivers,” Strong pointed out. “So, what we did with Quandre is we put him on the left side because [Kevin] White always aligns to the right and [Mario] Alford always aligns to the offensive left. We put Duke [Thomas] on –Alford, so Quandre was on our left.”
Thomas answered the call as well, holding Alford to just 31 yards on five catches, but it was Diggs’ effort on White that got everyone’s attention.
“One thing about Diggs, if you challenge him, he’s going to accept it, and he’s not going to back down, and he will not run away from it at all,” Strong said Monday. “It was just great.”
White got off to a fast start, catching five first-quarter passes for 61 yards but all but vanished for the next 30 minutes, when Texas stretched its lead from 7-3 to 24-3.
“But for the most part, Diggs made him work, and made him a non-factor for most of the pivotal second and third quarters,” wrote Mike Finger in the San Antonio Express-News. Under close coverage from Diggs, White caught just six balls in the second and third quarters, the longest of which went for 11 yards.
He did little fourth quarter damage until late, when he caught five passes for 39 yards, the last of which gained him nothing as Diggs and teammates dragged him down at the one yard line as time expired.
Kirk Bohls caught up with Diggs after the game for the Austin American-Statesman and asked about White’s last-ditch effort.
“I wasn’t going to let him get in the end zone,” said Diggs, who had five tackles and a key interception. “He caught a lot of passes in the fourth quarter, and it was pissing me off. I guess they wanted to get him a touchdown to boost his stats.”
Diggs may not have won the individual battle – White had a season high 16 catches and drew a pair of interference flags on the Longhorn – but he and his team won the war, something he enjoyed talking about after the game.
“You’re going to have bad plays, he’s [WVU’s Kevin White] a great receiver,” Diggs said. “There’s not too much that can get me down in a football game. I’m a very confident player. I just use the techniques that the coaches tell me and they put me in great position. I’ve played this game for a long time, you’re going to have ups and downs, I bounced back and I think I played well.”
His coach agreed, praising the undersized senior for rising to the occasion of an oversized challenge.
“Quandre is one of those guys that for his size he plays so big and he plays so smart, he can body a guy up,” Strong said of his 5-foot-10 corner who played every bit as tall as the 6-foot-3 White. “He knows what his limitations are, and he plays within them. It’s just fun to watch him because you look at that match-up and all year long White has gone up over guys, taking balls away from them. But it was just good to watch how well [Diggs] played.”
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