Comeback might be greatest in WVU history

Comeback might be greatest in WVU history


MORGANTOWN — What happened Saturday evening at Mountaineer Field/Milan Puskar Stadium bordered on the unbelievable.

West Virginia’s stunning second-half bounce-back, putting itself in position to defeat Louisville in triple overtime, was downright difficult to comprehend.

Indeed, seeing hardly was believing as the Mountaineers eventually emerged as a 46-44 winner over the No. 19-ranked Cardinals.

This might well have been the greatest comeback in WVU’s football history. I can’t remember one as significant or more satisfying.

Even Rich Rodriguez couldn’t recall anything comparable in his 20 years of coaching at the collegiate level.

This was a game of strange twists. That is, it was marked by two extremely different halves.

The Mountaineers went from one of their most inept displays of offense, trailing 17-0 at halftime, to perhaps their most productive half of the season.

Once they started driving the ball on a consistent basis, slowly but surely they caught up at 24-all.

Then it just became a matter of which team could earn the nod in overtime. Fortunately, the momentum definitely had turned in WVU’s favor.

Making the sudden turnaround all the more mystifying was the fact this young team hadn’t scored an offensive touchdown in the previous three games.

Rodriguez had a ready explanation.

“We started executing better,” he said. “We started getting some momentum. The key was to be more patient and to get more yards on first down.”

Obviously, such reasoning paid off. So did his decision to settle for Pat McAfee’s 28-yard field goal with 4:35 left in regulation time.

That decreased the deficit to 24-17, and four plays later West Virginia had the ball back at UL’s 40 on a punt with 3:41 remaining.

Rodriguez thought that the offense was rolling along so well by then it could get the touchdown it needed to take the contest into overtime.

There was still a minute left when tailback Steve Slaton scored to knot the figures at 24.

“We wanted to take it down to one score,” Rodriguez said Sunday. “That was the biggest thing.

“When you’re down by 10, you’ve got to get a field goal at some point. The biggest concern was we had to stop them once. Field goal or touchdown, you still have to make a stop on defense.”

He thought the ensuing three-and-out was huge.

Ironically, this resembled strikingly the basketball battle between WVU and Louisville waged in the NCAA tournament last March.

That also was decided in triple overtime. But, happily, the football outcome was a reversal of the basketball outcome.

Is the tag “revenge” fitting?

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Two similar football comeback conquests come to mind, though I wouldn’t rate either as big as this one.

In 1964 West Virginia trailed bowl-bound Syracuse 21-7 at halftime, but rallied for 21 points and a 28-27 victory at old Mountaineer Field.

The late Allen McCune was the star of that triumph. He passed for two touchdowns and scored a third himself.

Syracuse was heavily favored, having beaten Kansas, UCLA and Penn Stae, among others. Then it barely bowed to LSU in the Sugar Bowl.

The other similar scrap was in 1992 against Maryland. That WVU team overcame a 33-14 deficit in a 20-point fourth quarter for a 34-33 win here.

Darren Studstill passed 10 yards to tailback Adrian Murrell for the game-winning touchdown.