MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The concern many West Virginia fans had when the Mountaineers joined the Big 12 nearly a decade ago was about the football rivalries they were losing.
 
No more Pitt Panthers. No more Syracuse Orange and no more Louisville Cardinals - not that Louisville or Syracuse would have ever reached the point of being included in a cheer, a fight song or a rhyming derogatory chant, but those games were also eagerly anticipated by the Mountaineer fanbase as a downsizing Big East continued to contract.
 
Eight years later, Mountaineer fans are finally beginning to find some new villains to conquer. It looks like we have one in Austin, Texas, now that West Virginia turned those Texas Longhorns upside down following last Saturday's 42-41 victory.
 
There could be another rivalry brewing with the team 200 miles north in Fort Worth, Texas. That's where TCU is located.
 
TCU and West Virginia have a lot more in common than many people realize, beginning as brief Big East brethren before the Horned Frogs got the nod to join the Big 12. WVU followed suit shortly thereafter.
 
During the last decade, TCU and West Virginia were two of college football's biggest party crashers.
 
The Horned Frogs reached the Fiesta Bowl in 2010 and two years later upset Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl. WVU had a table-turning moment in 2006 when it upset SEC champion Georgia in the Sugar Bowl and another one two years later when the Mountaineers outgunned Oklahoma in the 2008 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.
 
"This history with us and TCU is pretty good, obviously, with us coming in (to the Big 12) together at the same time and playing each other now for the seventh time," West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen noted. "Both programs, really, have pretty much the same tradition of being in the Group of 5 discussion and winning a lot of football games in their respective conferences."
 
The first time West Virginia and TCU met as conference combatants in 2012, the game concluded epically when the Horned Frogs pulled out a 39-38 victory in double overtime.
 
Much like last WVU did in its win last Saturday at Texas, TCU successfully pulled off a winner-take-all, two-point conversion. A year later, a subpar West Virginia team gained some revenge when Josh Lambert booted a 34-yard field goal in overtime to give the Mountaineers a 30-27 victory.
 
Since then, two other games have been decided by a touchdown or less, including last year's game in Fort Worth when West Virginia was driving for a potential game-tying touchdown before wide receiver David Sills V was called for a questionable offensive pass interference penalty.
 
Instead of being on the other side of the 50, West Virginia was buried deep in its own territory, and the Horned Frogs stopped the Mountaineers and won the game.
 
This year, injuries, suspensions and some bad breaks have kept TCU (4-5, 2-4) from having the type of season Horned Frogs fans are accustomed to having, but Holgorsen still sees a dangerous team coming to Morgantown on Saturday.
 
"I have the utmost respect for (TCU coach) Gary Patterson, an elder statesman in our conference," Holgorsen said. "He's been there 18 years or so as head coach, and he's done as good of a job as anybody in college football over that span."
 
Holgorsen cites the tremendous speed TCU has at the skill positions, including possibly the fastest player in the Big 12 this year in 5-foot-11, 195-pound sophomore wide receiver Jalen Reagor from Waxahachie, Texas.
 
A sub-4.4 runner, Reagor has caught 49 passes for 734 yards and six touchdowns so far this season to lead a struggling Horned Frog offense that's minus its best playmaker in KaVontae Turpin, who was booted from the team for his off-the-field transgressions, and starting quarterback Shawn Robinson, out for the rest of the season after undergoing shoulder surgery.
 
Penn transfer Mike Collins is now the man behind center, and he led the Horned Frogs to a 14-13 win over Kansas State last Saturday by passing for 218 yards and engineering touchdown drives in the first and third quarters.
 
"He's a big kid, 6-5, 215, and he throws the ball well," Holgorsen said of Collins. "He's a smart young man, and he will get better and better and better. As his reps go, he'll go."
 
Darius Anderson, who ran for a season-high 154 yards in TCU's 40-28 loss to Ohio State, is a dangerous threat in the backfield as is 6-foot-3, 231-pound bruiser Sewo Olonilua, a Christian Okoye-type in short yardage situations.
 
"We saw both of these guys last year, and they are nothing new to us," Holgorsen said. "They are dangerous and can change a game."
 
Despite their presence in the backfield, TCU is near the bottom of the Big 12 in almost every offensive category and has had trouble sustaining drives all season. It has had just three length-of-the-field touchdown drives lasting 10 plays or longer, meaning if defenses can keep Reagor and freshman Taye Barber from getting behind them and scoring touchdowns, the Horned Frogs usually find a way to shoot themselves in the foot.
 
Defensively, TCU is as good as ever, and its solid play on that side of the football has kept them in games. The Horned Frogs outlasted Iowa State 17-14 on Sept. 29, but they did so without facing outstanding Cyclone freshman quarterback Brock Purdy.
 
TCU limited explosive Texas Tech to just 17 points in a three-point home loss, and last Saturday held K-State to only 13 points in a one-point win. The Horned Frogs might have the two best bookends in the Big 12 in senior left end Ben Banogu, the preseason Big 12 defensive player of the year, and senior right end L.J. Collier, a 6-foot-4, 276-pounder.
 
The two have combined for 11 ½ sacks and 18 ½ tackles for losses, and are constantly in the opposing team's backfield. 
 
"They are good players," Holgorsen said. "When you're 6-5, 275, and 6-4, 250, and twitchy you can probably get to the quarterback so I'm glad we have two capable tackles that can block. They're going to be a handful and a challenge, as they were last year."
 
The second-level guys behind them are all experienced players, which includes five seniors and a pair of juniors at the corners in Julius Lewis and Jeff Gladney.
 
"They had a rotating deal going on at safety, but it doesn't matter who plays these spots in Gary Patterson's defense," Holgorsen said. "They are going to be coached up, they're going to be sound with their technique and they are going to play hard."
 
TCU, which has already faced Oklahoma and Texas, ranks third in the league in scoring defense (23.7 ppg.) and second in total defense, allowing just 335 yards per game.
 
This will be West Virginia's most difficult offensive assignment since facing Iowa State on Oct. 13.
 
The seventh-ranked Mountaineers jumped four spots in this College Football Playoff rankings from No. 13 to No. 9, although some onlookers felt West Virginia could have been a little closer to the top four with one-loss Washington State and two-loss LSU immediately ahead of it.
 
That should give the team some added motivation as it prepares to face TCU this Saturday. 
 
A noon kickoff has been assigned for the game to accommodate FS1 national television coverage (Justin Kutcher, DeMarco Murray and Petros Papadakis).
 
The Mountaineer Sport Network from IMG's coverage begins at 8:30 a.m. with the GoMart Mountaineer Tailgate Show leading into regular game coverage at 11 a.m. on stations throughout West Virginia and online via WVUsports.com and the popular mobile app TuneIn.
 
"I'm excited about a noon game," Holgorsen said. "This time of year is a good time for a noon game; it's going to be the warmest part of the day. It's after Daylight Savings ends, so it's like a 3 o'clock game earlier in the year, right?"
 
There are still some tickets remaining and those can be purchased by calling the Mountaineer Ticket Office toll-free at 1-800-WVU GAME or by logging on to WVUGAME.com.
 
Saturday's game will be the eighth meeting between the two with the Horned Frogs owning a 4-3 advantage dating back to a 1984 meeting in the Bluebonnet Bowl in the Houston Astrodome, a 31-14 WVU victory.
 
"They're 2-1 in Morgantown over the last three times that they've been here so we know what we're getting with this bunch. You're only as good as your next one. We have some good, positive stuff ahead of us, and this is the next thing, and the only thing, that we will be talking about," Holgorsen concluded.

Wednesday Sound