They say necessity is the mother of invention. Well, Jake Spavital certainly didn't invent the Wildcat formation, but his use of it during last Saturday's 59-31 loss to Oklahoma at least kept things interesting.
 
Tailback Kennedy McKoy was the guy Spavital primarily used to run the Wildcat, and the sophomore parlayed his 25 carries, many from that formation, into a career-high 137 yards and three touchdowns.
 
On several occasions, he gouged Oklahoma's defense for big runs up the middle that either kept drives alive or led to scores.
 
West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen said afterward that his goal was to try and keep Oklahoma's record-setting offense off the field as much as possible.
 
The Mountaineers accomplished that by holding the ball for nearly 11 minutes longer than the Sooners. The problem was when Oklahoma did have the ball, it didn't take it long to score. And score. And score some more.
 
Still, putting a foreign formation into the team's offensive package in one week's time - and the players flawlessly executing it - is commendable.
 
"I thought (offensive coordinator) Jake (Sapvital) did a good job," Holgorsen said. "We weren't happy with how we did things (against Texas). I downplayed Will (Grier's) injury, but you can't use that as an excuse. When things like this happen, you have to have a plan to be able to step up and try and make it work.
 
"I thought the staff did a great job. I thought Jake did a great job. He called it great and put our guys into position to be able to have some success," Holgorsen said. "I thought Kennedy took it and ran with it. The plan was good; they bought into it and that helped us move the ball."
 
McKoy said he took some direct snaps when he played at North Davidson High in Lexington, North Carolina, so he was familiar with handling the football. Once he had the ball in his hands it's not really much different than when Grier was handing it to him.
 
"The difference is giving an indicator and then making sure everyone is set, things the quarterback normally does for us," McKoy explained.
 
Spavital said having a week without classes because of Thanksgiving recess gave them enough time to put in a package of plays that his guys could pull off in a week's time.
 
"That got us a lot more mental reps and meeting time to be able to get out there and run these packages," he explained. "With the communication, that's tough to slow the game down like that. One of our deals was trying to keep their offense off the field by slowing the game down and moving in and out of different personnel packages and stuff."
 
McKoy said he was approached about running the Wildcat on Monday by his position coach, Tony Dews, and Tuesday he was out on the practice field doing it.
 
By the end of the week he had it looking pretty good.
 
"We only had about four plays in that particular set, so we repped those four plays a lot and that was good enough to get me some good reps at it where I was comfortable," McKoy said.
 
The key to making this successful was not doing too much out of it, or having a bunch of different players handling the football. If you noticed, McKoy never handed the ball off to the motion man coming across the field.
 
"It was just a fake to get everyone flowing," McKoy said.
 
"There were times when we kept feeding him over and over again, and he really didn't get too tired or check himself out every often," Spavital added.
 
Why would he? The guys up front were opening up holes and Oklahoma was struggling to adjust to it.
 
Once he was tackled he got back up, took his time going back to the huddle to catch his breath and got himself ready for the next snap.
 
"Once I broke a few times, I thought they would adjust but the line did a great job," McKoy mentioned. "They just kept leaning on them and opening up small gaps that I could fit through."
 
If you recall, Holgorsen did something like this the first time West Virginia faced Oklahoma back in 2012. He moved slot receiver Tavon Austin to tailback and kept feeding the football to him because Oklahoma was struggling to stop him.
 
Because it was so successful, Holgorsen continued to use that package with Austin at running back for the rest of the season.
 
Based on the success West Virginia had with the Wildcat last Saturday against Oklahoma, Spavital indicated he is willing to continue using it occasionally even when Grier gets healthy and returns to the field.
 
Why not?
 
It's just another thing for which defenses will have to spend time preparing.
 
"I think we can get more creative with it," Spavital said. "We knew if they started doing certain things we had answers to complement it so I think we can grow off of that and just see where it takes us. We've got some time with the bowl prep so let's just see where we can take it."
 
McKoy said he has no problem with that.
 
"I would like it to," he said.
 
Does that mean throwing some passes, too?
 
"Yeah, I can throw some passes," he said.
 
Spavital is probably not ready to go there, yet, but he was pleased that his offense moved the football more effectively against the Sooners.
 
The unit was in a little bit of a funk, particularly in the second half in recent games against Iowa State and Kansas State. He finally saw a ray of sunshine, despite having his No. 1 playmaker standing on the sideline with a cast on his right hand.
 
"This offense has been a really good offense, and they've been down in the dumps. They're fighting their way out and trying to be resilient, and they're sticking together," Spavital said. "I see the improvement, and we've just got to stick together and keep building off each other."
 
And get healthy once again. This team was running on fumes after nine straight weekends of Big 12 football without a break.
 
"We were pretty banged up," Spavital admitted. "I don't know how much farther we could have gone after this week. Bowl prep is going to be a really good time for us to get healthy."
 
Perhaps even some more time to put something else in.
 
The flying wedge? No, that one's definitely out, but how about the wishbone or the split-T?