Leddie Brown ran 19 times for 156 yards and a touchdown, backup Tony Mathis Jr. gained 118 yards on 22 carries and a patched-up Mountaineer defense stopped Kansas three times on fourth down, twice on red zone interceptions by senior linebacker Josh Chandler-Semedo.
"Tonight's win was important because now we have a chance to create some momentum," West Virginia coach Neal Brown said afterward. "We finished the year with (two) wins, we've got a chance to go to a bowl game, which is important for the senior class but it's also important as we continue to build our program."
West Virginia ran for a season-high 261 yards and had double-100-yard rushers for the first time since last year when Brown and Alec Sinkfield did it against Eastern Kentucky.
Brown's rushing total tonight pushes him over the 1,000-yard mark for the second straight season, making him one of eight players in school history to do so. He ran for 1,010 yards last season and now shows 1,057 yards at the conclusion of the regular season. Brown's 2,888 career rushing yards put him sixth in school history.
The Mountaineers (6-6, 4-5) went almost exclusively on the ground early in the third quarter after Jarret Doege's slant pass to Isaiah Esdale was intercepted by Kansas linebacker Gavin Potter and returned 28 yards for a touchdown.
Potter's score and Earl Bostick Jr.'s two-point conversion catch tied the game at 21.
After the interception, Doege attempted just two passes for the remainder of the game - one going for 7 yards to Sean Ryan and the other a 6-yarder to Esdale.
Mathis Jr. got all but 25 of his 118 yards after intermission, while Brown scored his 44-yard touchdown run on the possession following Potter's pick six.
West Virginia also turned an Akheem Mesidor fourth-down stop into three points when it marched 30 yards in nine plays, putting Casey Legg into position to kick a 38-yard field goal. That score gave WVU a 31-21 lead with 31 seconds left in the third quarter.
Kansas got the ball to the WVU 10 on the ensuing possession, but Chandler-Semedo intercepted Jalon Daniels' first-down pass in the end zone.
The Mountaineers turned Chandler's pick into three more Legg points after Mathis took his first-down carry 45 yards down the far sideline to the KU 35. Seven more runs followed, burning about five minutes off the clock before Legg's 37-yard field goal made the score 34-21.
Kansas (2-10, 1-9) made things interesting late in the game when Daniels hooked up with Jared Casey for a 43-yard gainer to the WVU 6 with 2:07 left. Two plays later, Daniels stretched out to get the football into the end zone from the 5, making it 34-28.
But Winston Wright Jr. recovered Jacob Borlia's onside kick, and WVU ran out the clock to get its sixth victory of the season and become bowl eligible for the second time in Neal Brown's three-year tenure.
Kansas got on the scoreboard first when Borila kicked a 46-yard field goal, but West Virginia responded with a Doege 14-yard touchdown pass to Wright Jr., who caught a second 14-yard scoring strike from Doege after Borila's second field goal, a 35-yarder.
Kansas pulled to within a point with 7:24 left in the second quarter when Daniels flipped an 8-yard touchdown pass to a wide open Casey in the middle of the end zone. WVU came up empty in its attempt to answer Kansas' score when Legg missed a 44-yard field goal try with 2:19 left in the half, but a Mesidor sack of Daniels on third down forced Kansas to punt the ball back to the Mountaineers with 1:49 to go.
A Brown 21-yard run immediately got West Virginia to the KU 38. Doege completed a 16-yard pass to Ryan to the Kansas 22, and following a Kansas timeout, a Brown run and a Sam James reception covered 12 more yards to the 10.
A short Doege pass to Brown preceded his 7-yard scoring hookup to James with 22 seconds left in the half. Legg's conversion kick gave the Mountaineers a 21-13 lead heading into the locker room at halftime.
"They played hard and they've gotten better, but we made it hard too," Brown said. "This was kind of a microcosm of our year in one game – just full of highs and lows. The good thing is our guys had enough resiliency to find a way to win."
Doege, who was 13-of-17 for 136 yards and three touchdowns after two quarters, finished the game 16-of-21 for 170 yards.
Ryan led WVU with five catches for 87 yards.
"I wished we could have played a little better, but I'm proud of how we handled it and how we found a way to win," Brown said.
Daniels completed 22-of-32 passes for 249 yards and a touchdown with two interceptions. Luke Grimm caught four passes for a game-high 105 yards, while Amaur Pesek-Hickson led the Jayhawk ground attack with 60 yards on 12 carries.
Kansas, which finished with 336 total yards, was just 4-of-12 on third down and 1-of-4 on fourth down.
West Virginia, with several defensive starters out with injuries, got an eight-tackle, one-TFL, two-interception performance from Chandler-Semedo. True freshman safety Saint McLeod also contributed eight tackles, six solo, while Mesidor was credited with five tackles, a sack and a quarterback hurry.
Senior safety Sean Mahone, playing in his school-record breaking 54th career game, had six tackles and a half-sack.
Safety Kenny Logan Jr. led the Jayhawks with a game-high 14 tackles, but many of those were well beyond the line of scrimmage.
West Virginia is now bowl eligible for the 18th time in the last 20 seasons and will learn its bowl destination following the conclusion of the conference championship games next Saturday.
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