WVU’s Rollercoaster Night Ends On Downslope, Houston Wins On Hail Mary
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MORGANTOWN -- The sun set at dawn on West Virginia Saturday night in Houston. In was out and up was down and a win became a loss.
Over more than 100 years of football, WVU has suffered some difficult losses to swallow, but none could match this one.
Not considering it would have been their fifth in a row, the most heroic they may have ever had considering this was a team picked 14th in the Big 12 this year.
So much was riding on it. It was against former coach Dana Holgorsen. He was beaten, clearly beaten, or was he for when it was over, it was his team celebrating on the field, the scoreboard twinkling a 41-39 victory.
Holgorsen's job in Houston was hanging in the balance and Neal Brown, his successor at WVU, seemed to have earned the right to keep his job.
And then the earth opened up and swallowed the Mountaineers.
Garrett Greene was heroic. He'd put his team on his back and led to what seemed certain to be an impossible, incredible victory.
But it wasn't to be and he wound up being in the middle of it.
As great as he was, Donovan Smith, the Houston quarterback, was his equal.
Neal Brown expected heroics on this night. He said before the game he was turning him loose.
"There's excitement centered around Garrett Greene," Brown admitted in his pregame interview. "We felt he was close to a breakout performance against Pitt but he was injured in the game. I think the kid can be special."
Greene went 20 of 38 passing for 391 yards and two touchdowns. He ran 12 times for 47 yards and two more touchdowns … and he threw for a two-point conversion to put WVU in a position to win the game.
And then, when victory seemed to have escaped him, he found Hudson Clement on fourth and 10 with 12 seconds to play for a 50-yard touchdown that gave WVU a 39-35 lead.
It was indescribable to see, impossible to imagine if you look at through Greene's eyes.
You can't imagine the glee, the rush of emotion, the thrill of victory they used to talk about on ABC's Wide World of Sports.
And then Greene did the unimaginable. He celebrated too strongly. What he did, couldn't tell at the moment. He was flagged for 15 yards on the kickoff.
How could it matter?
It did. It changed field position after the kickoff. Houston took over at its 43 with 7 seconds to play. They threw an out, then what was, to them, was a Hail Mary.
For West Virginia it was a Hell Mary.
Smith had grown as the game went on. He had a mediocre first half, then as he ran to his left he had a string of 15 straight completions as he launched one final pass. It soared into the end zone, was batted around and wound up in the hands of Stephon Johnson Jr.
Lightness turned to darkness. Time stood still. Hearts stopped beating all across West Virginia.
No one knew what to do, what to say.
WVU seemed to try to talk the officials into forcing Houston to try an extra point, but they wouldn't have kicked it anyway, fearing it would be blocked and picked up and run back for a tying 2-point conversion.
WVU had used up its share of miracles on this night.
How could that Hail Mary have worked? Brown didn't know.
"It's a play we worked on every Friday," he said. "You have got to knock that ball down."
Instead, it bounced into the air.
All across the state, at every alumni chapter across the country, there was silence until someone said to the bartender, "Give a shot … no, make it a double … and keep them coming."
The thing was, if you take the emotion of the last touchdown out of the picture, WVU earned this defeat. Like if you can't win when you run 82 plays to 53, when you gain 546 yards to 393, when you pass for 391 yards, when you score 39 points, how can you lose.
Well, you give up a 100-yard kickoff return. You come in averaging 3 penalties a game and commit 8. When you drop passes and let them get away with a Hail, Mary, you have written a script to wipe out all that was good.
You would prefer you put it away and not let it get on the plane home with you, if you are Mountaineer, but it isn't going to go away easily.
All we can say is, the sun will come up in the morning.
We think.