Horned Frogs top Mountaineers on last-second field goal

Fast forward to a gray, damp, windy November Saturday afternoon in Morgantown.

Fast forward to a fascinatingly crucial Big 12 football game between West Virginia and TCU.

Fast forward to 31-30, TCU.

Gary Patterson was a happy man.

The same cannot be said about West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen, whose team literally let this game and their slim chance to win the Big 12 title through their fingers, turning the football over five times and blowing a coverage on the game-winning drive in what otherwise was an immaculate defensive effort.

On a day made for celebration, a day that began with Brad Paisley joining the Game Day crew for a wonderfully entertaining performance before a wild throng of Mountaineer fans and students, darkness came early.

Holgorsen took responsibility for what transpired, especially on the offensive side where after a fast start that led to a 13-0 lead things came completely undone.

“I take responsibility for what happened offensively, it was bad,” Holgorsen said in a brief post-game press conference in which he had few answers and the media had few questions. “It’s not acceptable. It’s not going to win football games.

“We turned the ball over five times and to average what we averaged per play (4.5 yards) is completely unacceptable,” he said.

Once TCU’s defense settled in, it seemed nothing worked for the Mountaineers. Clint Trickett, his offensive tackles doing as much to protect him as if they had moved the Jerry West statue from the Coliseum onto the offensive line, was running for his life most of the day.

The result was 15 of 25 completions to go with two interceptions, just 162 yards gained, the only TD being that first 23-yard touchdown fling to Mario Alford on a beautiful pass and catch under the goal post.

The statistics listed only one sack of Trickett but it is guaranteed he felt like he’d been mugged by game’s end.

We don’t know because he — or any other offensive player — was made available after the game

The running game really wasn’t much better, although Holgorsen chose to run the ball 46 times while passing it 25. It produced 197 yards, 50 of them on one breakaway run by Dreamius Smith, but there were costly fumbles by Rushel Shell and Wendell Smallwood.

Both Shell and Smallwood were running well until their first-half fumbles, then were shuffled off into the Village of the Damned, Shell carrying once more in the game, Smallwood twice.

While one would argue that 30 points should be a good offensive day, it should carry an asterisk for seven of those points came when Terrell scooped up a fumble that he caused on a completed pass and ran 35 yards for a touchdown.

Amazingly, it was WVU’s first recovery of an opponent’s fumble this season.

That was just part of what was an amazing defensive performance against a team that was averaging 51 points a game. The defenders held TCU to just 389 total yards.

Boykin’s Heisman candidacy was derailed a week after his break-out game, WVU throttling him all day, holding him to 12-of-30 passing for 166 yards.

“We played good,” said safety K.J. Dillon. “Just not good enough.”

Indeed.

“It hurts,” defensive coordinator Tony Gibson said. “Go back in that locker room and there’s guys hurting in there. We had the quarterback baffled. We held them what, 340 yards? But we gave up stuff we shouldn’t have given up.”

And that is what cost the game. Unable to count on the passing game, Holgorsen tried to nurse the lead and went ultra-conservative, a rare posture for him.

In the fourth quarter he threw only one pass. One other was called and Trickett was sacked. WVU had no first downs and had a total offense of minus-2 yards.

As Holgorsen said, “unacceptable.”

“They pay me to make decisions and offensively I made decisions,” Holgorsen said. “Clint was incredibly uncomfortable. Their rush was good; I’ll evaluate to see if we pass protected worth a darn. He was uneasy in the pocket, he got spooked.

“If we sat there and just tried to throw the ball it wouldn’t have turned out very good.”

And so it was the game came down to a final possession, TCU taking over at its own 34 with 2:07 to go. On the first play Boykin ran for 3 yards.

On the second the game slipped through WVU’s fingers, Boykin hitting Kolby Listenbee for 40 yards to the WVU 33. It came on blown coverage.

“We had 10 guys playing one coverage, one guy not,” Gibson said.

How could such a thing happen at such a critical point?

“We just didn’t get communication from the sideline,” Dillon said. “It cost us.”

Dillon said the tempo threw things off in getting the signal, something that rarely happens.

“If I could have seen that had happened I would have called time out,” Gibson said. “It was the same coverage, stuff we had done all game.”

That would be a Cover 3 defense.

Now the ball was on the edge of field goal range.

Boykin ran for 6, they gave the ball B.J. Catalon three times for short yardage, the clock showed 4 seconds left when Jaden Oberkrom lined up and drilled the winning field goal from 37 yards, making it the third straight season WVU’s game with TCU had ended on the final play of the game.

NOTES: Nick O’Toole had not punted a touchback all season until he had a 59-yard punt roll into the end zone … Cornerback Terrell Chestnut started the game after missing last week’s with concussion-like symptoms … WVU has scored a defensive touchdown in each of the past two weeks … Kevin White caught just three passes for 28 yards after being held to three catches for 27 yards last week by Oklahoma State.