Box Score AUSTIN, Texas – This time, Will Grier's run into the end zone was successful – and all 10 digits on both hands came out of it intact.
 
Grier's two-point conversion run with 16 seconds remaining lifted 12^th-ranked West Virginia to a heart-stopping, 42-41 victory over 15^th-ranked Texas before 100,703 disappointed Longhorns fans at sold-out Darrell K Royal Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas.
 
Last year, Grier's season (and West Virginia's) ended in the first quarter of the Mountaineers' 28-14 loss to the Longhorns in Morgantown after Grier broke his finger trying to score a touchdown.
 
Tonight, he didn't need to dive because he didn't have to. He ran across the goal line untouched.
 
"I knew it was going to be a crazy deal," West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen said. "When we got the ball back with two minutes left, I told our guys to go down and score and we'll make the two-point conversion."
 
Holgorsen said he has been working on two-point plays all year long, including the one on which Grier scored - a variant of the same play the Mountaineers successfully converted after Texas' late timeout.

"I have four different options on that play and I went with the fourth one me running the ball," Grier explained. He said this one turned out far better than the last time he tried to cross the goal line against these guys. "I stayed on my feet which is good. Whatever it takes to win, man."

The win was WVU's first on the road against a top 15-ranked team since West Virginia won 48-45 here in 2012. It was also the first time since 2007 the Mountaineers have posted two road wins over ranked teams in the same season. WVU is also 4-1 all-time in Austin.

"I'm proud of the players and I'm proud of the coaches for just hanging in there," Holgorsen said. "A lot of things happened in this game and some of them were not advantageous to winning. We needed all 42 points to win this football game and that's why I think we've got a good football team."
 
Grier kept his Heisman Trophy candidacy alive by completing 28-of-42 passes for 346 yards and three touchdowns, but it was the running of Martell Pettaway and Kennedy McKoy that made this memorable victory possible.
 
Pettaway ran nine times for 121 yards and McKoy 17 times for 94 yards as the Mountaineers gained 232 yards on 33 attempts. It was second-most rushing yards of the season for West Virginia, now 7-1, 5-1.
 
The teams combined for 83 points, 1,098 yards and 56 first downs, the majority coming in the first half.
 
After punting on its opening possession of the game, Texas scored the next four times it had the football, twice benefiting from short fields.
 
The first came after the Mountaineers failed to move the sticks deep in their own territory, and Billy Kinney's punt into a stiff wind was downed at the Longhorns' 47 yard line. Ehlinger ran 13 yards to the WVU 30 and two plays later, he lobbed a high arching pass that Lil'Jordan Humphrey hauled in at the WVU 1.
 
Ehlinger snuck in from there.
 
Following a bizarre sequence that saw West Virginia score on a 60-yard David Sills V touchdown catch, Texas' second touchdown march consumed only 39 yards after WVU was flagged for two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties. 
 
One was called on Sills V for celebrating the touchdown and another was called during Evan Staley's conversion kick on left tackle Yodny Cajuste that also resulted in his ejection from the game. Meanwhile, junior Kelby Wickline stepped in to play a tremendous game and was actually the one who got the last block to spring Grier's successful two-point conversion run.
 
Three plays after all of that happened, Humphrey got past WVU safety Kenny Robinson Jr. down the seam and Ehlinger delivered an accurate pass for a 21-yard touchdown.
 
West Virginia answered on the next possession with a nine-play, 75-yard drive that resulted in Sills V hauling in his second touchdown grab when he beat corner Kris Boyd down the near sideline for an 18-yard score.
 
This time there was no celebration penalty and WVU re-took the lead 17-14 following Staley's conversion kick.
 
Texas responded with an 11-play, 75 yard-drive that once again ended in West Virginia's end zone when Tre Watson slipped in from the 5. Two Ehlinger passes, one going to Collin Johnson for 26 yards on a fourth-and-3 play at the WVU 43, got the Longhorns into scoring territory. Cameron Dicker's conversion kick made it 21-17 with 10:04 remaining in the half.
 
Two minutes later, Pettaway broke loose from the WVU 45, ran through an arm tackle at the Longhorn 45 and scooted 55 yards for touchdown - WVU's longest scoring run in four years since Rushel Shell ran 54 yards for a TD at Iowa State in 2014.
 
Staley's conversion kick made it 24-21 West Virginia, but it only lasted as long as it took Texas to advance the ball the length of the field. 
 
The Longhorns marched it 75 yards in seven plays, the big gainer being a 32-yard Ehlinger pass in the flat to a wide-open Tre Watson that he took all the way to the end zone. WVU linebacker JoVanni Stewart got caught up in traffic and was unable to catch up to Watson, angling down the far side of the field toward the West Virginia bench.
 
West Virginia's final offensive possession of the first half ended like its first – with a Staley field goal. This one was 1 yard shorter than the first one he hit for 45 yards and came with just nine seconds left in the second quarter.
 
Once again, penalties against the Mountaineers kept them from getting more than just a field goal.
 
Texas dominated the third quarter with the lone points in the period coming on Cameron Dicker's 22-yard field goal, but the Longhorns kept the football for most of it on two length-of-the field marches. 
 
The first ended on downs at the WVU 5 after Ehlinger was short of the marker on a fourth-down run when his helmet came off and the play was ruled dead. The second, following a Kinney punt, also concluded at the Mountaineer 5 after Ehlinger's pass sailed high of Keaontay Ingram in the end zone on third and goal.
 
Stewart came unblocked from his linebacker spot to apply pressure on Ehlinger.
 
Right before the conclusion of the third quarter, West Virginia, moving with the wind toward the bowl end of the stadium, got to the Longhorn 21 on Grier's first-down pass of 9 yards to tight end Trevon Wesco.
 
But Leddie Brown's second-down run lost a yard, and Kennedy McKoy's third-down carry only got that yard back, setting up a fourth and 1. Instead of kicking a field goal to reduce Texas' lead to one, Holgorsen chose to go for it, and McKoy came up a half-yard short of the marker as the third quarter clock expired.
 
Texas got possession there and advanced the football to the Mountaineer 21 where the march eventually stalled. Here, Dicker booted a 38-yard field goal, his second of the game, with 9:38 remaining.
 
West Virginia tied it four minutes later, taking the ball from their 25 and advancing it mostly on the ground. A McKoy 19-yard burst up the middle on third and 2 at the Texas 43 gave WVU a new set of downs at the 24.
 
Three plays later, Pettaway ran untouched into the end zone from the 13 and Staley's conversion kicked tied the game at 34.
 
It only took Texas six plays to untie it once again as Ehlinger found Devin Duvernay wide open down the far sideline for a 48-yard touchdown.
 
That left West Virginia just 2:34 to either tie it or win it.
 
As it turned out, the Mountaineers came here to win it. Grier's controlled passing over the middle of the field and short Pettaway runs put West Virginia into position for Grier, throwing off his back foot, to complete a 33-yard touchdown pass to Gary Jennings Jr. in the back of the end zone with 16 seconds left.
 
Holgorsen opted to go for the two-point conversion and the win, actually converting it twice. The first one, a Grier quick slant to Sills V, was blown dead when Texas called timeout, and the second time Grier called his own number to get to the far pylon.
 
Another celebration penalty on West Virginia made for an anxious nine seconds after Humphrey's 21-yard kickoff return put the ball at the Texas 41.
 
Ehlinger's sideline pass intended for Jerrod Heard was dropped by Josh Norwood, but his second on a series of laterals eventually ended up on the ground where Donte Bonamico fell on the ball at the 43.

As for the inordinate number of unsportsmanlike penalties called on West Virginia, Grier offered this explanation, "We didn't know the horns-down thing was a penalty."