Twice already this season West Virginia has handled the final moments of a game with so much skill and so few scares that it was rewarded with game-winning field goals. In each of the two games before Saturday’s callous and curious loss to TCU, West Virginia trusted its defense to not merely combat the other team’s offense, but to win the game.
So with those four results in mind — four of the six wins that propelled WVU to a No. 20 ranking before the nationally televised showdown with the seventh-ranked Horned Frogs — it stands to reason the Mountaineers knew quite well what they were doing. That it went so wrong when Jaden Oberkrom’s 37-yard field goal eased through the uprights as time expired was a harsh reality that ended TCU’s 31-30 win.
What added to the agony was WVU made a string of decisions to create the smallest of margins before committing one critical error to undo the all the planning. TCU completed a 40-yard pass on second-and-7 from its 27 on the final possession, but it was the Mountaineers who made it possible.
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