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The West Virginia Mountaineers battled back from a 15 point deficit and forced overtime with the 21st ranked Oklahoma State Cowboys under the lights in Morgantown. Unfortunately, Dana Holgorsen's squad fell short in overtime, after Mike Gundy's Cowboys scored a touchdown on first down on their first overtime drive.
We saw a new version of Skyler Howard that we hadn't really seen before. I'll call him "Mediocre Skyler". Howard was nearly dreadful in the first half, throwing only 31 passing yards through 2 quarters. Things took a turn in the Mountaineers' favor in the second half when Howard hit Shelton Gibson with a beautiful 48-yard bomb to bring the Mountaineers within 7 points. Skyler also had a really nice toucdown run late in the 4th quarter to tie the game up. Howard finished the game 18/35 for 188 yards, 1 TD and 1 INT. He also accounted for 47 yards and 1 TD on the ground.
West Virginia once again relied on the run to get the job done. Wendell Smallwood had 19 carries for 147 yards and 1 touchdown. Rushel Shell, who got the final carries in overtime but came up short, had 19 carries for 48 yards. I'm not quite sure what the thought process behind having Shell run the ball in overtime was, instead of the more productive Smallwood, but it may be something that Dana Holgorsen needs to step back and take a better look at in the upcoming games.
The Mountaineer defense was once again the collective players of the game. Tony Gibson's unit gave Skyler Howard and the offense numerous chances by forcing 3-and-out throughout the game. The question mark heading into the game was "Who will replace Karl Joseph?" and we got that answer. Jarrod Harper had a solid performance in Joseph's spot, coming up with a couple big plays to stop the Cowboys. We should feel pretty good with what Harper did, and how the defense as a whole performed tonight.
West Virginia has not won a conference game at night in Morgantown since joining the Big 12 Conference.
And now, I want to take the time to ask all the By-Godders out there for some help. It's been documented that The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" does bad, bad things to Mountaineers, yet for some reason those in charge continue to play it during Mountaineer games. This is where you come in. I want to crowd source a new project in which I take video evidence of every time Seven Nation Army has been followed up by a swift kick in the balls, and compile it into one big video that I can send to whoever needs to see it in an effort to finally ban Seven Nation Army once and for all. Leave some comments below with specific times that abomination of a song/chat has come back to haunt the Mountaineers. I will accept football, basketball, soccer, whatever. If you have a link to a video, that's even better. Let's finally get rid of 7NA.