MORGANTOWN — Maybe it lacked the basic offensive aesthetics that have marked West Virginia football over the last decade.

Or maybe this is a new era of Mountaineer football.

Either way, WVU coach Bill Stewart had to be pleased after his team opened the 2010 season with a defense-dominated 31-0 win over Coastal Carolina Saturday at Milan Puskar Stadium.

“I’m very pleased with the way our defense adjusted, reacted and took control of that football game,” Stewart said. “They got us on a couple routes early, a quick screen and a shallow route, but then our men adjusted and they adjusted very well.”

The last time the Mountaineers started a season with a shutout win was Aug. 31, 1996, when they beat Pittsburgh 34-0.

The Geno Smith era at WVU commenced with the sophomore signalcaller completing 20 of 27 passes for 216 yards and two touchdowns. He was also intercepted twice.

A lot of his throws were high-percentage screens and short passes in the flat. His long throw was 33 yards.

But it was more than enough.

Noel Devine added 111 yards — 55 of those on three carries to start the fourth quarter for the final points of the game — and Jock Sanders had eight catches for 71 yards and a touchdown and Tavon Austin five for 90.

WVU never let the Chanticleers inside its 20 and West Virginia’s defense limited Coastal Carolina to just 186 yards, including just 71 in the first half.

Meanwhile, the score was still just 10-0 at the break.

WVU took the opening kickoff and used a 16-play, 73-yard drive that took eight minutes off the clock and ended in a 4-yard Smith to J.D. Woods pass. A 21-yard Tyler Bitancurt field goal in the second quarter built the lead to 10-0.

The Mountaineers twice let scoring opportunities elude them early and it looked like disaster might have struck after the Chanticleers’ Dominique Davenport intercepted a Smith pass and returned it to the WVU 21. But the defense came to the rescue.

Brandon Hogan intercepted Zack MacDowell on the very next play to end that threat.

“I told the defense we weren’t going to let them score,” Hogan said. “That is the difference between this year and last season. We go onto the field expecting that we are going to stop the offense from scoring.”

“We fought hard, but we have to fight that fight and have the execution and discipline not to make mistakes,” Coastal Carolina coach David Bennett said. “Great first half, but there are two halves to football and we’ve got to be able to play both halves.”

For Smith, it was all about keeping it in perspective.

“We just had to stay patient,” he said. “It wasn’t like we weren’t moving the ball up and down the field. And Coastal, they have a lot of good athletes. The key for us was to stay patient and obviously it worked out in the end.”

The Mountaineers struck quickly in the second half when Darwin Cook recovered Adrian Sullivan’s fumble on the second-half kickoff.

Three plays later, Smith hooked up with Sanders on a 17-yard touchdown and a 17-0 lead.

Finally, late in the third, West Virginia got back into the red zone and went directly to its jumbo package, with Ryan Clarke getting three straight carries and a touchdown.

“We wanted to spread them out,” Stewart said of earlier forays into the red zone. “What they were doing, they had the guys up in the line of scrimmage. So we wanted to spread them out with the little quick guys and see if we could make them cover (them) and see if Noel could catch a crease.

“We tried it and I said, ‘You know what, let’s just put the big guys in there and bang on them and do what we do best, play physical football.’ We did that for a reason, but what we probably need to do there is throw the ball or get in the big set and pound them.”

West Virginia was 9-of-17 on third downs and held Coastal to just 2-of-14. And the Mountaineers had just three penalties in the game.

“Third-down conversions and turnovers are huge,” Bennett said. “We have to do better than that.”

West Virginia (1-0) is at Marshall on Friday night.

— E-mail: demorrison@

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