COMMENTARY
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The gleam and gusto were long gone from Saturday night’s game. The fourth-quarter lead had vanished into the Central Texas breeze and West Virginia’s swagger gauge pointed toward empty.
A dominant, satisfying performance propagated across three periods rapidly mutated into a survival test in the final 17 seconds. The Mountaineers had chased away most of the crowd but neglected to put away the Bears themselves, and now arose the moment of reckoning.
Winless Baylor, having erupted for 23 unanswered points, needed two more to tie the game — and needed only 3 yards to do it after averaging 7.1 per play during four frenzied comeback drives.
In a timeout preceding the 2-point try, defensive coordinator Tony Gibson took a two-fold approach: Share information on a misdirection play the Bears might try, and try to restore sanity to his own huddle.
“I told them, ‘It’s our opportunity to win a game right here. So go out and win it.’”
Some re-empowerment was necessary. The defense looked scattered and gassed, its late fade coinciding with Baylor running an incredible 32 plays in the fourth quarter.
“Coach Gibby just settled everybody down,” linebacker Al-Rasheed Benton said of the reset. “He said everything that happened before this doesn’t matter. All the good plays we made, all the bad plays we made, it was all gone.”
Enter linebacker Xavier Preston with the decisive sack. One final good play to negate all the bad ones.
On the sideline, Will Grier and the offense had gathered to watch the 2-point try — their unit equally culpable in facilitating Baylor’s rally. (“We were prepared to go win it in overtime,” Grier told us later, “but we didn’t have to because the defense came up big.”)
The quarterback recently spoke about mental techniques he employs to make each play a fresh chapter. “The importance of being present,” he called it. Wiping the mind of negative residue in order to prevent mistakes from compounding.
It was a lesson Gibson’s defense took to heart and head not only on the 2-point stop, but again in the postgame aftermath, when talk of Baylor’s comeback threatened to steal the glow from the victorious locker room.
“It’s a win,” Gibson said. “Beats the hell out of the last two times we were here.”
Those historically embarrassing losses (73-42 and 62-38) transpired against far better Baylor teams, though in the bottom-line present, you understood West Virginia’s relief over avoiding an all-time embarrassing collapse.
“This was one thing I wanted to get — a win in Waco before I got out of here,” said Benton, a fifth-year senior whose 4.5 TFLs highlighted the defense’s solid handle on the opening three quarters. None of which excused the foibles of the fourth.
“You can’t let up and relax. We did, and almost let them get back in the game. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
At least that work will occur against the atmosphere of a top-25 matchup approaching and the Big 12 title still on the table. How appropriate that this week’s guest, No. 11 Oklahoma State, survived its own moment of peril at Texas.
The Cowboys and Mountaineers compose half of a four-team cluster tied for second place. With five weeks left, each team controls its own destiny with regard to reaching the conference championship game.
Based on opponents’ winning percentage (.657), West Virginia faces the toughest remaining schedule. That suits the story arc of this suspenseful season, in which games against Virginia Tech, TCU and lowly Baylor saved high drama for the finish line.