No. 10 West Virginia is on upset alert halftime as the undefeated Mountaineers trail the Oklahoma State Cowboys, 20-10
Through the first eight weeks of the 2016 college football season, it’s been a near-Cinderella story for the West Virginia Mountaineers. Entering Week 9, they remained unbeaten and eyeing a potential spot in the College Football Playoff if they could keep it up through the heart of their Big 12 schedule. However, that’s all in jeopardy on the road in Stillwater against the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
Despite both teams having high-octane offenses, the Mountaineers and Cowboys could only muster field goals early in the contest to give the home team the 6-3 lead. However, Skyler Howard and Sterling Gibson connected on a beautiful touchdown pass to give undefeated West Virginia the lead. After that, though, the wheels started to come off a bit.
After holding the Cowboys to a three-and-out and looking to gain some sort of momentum, Howard was sacked and fumbled. The loose ball was recovered by Oklahoma State and gave them a short field. With a powerful offense, Mason Rudolph and company had no problem punching it in from eight yards out.
Things got worse for West Virginia from there, though. After driving down the field on the ensuing drive, they missed the field goal and blew the chance to tie things up. That miss gave Rudolph and Co. the ball once again and they found paydirt once more with only 15 seconds left in the half. West Virginia didn’t want to risk anything and ran the clock out to go into halftime trailing, 20-10.
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The knock on the Mountaineers as they’ve gone undefeated is that they still need to prove it against the more dangerous in-conference teams. Oklahoma State certainly qualifies in that department. And now West Virginia finds themselves on upset alert with an uphill battle awaiting them in the second half.