MORGANTOWN — If you were hoping for some answers as to what the real potential is for this WVU football team under head coach Rich Rodriguez, we do have some.

If you were hoping for the whole kit and caboodle following West Virginia’s 45-3 victory against Robert Morris on Saturday, inside Milan Puskar Stadium, you’ve come to the wrong place.

There is serious doubt anyone has all of those answers at this point.

“Well, I’d like to say that was a typical game,” Rodriguez said afterwards. “Obviously we didn’t play well in the first half. It was West Virginia beating West Virginia.”

WVU (1-0) walked into halftime with just a 10-0 lead after turning the ball over three times. That was not the ideal start to a Rodriguez era that has tons of eggs packed into his basket in terms of what the future of WVU athletics will look like in the years to come.

“I was as cool as a cucumber,” joked WVU quarterback Nicco Marchiol. “Fumbles are a part of the game. Coach Rod kind of had the same message for us at halftime, that we got it out of our system.”

It was sort of like a basketball player taking his first free throw in the first game of the season, and he airballs it badly. The knee-jerk assumption is the guy is just an awful free-throw shooter, but then you look at the stats in March and the guy is an 80% or 85% shooter at the line.

That’s essentially what the WVU football team pulled off in Game 1, shooting a bad airball, at least offensively. The question now: Are the Mountaineers an 85% shooter by the end of the season or just a collection of airballs?

That’s the part no one can answer for sure, probably not even Rodriguez himself.

What we can tell you is it appears this WVU defense will be pretty good against the run. Robert Morris (0-1) averaged just 1.4 yards per carry. I’m told that’s pretty good news for WVU defensive coordinator Zac Alley, regardless of the level of competition WVU did or did not face.

“That’s a scary defense to go against,” Marchiol said. “I’ve been waiting to say it. We’ve had to go against it all camp. Man, they’ve got some guys.”

Robert Morris really didn’t bother to throw the ball downfield. When the Colonials tried, either quarterback Zach Tanner had two WVU defenders in his face or his receivers dropped the ball, so we can’t really tell you if this WVU secondary is going to be any type of improvement from the dreadful secondaries of the recent past. At least not yet.

Other observations:

** Running back Jahiem White was solid (18 carries, 93 yards, two TDs), but let’s not just simply assume he’s the second coming of Steve Slaton just because he’s playing in Rodriguez’s offense.

His longest carry went for 19 yards and he averaged 5.2 yards per attempt. Not bad, but this was Robert Morris, not Arizona State.

“Jahiem ran hard,” Rodriguez said. “I’m a little disappointed we didn’t get him loose for some longer runs. I’m going to have to see what the reason for that was. Maybe they had us outnumbered. I don’t know what the case was.

“He’s an explosive guy and we didn’t get him enough explosive opportunities today. We have to figure out what happened with that.”

** There appears to be a little bit of juice behind WVU sophomore receiver Cam Vaughn.

His stats were good – seven catches, 127 yards, one TD – but the impression he made went well beyond his stats.

“Cam is one of the most explosive guys, I think, in the country,” Rodriguez said.

Like many of his WVU teammates, Vaughn’s college career began elsewhere. He began at Jacksonville State with Rodriguez, where Vaughn caught 48 passes for 803 yards and five scores last season.

“We thought when he signed, he was a Power Four talent,” Rodriguez said. “He was a quarterback and a lot of other people couldn’t project him playing another position. We told him we’d give him a shot playing quarterback, and that lasted about an hour.

“He’s still learning (receiver). He’s a competitive guy and it’s important to him.”

Most would say Vaughn’s best moment was his 46-yard touchdown reception early in the fourth quarter.

The view from here is his best moment might have come in the second quarter, on a play that finished with him fumbling the ball into the end zone for a touchback. Not to say you excuse the fumble, but that play began with him catching the ball near the WVU sideline and then Vaughn completely leaped over a Robert Morris defender to get himself downfield.

“That was my first fumble,” Vaughn said. “I’ve never fumbled the football before. It’s the next-play mentality. I knew I was going to respond to it.”

OK, but what about jumping over another human being while in football gear?

“I want to say I did that at least 20 times in high school,” Vaughn said matter-of-factly.

** Finally, what’s the thought of Marchiol running this WVU offense? He was definitely efficient, completing 17 of 20 passes. He fell short of spectacular, and the Mountaineers may need a little spectacular as this season wears on.

The interesting part is that through three quarters, WVU’s rushing yards and passing yards were pretty balanced (194 rush, 167 pass). In the fourth quarter, WVU’s rushing yards just took over. In the first three quarters, though, this was not exactly the run-happy Rich Rod offense at WVU we knew back in 2007.

“Whatever your quarterback’s strengths are is what you’re going to feature,” Rodriguez said. “You think you have an idea, but we’ve only played one game. As the season goes along, with the quarterbacks, we’ll have a better idea what they do well and what they can execute in the offense and then we’ll take it from there.”