It’s been a while since West Virginia has played a football game of this magnitude so late in the season.

 

Actually, you have to go back nine years to a certain date on the first day of December in 2007 that has been permanently erased from the minds of Mountaineer fans to find a football game played in Morgantown of this significance.

 

Before that, you are probably looking at 23 years ago, in 1993, when ninth-ranked West Virginia defeated fourth-ranked Miami to continue its unbeaten season and insert its name into the national championship discussion.

 

West Virginia, ranked No. 9 and likely to be right around there when the College Football Playoff poll is released later tonight, has still got a ways to go to get into playoff consideration this year, but all eyes will be on Morgantown, West Virginia, on Saturday night when ABC carries the Oklahoma game to a national television audience.

 

The Big 12, after taking a hit in national perception earlier this year with some early-season losses, is returning to the spotlight.

 

“I think it’s great for the program,” said West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen, who has now won 13 of his last 15 games at WVU and has boosted his career record to 44-29. “It’s great for WVU in general and great for the state of West Virginia - that’s all positive stuff.”

 

In the same light, Holgorsen said his team has been at its best when it’s kept its nose to the ground.

 

“We’ve got to worry about what we can control and worry about what our preparation is throughout the week and understand that every week is important and every game is important,” he said. “I give our kids and our staff a lot of credit. We’ve been off the radar for a long time and we’re okay with that. We use that as motivation. Whether they’re talking good about us or bad about us we don’t pay attention to it. We just do our job and try to get prepared to go out and play to the best of our ability and try and figure out a way to win another game.”

 

Holgorsen’s Mountaineers have spent four years trying to figure out how to beat Bob Stoops’ Oklahoma Sooners.

 

In 2012, Oklahoma got a touchdown pass from quarterback Landry Jones with 24 seconds left to eke out a 50-49 win, despite Tavon Austin’s 344 yards rushing and 572 all-purpose yards.

 

Three years ago, the Sooners won a tough defensive battle by totally shutting down West Virginia’s offense. In 2014, it was the return game, an unbalanced line and the down-hill running of Samaje Perine that added up to a 45-33 prime time victory over the Mountaineers in Morgantown.

 

And then last year, the Sooners once again smothered West Virginia’s offense, forcing crucial turnovers that turned a competitive game upside down in the fourth quarter.

 

Yes, Morgantown is going to be electric on Saturday night, but Holgorsen said these types of atmospheres exist on a weekly basis in the Big 12, and more often than not, it usually involves Oklahoma.

 

“Nobody has been in those games more than Oklahoma,” Holgorsen pointed out.

 

Still, having a loud, vocal, supportive crowd will help Holgorsen’s football team get energized. And the country will see this.

 

“It will be wild. It will be as good of an atmosphere that exists in college football,” Holgorsen said. “We’ve got a great fan base that gets incredibly excited and enthusiastic for an opportunity like this so it’s going to be fun to be a part of this.”

 

Stoops agrees.

 

“It’s always challenging (going to Morgantown), but it’s exciting though,” he said. “It’s challenging because they always have a raucous crowd and a sold-out stadium - a night atmosphere - so it will be exciting and challenging always.

 

“But I can’t emphasize enough that it’s exciting as well.”

 

Indeed, it will be exciting, for sure.

 

It’s taken West Virginia football nine long years to dig itself out of the hole it has been in. There is an old ball coach still hanging around town here who used to tell his Mountaineer teams all the time that they have to keep scratching and clawing and fighting to get out of that well.

 

Well, West Virginia has a chance to climb out of the well on Saturday.

 

Eight o’clock, Saturday night, Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown, West Virginia on ABC … it should be a lot of fun!

 

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