MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Things never come easy in the Big 12. If there's one thing West Virginia football fans have learned since joining the conference seven seasons ago, it's that the games last 60 minutes and usually all of them are required to win in this crazy league.
 
"I'm proud of our guys for just hanging in there for four quarters and finding a way to win there at the end," coach Dana Holgorsen, looking somewhat frazzled after his 57th victory at WVU, remarked yesterday after his team held on to win at Texas Tech.
 
The 12^th-ranked Mountaineers looked unstoppable in the first half of Saturday's 42-34 win over the 25^th-rated Red Raiders, WVU RPOing its way down the field at will on the way to building a commanding 35-10 halftime lead.
 
It was truly a sight to behold with quarterback Will Grier flinging darts all over the field and having the look of someone prepared to rent a tuxedo for an early-December appearance in New York City.
 
Meanwhile, Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury's newest quarterbacking sensation, freshman Alan Bowman, was out of the game after suffering an upper body injury late in the second quarter. His replacement, sophomore Jett Duffey, had played just a half-dozen snaps this year in a 77-0 victory over Lamar.
 
"That's not a lot to go on," West Virginia defensive coordinator Tony Gibson admitted afterward.
 
The third pass Duffey tried sailed high of his intended target nto the waiting arms of West Virginia's Kenny Robinson Jr.,who returned it 42 yards to the Texas Tech 38.
 
If not for a foolish unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on the Mountaineers during Robinson Jr.'s celebration of the play, West Virginia was in position to try to get even more points before the end of the half. 
 
In this league, a lot of points are never really enough points. All of those years working in the Big 12 have taught Holgorsen that.
 
His message to his team at halftime was explicit - play the second half like the game was tied. It was a clean slate. Forget about the first half.
 
But human nature prevailed, as it usually does.
 
Guys who normally make NFL-caliber catches dropped passes in the second half. There were numerous penalties (12 in all for an alarming 115 yards, some of them baited by the Red Raiders, of course) and West Virginia's unstoppable offense in the first half played the next two quarters stuck in idle (and sometimes reverse).
 
Consequently, a defense that was buzzing around like a swarm of bees in the first half was furiously trying to come up with big stops in the second half to preserve a rapidly dwindling lead.
 
But that's usually how things go in Big 12. We've seen it so many times before.
 
"I'm surprised we didn't need 49 points to win this game," Holgorsen admitted.
 
A show of hands, how many of you had last year's Baylor game in the back of your mind as the second half unfolded yesterday?
 
The circumstances were almost similar – WVU jumping out to a big first-half lead in impressive fashion and then scrambling at the end to hold on for a 38-36 victory. We blamed that one on the offense for keeping its foot on the pedal and taking unnecessary risks against an inferior, one-win football team.
 
Yesterday, West Virginia was scrambling at the end because it tried to play smart by protecting the football, managing the clock and helping out its defense in the Texas heat against a team that wasn't inferior, even with its No. 3 quarterback in the game.
 
Thirty-five to 10 soon become 35 to 17, and then 35 to 20, and then 35 to 27. The Red Raiders had possession of the football with 4:30 remaining at their own 24 with all three timeouts left and momentum clearly on their side.
 
A Duffey third-down pass to De'Quan Bowman for 17 yards gave Tech a new set of downs at its 42. Then, a Da'Leon Ward 5-yard run moved the ball to the 47 with just half of the field separating West Virginia from a complete second-half meltdown.
 
Here, first-time starting cornerback Keith Washington made the play of the game when he stepped in front of Duffey's pass in the general direction of Antoine Wesley standing on the near side of the field.
 
The junior caught the football on a dead run, made one move to get past Duffey at the 27 and scored the game-sealing touchdown.
 
Washington's fourth-quarter play encapsulated the beauty and the agony of watching Big 12 football games.
 
The beauty is you never know who is going to step up and become a hero on a weekly basis. The agony is why in the hell did it ever get to that point in the first place?
 
Well, that's because it's the Big 12.
 
Keep in mind, it wasn't an accident that Texas Tech was averaging 52 points coming into yesterday's game and has always scored on everybody - no matter who is behind center. 
 
It's also not an accident that the Red Raiders completely shut down Oklahoma State in the second half of last week's impressive, 41-17 victory in Stillwater.

And, wins over ranked teams on the road don't grow on trees around here.
 
"That's a good football team over there," a relieved Grier said afterward.
 
It's also worth noting that nearly all of the ESPN College Game Day experts (except Desmond Howard) predicted a Texas Tech victory, and those guys know everything, right? In the eyes of Mountaineer fans, at least one guy sitting on that set does.
 
So, you take them as they come, you try and learn from the mistakes, fix them as best as you can and you move on to the next week.
 
 "We've got to handle success better," Holgorsen noted. "We've got to be able to play better and play smarter when we're winning."
 
Nevertheless, West Virginia is now 4-0, one of just 14 undefeated teams remaining with all of its preseason goals still attainable as we flip the calendar to October.
 
The players have continually preached going 1-0 each week. In this league it's not always how you win them – just win them, any way you can.
 
"I think we've got a good football team, and if we're winning, then that can't dictate how we play," Holgorsen pointed out. "We've got to keep playing because we're going to have to keep scoring at times."
 
He later added, "As soon as my headache goes away, I'm going to be okay with it."
 
So will we.
 
Up next is Kansas at Milan Puskar Stadium. Will something wild and crazy (and hopefully wonderful) happen next Saturday? Do you recall last year's game in Lawrence? 
 
The Jayhawks ran for 367 yards in that one – 291 coming from a guy named Khalil Herbert, who carried the football just three times in yesterday's loss to Oklahoma State.
 
After all, it's the Big 12.

Sunday Sound