Season now complete, WVU awaits bowl destination
After a 24-21 victory over Baylor on Saturday, West Virginia reaches its second 10 win season in the Dana Holgorsen era and its first since the 2011 season.
The Mountaineers now await their bowl destination which will be announced Sunday evening. West Virginia is projected by many to play either in the Russell Athletic Bowl in Orlando or the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio but head coach Dana Holgorsen thinks different.
Holgorsen didn’t hold back his opinion on his team’s ranking in the polls after the Baylor game, having not commented on it throughout the season. He believes the Mountaineers should be ranked higher in the polls and are deserving to play in a power-six bowl game.
“For the life of me, I can’t figure out how we’re ranked 16th,” Holgorsen said. “We’ve got two losses to two top-10 schools. There’s other schools that have two and three losses that are ahead of us that don’t have losses to top-10 schools. I don’t get how that is.”
When you break down the losses that teams ranked ahead of West Virginia and the quality of opponents that these teams have lost to, Holgorsen makes a valid point.
The Mountaineers have two losses on the season to two quality opponents in Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. The Sooners are have won back-to-back Big 12 championships and are ranked ninth in the College Football Playoff rankings.
Oklahoma State is ranked right behind the Sooners at 10th but will likely drop some in the rankings following its loss to Oklahoma on Saturday.
Before this weekend there were six two-loss teams ranked ahead of the Mountaineers along with four three-loss teams and even one four-loss team.
Wisconsin is the only team two-loss team ranked ahead of West Virginia that has losses to two top-10 teams in the regular season. The Badgers have lost to Ohio State and Michigan who are both ranked in the top five. But added another loss to Penn State in the Big 10 Championship game leaving the program with three losses.
Other schools like 14th ranked Auburn, a four-loss team, and even the Big 10 champions, Penn State each have at least one loss to an unranked team. The Nittany Lions fell to Pitt and early on and the Tigers suffered SEC losses to both Texas A&M and Georgia. Each of those teams have at least four losses, while Oklahoma and Oklahoma State have five losses combined.
When you look at the wins and losses and take into consideration the quality of the losses, it’s no question that West Virginia deserves to be ranked higher than what they are. This is a team that was projected to finish seventh in the Big 12 this season and have surpassed everyone’s expectations.
A possible reason why the Mountaineers have been snubbed in the rankings could be because the team has produced some ugly wins but according Holgorsen, a win is a win at the end of the day.
“This has fought hard,” Holgorsen said. “At the end of the day, I thought it was about winning football games. And we’ve won 10.”
At this point, there’s nothing more that West Virginia can do to prove its case for a power-six bowl game. No matter what bowl the Mountaineers are invited to play in, they will have the chance send their seniors out with a bowl win and an 11-win season which would be the team’s first since 2007.
“There’s a lot of good bowl games out there and no matter where we go, we’re going to be excited about going and hopefully we’ll get to eleven,” Holgorsen said.