Moment proves too much for Mountaineers

The scene was set for West Virginia. A top ten matchup against a powerhouse program in Oklahoma with Big 12 Conference Championship implications.

A win and the football program had a clear path to its first conference crown since joining the league since 2012. A home-game, the first between top ten teams since 1993 against Miami, at night. It was the setting for a big-time college football game. But it turned out to fall flat.

The game started with the Sooners stomping on the flying WV logo at midfield and ended with them doing the same to the Mountaineers’ Big 12 title aspirations in convincing fashion.

After the game, several West Virginia coaches and players used the phrase that maybe “the moment was too big,” for the Mountaineers. And maybe it was.

The Mountaineers started the game in a 34-0 hole and appeared out of sync as the offense struggled to generate consistent drives and the defense failed to halt the Sooners attack. After a stop on the first series of the game, the Mountaineers muffed the punt and it was all downhill from there.

Perhaps more troubling was the fact that the Mountaineers struggled to keep their emotions in check from the pre-game scuffle at midfield to multiple personal foul penalties – West Virginia was caught in a game of intimidation that Oklahoma “invented,” according to head coach Dana Holgorsen.

“That’s just kind of been their M-O for a long time and we’re not backing down from anybody,” he said.

For instance, the Mountaineers were hit with a pair of personal fouls on one play. That’s 30-yards worth of penalties in a game where West Virginia had a total of 91 yards in that department.

“We were good all the way up to this game,” defensive coordinator Tony Gibson said. “I don’t know if it’s the Saturday night prime-time game and we felt like we had to do something different.”

Entering the season, West Virginia was picked to finish seventh in the Big 12 but with three games remaining the Mountaineers had moved into the title picture. But a lesson can be learned in the future as West Virginia can now use this experience as a blue print on how to better handle these games.

While the Mountaineers did make a run to cut into the deficit and even brought it to two possessions in the fourth quarter, the damage had been done and the gap proved too wide to overcome.

The eyes of college football were upon Morgantown but it ended up being the Sooners that walked away as the talk of the day. If the Mountaineers get another chance, it must come with better discipline and clear focus on the task at hand. Because it’s hard enough to beat good teams without mistakes.

“They were more physical. We let all the emotions get to us and they got us out of our game. We let them dictate the entire first half,” redshirt senior linebacker Justin Arndt said.

But for now it’s onto Iowa State and waiting for the next opportunity to prove that the moment isn’t too big for the Mountaineers.