COMMENTARY
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Even 23 games and some 734 days later, the shame is readily rekindled.
Ask West Virginia players about their 37-0 beating in Baltimore and the embarrassment washes over them anew. Same goes for the coaches.
(“It’s not something I can hide from,” joked Dana Holgorsen, whose offensive genius card was temporarily renounced that day. “Worst effort I’ve seen by a West Virginia team,” said Ron Crook, who probably felt like crawling out of M&T Stadium straight back to Stanford.)
The Mountaineers may have dominated the series with Maryland the past nine years, but the single loss in 2013—lordy—was that ever the mother of all rock-bottoms.
A flashback: Forty-seven offensive snaps were the fewest this century for a WVU team, futility made worse by squeezing in six turnovers and eight negative-yardage plays.
As poorly as the game went for freshman center Tyler Orlosky, the aftermath of a four-hour bus ride back to Morgantown felt worse. Everyone knew Holgorsen and Crook would be compelled to make lineup changes.
“It’s a long ride when you get your ass kicked 37-0,” said Orlosky. “I just stared out the window and listened to music the whole time.”
Demoted to second-string, Orlosky became so disillusioned he alternated between being angry over the benching and wondering whether he ever deserved a starting job in the first place.
“I was just caught up in the moment, and the speed of the game was something I was unfamiliar with,” he admitted this week. “It was an eye-opener. And I guess you could call it a turning point.”
Orlosky turned to his St. Edward-Cleveland offensive line coach Pat Conachan, himself a former Mountaineers center, who provided the reassurance Orlosky needed while being relegated to backup during the final eight games of 2013. Though Conachan has moved to another high school, their frequent talks remain uplifting to Orlosky, now considered the team’s most reliable lineman.
No moment contained more vindication than the 2014 rematch in College Park, where West Virginia’s offense flipped the script by running a school-record 108 plays, piling up 694 yards and winning 40-37 on a last-play field goal. Players labeled “as inept as we can be” by Holgorsen the previous year—and that was the coach being generous—lingered for an extended celebration with Mountaineers fans.
The two-game swing became crystalizing to Orlosky, who was raised on the venom of Ohio State-Michigan but arrived at WVU just as league realignment was killing off traditional matchups. Suddenly the Maryland game carried priority.
“After Josh kicked that field goal to win the game, there was so much emotion because it went back to two years ago, to where we got embarrassed,” he said.
“I think I learned from that (2013 shutout). That’s why it became a big game for me—it’s where I lost my job. But it happened for a reason. I can’t remember a game that bad and hopefully I never have another one like that.”
Come Saturday, he gets another shot at the Terps, another chance to make amends for the ass-kicking.