In a vacuum, West Virginia’s 52-14 loss to the No. 5 ranked Oklahoma Sooners in Norman on Saturday afternoon looks pretty terrible. The Mountaineers’ eighth straight loss to the Big 12 mega-power also marked the largest margin of defeat. In any other season, this would be a disaster. However, when looking at this game from a big picture point of view, the game went about as anyone with realistic expectations for a team playing 21 freshmen and redshirt freshmen against a championship caliber team.
For the third straight game, the Mountaineers hung in the game through the first half — going into the locker room down 28-14 — before ultimately running out of steam in the second half and allowing the opposing team to roll over them.