West Virginia handed rude goodbye on Oklahoma's way to SEC

By any count that is eight touchdowns accounted for, running up 423 passing yards and another 50 ground yards. That’s 473 total yards.

In all, Oklahoma embarrassed WVU’s defense with 646 yards of offense to 314 yards for WVU.

But the real embarrassment was to the West Virginia offensive line that had been marketed as one of the toughest and most efficient in college football. But the Sooner defense spent more time in the WVU backfield than the back judge and completely dominated play.

“They beat us up front. That’s the first time anyone has done that to us all year,” Neal Brown said in his post-game press conference.

It culminated in a goal line stand that humiliated the offensive line, stopping WVU on four plays from the 3, the last two from the 1 or inside it.

There was nothing sneaky about the quarterback sneak WVU quarterback Garrett Greene ran on third down, with everyone but the waterboy for West Virginia trying to push Greene to the goal line with Oklahoma ceding an inch. The Mountaineers tried a bit of trickery on the next play, but it was they who were tricked.

They called a shovel pass to 240-pound CJ Donaldson, who was met in the middle by an angry mob who kept him inches from scoring.

Brown thought WVU had gotten into the end zone a couple of times and told the officials, but there would be no definitive replay and that really got to him.

“There was no goal line camera and the game was on national TV. That was amazing to me,” Brown said. “Now I don’t think we win the game but it’s a hell of a lot more interesting.”

The domination was a combination of talent and physical skills such as strength, speed and agility.

You could see early on a look of awe on the Mountaineers’ faces as it dawned on them that this was not going to be their evening. The Sooners had lost two straight close road games and were not about to allow that streak to reach three.

It became a boiling cauldron on the field and eventually erupted into a fight after Oklahoma scored its sixth or seventh or eight of nine touchdowns ... it was just hard to keep track. Receiver Drake Stoops, former coach Bob Stoops’ son, scored his second of three touchdowns to go with 164 receiving yards, and took a hard hit by Anthony Wilson, who would total 11 tackles in all.

Wilson stood over Stoops, which irritated some of the Sooners and before you knew it a hockey game broke out.

Before all this was taken care off and another incident occurred which led to an ejection of an Oklahoma lineman.

To add more pain to the evening, WVU’s Donaldson injured an ankle — not the one he broke last year to end his freshman season — and left in pain, not to return. It appeared to be the most serious of a number of injuries that were inflicted upon the Mountaineers.

While Gabriel was having the game of a lifetime, WVU quarterback Greene had an evening to forget. He was bounced around quite a bit by the Oklahoma defenders and never could get into any kind of groove.

He completed only 10 of 27 passes for 154 yards with two touchdowns and one interception, his quarterback rating at 102 compared to 208.4 for Gabriel.

“We can’t beat any quality team if our passing is as bad as it was tonight,” Brown said. “After the first drive, Garrett didn’t play like himself.”

It was total annihilation, so much so that Neal Brown said to sideline reporter Jed Drenning as he was leaving the field”

“Really bad football. Didn’t see that coming. It doesn’t resemble what we put on film this year.”

What they put on film in this game would have starred Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

And so it is WVU says goodbye to Oklahoma.

No one is sad to see them go. They scored 50 or more points against West Virginia six times since the Mountaineers joined the Big 12.

They’re Nick Saban’s problem now.