How much better is it than the one that began the season with a 31-0 shutout of Coastal Carolina and endured a monumental struggle in beating Marshall?

Is it better than the team that sandwiched routs of Maryland and UNLV around an unfortunate, turnover-fueled loss at LSU?

Is it a team that, if it had a do-over against Syracuse and Connecticut, would know what to do with it?

And is it finally as good as the team that, over the last four weeks of the season, scored 37, 35 and 35 points in three games?

Good questions, all.

Of course, in answering them we first probably need to simply settle one thing by acclimation: The defense is better. Period. No further argument needed. It's better than it was at the beginning of the season, better than in the middle and at its best at the end. It is a stifling, overwhelming unit that will finish statistically among the best in the country and, toward the end, corrected its only real weakness, which was a lack of forced turnovers.

"You know, until right before the Pitt game I didn't even know what the numbers were. I'd never looked at them,'' linebacker J.T. Thomas said. "I didn't know that we were second in this or third in that or whatever. But it's pretty good, isn't it?''

Yes. So enough about the defense.

Special teams? Well, that's nothing to brag about. Yes, West Virginia solved its two-season problem with hideous kickoff coverage. But the Mountaineers couldn't return punts or kicks all year, Gregg Pugnetti's punting was hot and cold, and Tyler Bitancurt had his fourth field goal blocked in Saturday's 35-14 win over Rutgers.

Let's just say special teams was a wash.

The real question, though, is about West Virginia's offense. That's been the Achilles' heel of this team all season. At the worst possible moments, it either sputtered or turned the ball over. The Mountaineers finished the regular season at 9-3, and all three losses can be directly pinned on the offense, which fumbled at the 7-yard line to set up LSU's only offensive touchdown, was intercepted three times by Syracuse, and fumbled the ball away four times at Connecticut.

But did that offense improve by the end of the road?

Well, let's take it from the glass-half-empty perspective first. That one is pretty easy to sum up. In WVU's two Big East losses, the Mountaineers turned the ball over seven times and scored just 14 and 13 points as a result. On Saturday, West Virginia turned it over three times again, but had a season-high 523 yards of total offense and won going away.

The pessimist would say that the only difference between Saturday's game and the two league losses was that Rutgers just wasn't good enough to make the turnovers matter. The offense, the argument will go, is still prone to self-destruction against teams capable of taking advantage.

"But it tells me our football team has gotten better,'' said coach Bill Stewart, pointing out that Rutgers was good enough this season to beat Connecticut and play Syracuse to within three points.

And Stewart is probably right. No, we don't swallow the argument that Rutgers is better than UConn because of a win back in October. Rutgers right now is just plain awful. If they played UConn again, it wouldn't be close. Rutgers vs. almost anyone wouldn't be much of a game.

Still, it is hard to argue with what this offense has managed to accomplish of late. Besides those three games of 35-plus points, Saturday's 523 yards constitute a season high by a lot. West Virginia had gained more than 400 yards only five times, and in only one of those - UConn - could the opponent be considered defensively competent.

Geno Smith passed for 352 yards against Rutgers, which is a total no one has approached since Marc Bulger was flinging passes here. Tavon Austin is starting to look like Noel Devine 2.0, the improved version. The downfield passing attack has struck big in four straight games. The short-yardage attack lives and thrives.

"The thing you have to understand is, we have a sophomore quarterback who is our third starting quarterback in the three years of this offense,'' Stewart said. "He's going to be incredible.''

Now Smith has the confidence to play, and that is helping everyone around him. That wasn't the case a month ago or so when West Virginia's offense - and its season - seemed lost.

"I think the difference now is we don't get frustrated and we don't get down on ourselves when we turn the ball over,'' Smith said. "Before, we just didn't handle adversity well.''

It helps, of course, that there is now far less adversity. Not only is the offense moving well, it is being driven harder. Gone, at least to an extent, are those infuriating stretches when West Virginia would get a lead and then try to sit on it.

"We just kept coming and coming,'' Stewart said of the Rutgers win. "I'm not playing it close to the vest. I'm not playing not to lose.''

And that might be the biggest improvement of all, right there.

Reach Dave Hickman at 304-348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.