West Virginia’s much-maligned defense rose to the occasion down the stretch.
As a result, the Mountaineers claimed a 24-20 victory against TCU at Amon G. Carter Stadium and will enter their bye week on a two-game win streak.
The outcome was in doubt until West Virginia’s defense, which had its best effort of 2026, came up with one final stop with inside 1 minute remaining as David Afogho sacked Horned Frogs’ quarterback Jaden Craig and forced a fumble that Ben Cutter recovered.
“We didn’t really play great. We played with a little bit of grit,” WVU head coach Rich Rodriguez said. “I was concerned that we were a little tired after eight straight weeks. Offensively, we played a little bit that way some, but they battled through it. The defense battled through it. A lot of new stuff we were doing in this game. We showed a lot of grit. I was hoping we’d play hard, make a few plays and they’d mess up a little bit. They moved the ball, but the turnovers were big. Any win is a big win and winning on the road is especially big.”
Cutter noted Afogho’s play to record the Mountaineers’ third sack of the matchup put him in position to seal the victory.
“He made a great play there. I just happened to be in the right spot at the right time,” Cutter said. “He should get all the praise for that. We had pressure coming in. He couldn’t get the ball out. We made the play.”
Outside of a 16 play, 91-yard series that led to the first touchdown courtesy of Craig’s 6-yard pass to Ka’Morreun Pimpton, TCU (3-4, 1-3) managed 13 points and one TD across its last nine possessions.
That also included a turnover on downs on the home team’s penultimate possession, which ended when Craig’s pass fell incomplete on fourth-and-2 from the WVU 20.
On a day the Mountaineers (5-3, 2-3 Big 12) were held to what matches their season-low point total, it was a 13-yard touchdown pass from Michael Hawkins Jr. to Cam Cook with 11:28 left in the fourth quarter that went as the winning score. It came two plays after Cook’s 3-yard run on fourth-and-1, and not long after an unnecessary roughness penalty was assessed to TCU on third-and-13.
“We schemed it up really well,” Cook said. “We had been running a play similar to that the whole game, and I went out like I was going to block him and I happened to open up free. Mike gave me a great ball to get the touchdown.”
WVU had trailed by three before the game’s final touchdown as a result of Craig’s 2-yard TD run with 1:22 remaining in the third.
That made it a 10-point third quarter for TCU, which got a 37-yard field goal from Nate McCashland to open the second-half scoring, before Hawkins eluded the Horned Frogs en route to a 36-yard touchdown run — his 16th this season — that left the Mountaineers in front 17-13 at that point.
The Mountaineers opened the scoring with Jack Cassidy’s 54-yard field goal, but trailed by four after the home team put together the 16 play drive that featured only one third down and ended with Pimpton narrowly getting a foot down on a nifty reception in the back of the end zone that was confirmed upon review.
An illegal bat penalty on TCU’s Max Carroll negated a third-and-goal stop from the Horned Frogs on the ensuring series, which instead ended with Hawkins’ 2-yard touchdown run that gave the visitors a 10-7 lead 13:58 before halftime.
Torbor recovered a Craig fumble with the Horned Frogs inside the WVU 30 to keep WVU in front, but Hawkins was intercepted by Kylin Jackson on a third-and-14 pass that more or less served as a punt.
A 39-yard field goal from McCashland tied the game at 10, but he missed from 43 later in the first half.
The Horned Frogs squandered another chance at a lead when Craig was intercepted by Chams Diagne with 1:04 to play in the first half, though the Mountaineers were conservative in response and handed it off to Cook once before taking a knee and settling for a 10-all tie at halftime.
“They got a lot of yards and more than they’re used to, but we made plays to win it,” Rodriguez said. “We were close the other times, too, to stopping some drives. I’m just happy to get the win. Our players and coaches all kind of breathe a sigh of relief like we have a chance to be a decent football team. You can look back and say we should’ve won two or three more games, and we probably should’ve, but you can’t get those back. We have four really good teams to finish the season out and we’re capable of playing better than we did today and we’ll have to do that.”
The 20 points allowed are the fewest under Rodriguez in 14 Big 12 games since the start of his second tenure at WVU.
“The defense had gotten stops the whole game. This was a big game for those guys up front and in the secondary,” Hawkins said. “Seeing those guys get the stop brought joy to our whole team. It was just a great feeling overall.”
TCU ran 25 more plays than WVU (82-57), finished with a 484-272 edge in total yardage and held Hawkins to seven completions for 79 yards.
The WVU quarterback was the game’s leading rusher with 94 yards on 19 carries, while Cook finished with 18 carries for 90 yards.
Craig was 33-for-47 with 372 yards.
The Horned Frogs netted only 112 rushing yards on 35 attempts.
“We did a lot of three-man rushes, so we didn’t get a lot of pressure, but there were times where our defensive ends got some pressure with a three-man rush, sometimes the coverage was there and sometimes the coverage wasn’t,” Rodriguez said. “But we were making them execute. It looked like the plan, as opposed to some other times this year, and the past is the past, but we made them execute, even on some of the plays they made. We had a guy right there and they just executed the play. At the end, they didn’t execute and we did — so we win.”