West Virginia shows fight, but has more to learn

West Virginia went toe-to-toe with No. 4 Oklahoma for 59:58 of the football game Saturday night.

Only problem with that was it required the full 60-minutes as Gabe Brkic booted through a 30-yard field goal as time expired to give the Sooners their one and only lead of the ballgame.

It was an impressive effort overall, but even more so when you consider that this was on the road in a place where Oklahoma simply hasn’t lost many games. It was there for the taking but slipped through the collective fingers of the Mountaineers.

“I love our guys. I love our staff; I love our players. I thought they fought their ass off really for four quarters,” head coach Neal Brown said. “That was a tough physical football game.”

The Mountaineers certainly battled and gave maximum effort on the road, that isn’t and never has been in question. Brown had his team prepared to potentially pull off the upset, but in the end mistakes and miscues loomed large in the 16-13 defeat.

A critical false start penalty that pushed the ball back from the one-yard line that resulted in settling for a field goal, a misfire on an open receiver in the end zone, a bad snap that knocked the Mountaineers out of field goal range on the final drive and more make up the rap sheet. It was the type of issues that has plagued West Virginia at various times this season and stood as a major roadblock in the upset bid.

“They executed in critical situations better than we did. That’s why they won. But they didn’t play any harder or more physical than we did,” Brown said.

Brown isn’t wrong. West Virginia made a positive impression with their play on the defensive side of the ball against the Sooners holding them to 16 points, the lowest total since Lincoln Riley has become head coach. They also limited Oklahoma to only two big plays in the game, which are runs over 10+ yards or passes over 15+ yards. That is quite the feat when dealing with an explosive offense.

"We played a team that we knew we could beat, that we outplayed for the majority of the game we just didn’t make plays in the crucial times in the game. That just falls on us," linebacker Josh Chandler-Semedo said. "We didn’t care that they were the 3 or 4 team in the country, we watched them on film and felt confident. We came in here with the mindset that we were going to win and we almost were good enough to do it."

It was the plan when Brown took over to get better on that side of the ball and it’s become clear that it’s paying off as the program has been one of the nation’s best two years in a row.

Offensively, the Mountaineers opened the game with an impressive 17-play, 75-yard drive that took over 9 minutes for a touchdown but that would be the only one of the game. West Virginia would settle for a pair of field goals and in two other red zone trips and deal with inconsistency.

“There’s going to be three or four opportunities when we had to win the game and we didn’t get it done,” Brown said.

It was a lost opportunity and one that West Virginia can’t get back. But perhaps, this close loss to one of the nation’s best teams could serve as a springboard moving forward.

“The hope is you learn from this for the next time you get in this opportunity, which we will. Our league there’s going to be a ton of these games that come down to the end and we have to figure out how to win them,” Brown said.

West Virginia was close, but now must learn how to finish. That’s the next step in the climb.

----------

• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot.

• SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting.

• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel

• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan, @JaredSerre

•Like us on Facebook