AUSTIN, Texas. – There's nothing quite like winning a road football game against a nationally ranked football opponent. But when your head ball coach chooses to win it by going for the two-point conversion instead of playing things conservatively for the tie, that's the kind of decision making that can rally a fan base.
All of those fence sitters can now make the jump, as they once did for Don Nehlen and Rich Rodriguez.
We saw the shot of adrenaline it gave Rich Rod 13 years ago down in Atlanta when he called that gutsy fake punt with his 5-foot-9-inch, 180-pound punter Phil Brady to beat Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, and we saw what it did for Dandy Don back in 1982 when he ran the onside kick against ninth-ranked Oklahoma in the second quarter to help seize the momentum in a game the Mountaineers eventually won.
Sometimes you have to take some risks when playing it safe seems like the logical thing to do. But nothing about Saturday's 42-41 win at 15
th-ranked Texas seemed logical to Holgorsen, from the inordinate number of penalties called on his team, to losing his best offensive tackle in the first quarter for retaliating to something done to him, to seeing the Longhorns seize territory against his nationally ranked defense the same way the Germans once marched through France.
If that game had ended up going into overtime who knows how it would have turned out? Take matters into your own hands and trust your best football player
Will Grier, which is what Holgorsen chose to do.
"It was an easy decision," he explained afterward. "If you put the fate of the game in No. 7's hands, I feel pretty good about it. We had that decision made before we even took the field."
Helping him get there was a Longhorn offense that answered every single West Virginia score with a score of its own in a back-and-forth game that saw both teams combine to score 83 points, produce 1,098 total yards and 56 first downs.
Therefore, the last team to get the football in scoring position had to take advantage of it.
"I felt confidence with our offense at that point," Holgorsen said. "Both defenses were having a hard time stopping the offenses. But I think both offenses were doing a good job, too."
When West Virginia got the ball back at its 25 trailing 41-34 with 2:34 remaining, Holgorsen was already thinking about the two-point conversion as Grier coolly marched the team down the field with controlled passes over the middle and medium-distance runs by
Kennedy McKoy and
Martell Pettaway.
Everything West Virginia took was given to them by a Longhorn defense wary of surrendering another easy touchdown.
All seven plays West Virginia used to get to the Texas 33-yard line were shorter than 10 yards, but three of them were for first-down yardage to momentarily stop the clock and preserve the Mountaineers' timeouts.
And Holgorsen opted to continue hoarding them as the ticking clock was winding down to 25 seconds when Pettaway ran 5 yards to the Texas 33, giving WVU another fresh set of downs.
Here, Grier, throwing off his back foot, delivered a perfect strike to
Gary Jennings Jr. running toward the back of the end zone for his third touchdown pass of the game to pull WVU to within 1 point, 41-40.
"Unbelievable throw," Holgorsen said, noting Grier also gave
David Sills V a great opportunity to make a sliding catch near the Longhorn goal line on a prior play.
Finally, with the clock stopped, Holgorsen chose to use a timeout to go over what he wanted done on the two-point conversion try. There was no doubt what he was going to do because they've been working on the same two-point play for more than a year knowing at some point they were going to need it.
Texas' Tom Herman, sensing something was up, called timeout right before West Virginia ran its first conversion play, a quick-slant pass Grier completed to Sills V.
The timeout actually faked out WVU's eagle-eye veteran play-by-play man Tony Caridi, who didn't see the home-side official run out onto the field waving his arms before the ball was snapped.
Had Herman smoked out Holgorsen?
"It was a very unique formation," Herman said. "They had four receivers to one side and one to the other, so we called timeout to talk about that formation. Then they put the ball on the other hash, and it was apparent they wanted to get 13 (Sills) on (freshman cornerback) Anthony Cook, and so we called another timeout so that we could switch our corners."
Refusing to get too technical, Holgorsen said his two-point play has multiple options so it really didn't matter that Texas saw the formation and got a dry run at trying to defend it.
He came right back out with the same call.
"There's about four options on that play and they took away three of them when we threw it to David (the first time)," Holgorsen noted.
That left the fourth option, a similar option to the play that actually cost West Virginia its season a year ago in the first quarter against these same Longhorns in Morgantown - Grier tucking the football and running like hell for the pylon.
The first time he tried it, the northern panhandle finger on his throwing hand was bent sideways instead of pointing straight down and his season was finished, as was West Virginia's.
This time Grier wasn't even touched, the quarterback following
Kelby Wickline's block to the outside where he scooted into the end zone for the winning score.
Wickline, by the way, was out there because starting left tackle
Yodny Cajuste – WVU's best offensive lineman – wasn't. He was tossed from the game in the first quarter for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty during
Evan Staley's point-after kick.
"It's football … strategy," Holgorsen said, adding, "worked out pretty good."
It sure did.
The result was a thrilling 42-41 win, West Virginia's second against a ranked team on the road this season – the first time that's happened since 2007. It was also
Dana Holgorsen's 60th victory at WVU, moving him into a tie with Rich Rod for second all-time and trailing just Nehlen.
The win keeps all of the Mountaineers' preseason goals intact heading down the home stretch with key conference games remaining against TCU next Saturday in Morgantown, at Oklahoma State a week later in Stillwater and ending on Black Friday right back in Morgantown against No. 7 Oklahoma.
Incidentally, the old ball coach West Virginia will be facing next Saturday, Gary Patterson, is known for rolling the dice as well.
Who has forgotten the successful two-point conversion he ran here back in 2012 to beat West Virginia in double overtime?
I can assure you
Dana Holgorsen hasn't.
Sunday Sound
