Oklahoma football: Watch out for waiting West Virginia
By Chip Rouse
No college team in America is hotter than Oklahoma football is right now.
And therein lies the problem for the 14th-ranked Sooners as they prepare for their longest road trip of the 2020 season and where danger waits in the form of the West Virginia Mountaineers.
West Virginia is playing very good football of late as well, and Saturday night’s primetime contest with the Mountaineers (5-3, 4-3) has all the makings of a trap game for the Sooners, who go into the game riding a five-game conference winning streak and with a potential spot in the Big 12 championship game in the balance.
This isn’t the first time Oklahoma has had to travel to West Virginia mountain country with plenty on the line. Most recently, when the Sooners played at West Virginia in the 2018 season, the Big 12 championship game was literally on the line. Oklahoma came in at 7-1 in the conference and ranked 6th in the country, and West Virginia stood 6-2 and ranked 13th.
Texas had already clinched a spot in the championship game by virtue of beating OU, and the Longhorns awaited the winner of the OU-West Virginia game.
It was a dramatic back-and-forth game, with the two teams combining for over 100 points and more than 1,300 yards of offense. In the end, it was a fumble recovery returned 48-yards for a touchdown by OU’s Curtis Bolton with under five minutes to go that allowed the Sooners to pull ahead and win the game.
The circumstances aren’t that much different this time around. The Sooners absolutely need a win to stay in title contention. West Virginia isn’t going to make the championship game this season, but the Mountaineers are easily good enough to win the game this year and they would like nothing more than to play the spoiler to the team that has beaten them eight straight times.
West Virginia has not beaten Oklahoma since becoming a member of the Big 12 in 2012, and that includes four wins by the Sooners in Morgantown.
Statistically, the challenge that awaits Oklahoma at West Virginia is even greater than the one posed by Oklahoma State in Bedlam last weekend. The Sooners lead the Big 12 in total offense, averaging 512.1 yards per game, but right behind them in West Virginia, whose offense is averaging 442.6 yards per game. There is a fairly wide disparity in scoring, however. OU averages almost 46 points a game, compared with 29 by the Mountaineers.
West Virginia leads the conference defensively, yielding an average of 17.8 points and 274 yards of offense. The Sooners rank second in that category, giving up 23 points and 312 yards per game. It should be noted, however, that the Mountaineers have games remaining at Texas and at home against TCU after Oklahoma.
There’s no question that this is a big game for both teams, and even more so for the Sooners. As said earlier, this sets up as a classic trap game for Oklahoma. It’s on them not to allow it to become one.