Brkic's field goal was OU's only lead of the game.
"I thought we competed," West Virginia coach Neal Brown said. "I thought we were in good position when the game was tied 13-13 and we had the ball in good field position."
At that point, the Mountaineers had the ball inside the Sooner 30 yard line with the clock winding down below four minutes to play when disaster struck. Two inadvertent Zach Frazier snaps, one a five-yard snap infraction penalty and the second one quarterback Jarret Doege didn't see that ended up rolling 21 yards back to the West Virginia 46 before he could fall on the football, took WVU out of scoring range.
So, instead of third down and a manageable distance inside the Sooner 30, West Virginia was faced with a third and 33 at midfield which ultimately required a Tyler Sumpter punt that was downed at the OU 8 with 3:39 remaining.
"We don't have a better person in a program than Zach Frazier," Brown said. "I'll take him every day against Oklahoma or wherever we're going. We've got some hurt kids in the locker room and nobody is more hurt than him.
"I'm not sure what happened, but I'm sure noise was a factor," Brown added. "I will have to go back and watch the TV copy to see whether (the Oklahoma players) said something or not. That happens, so we'll see."
Quarterback Spencer Rattler, who completed 26-of-36 passes for 256 yards, used controlled passes to methodically march the football down the field on Oklahoma's winning drive. A 14-yard pass to Drake Stoops (OU's longest play of the drive) gave the Sooners a first down at the WVU 34. Another Rattler short pass to Michael Woods moved the ball to the 30 with 56 seconds left, forcing West Virginia to start using its timeouts.
A Lance Dixon offsides penalty moved the ball five yards closer to the goal line, and an Akheem Mesidor facemask infraction following WVU's final timeout gave Oklahoma a first and goal at the 8. Oklahoma ran the clock down to two seconds before calling timeout to put Brkic in position to kick the game winning field goal, one of three he made on the evening.
His others were a 28-yarder on Oklahoma's opening drive of the third quarter to tie the score at 10, and a 35-yarder with 8:52 to play to tie it again at 13.
"It wasn't a good matchup for us offensively but I thought our guys battled," Brown said. "I think we held the ball for like 34 minutes and looking back on it, we had a couple of penalties that knocked us out of some favorable positions that hurt us."
West Virginia (2-2) began the game with an impressive 17-play, 75-yard drive that consumed 9:07 of the clock. Neal Brown mixed in backup quarterback Garrett Greene, who took all of the snaps once the Mountaineers got the football inside the 20. His run for nine yards moved the ball to the OU 9, and two plays later, he squeezed into the end zone from the 2.
"We had a plan for (Greene) of when to play him," Brown said. "Down in the red zone area is when we wanted to play him."
Oklahoma (4-0) answered on its opening possession by marching 67 yards in just seven plays, the big play being a Rattler pass to Eric Gray coming out of the backfield for 38 yards to the Mountaineer 8. Eventually, Rattler hooked up with H-back Austin Stogner for a 5-yard touchdown.
After that, the game turned into a field-position, defensive struggle.
Following a Taijh Alston sack of Rattler for a loss of 6, West Virginia got the football back with 2:16 to go in the half when Isaiah Esdale returned Michael Turk's punt eight yards to the OU 49.
A Doege-to-Bryce Ford-Wheaton pass for 10 yards on fourth and 1 afforded WVU a new set of downs at the Oklahoma 38, and a 28-yard Doege pass to Winston Wright Jr. down the far sideline gave West Virginia a first down at the Sooner 10.
Doege threw an incomplete pass to Leddie Brown, and his second throw to Brown out in the flat gained two yards to the Sooner 8 where he was tackled in bounds with the clock running. Doege managed to get the team lined up to spike the football with two seconds left, enabling Legg to boot a 25-yard field goal to give West Virginia a 10-7 halftime lead.
Legg's second field goal, a 21-yarder, capping an 11-play, 68-yard drive to answer Oklahoma's field goal to begin the third quarter.
However, the Mountaineers missed an opportunity to reach paydirt when a false start penalty moved the ball back five yards to the OU 6 where Ford-Wheaton was unable to hold on to Doege's elevated third-down pass in the back of the end zone.
"I think when we go back and look at it there were going to be three or four opportunities to win the game – and you never know when those plays are going to be – and we just didn't get it done," Brown said.
Doege completed 20 of his 29 pass attempts for 160 yards, eight of those going to Ford-Wheaton for a game-high 93 yards.
Mike Woods led Oklahoma with eight catches for 86 yards.
Leddie Brown was the game's top rusher with 56 yards on 15 carries while OU managed to net just 57 rushing yards on 28 attempts.
"That was a tough, physical football game and I thought we went toe-to-toe with Oklahoma here in their backyard," Brown said. "If you look at it we had chances but we just ran out of time. It's a tough loss but I'm proud of our guys."
Oklahoma, which came into tonight's game averaging 46.3 points and 487.3 yards, finished with 313 yards of total offense – or nearly 300 yards fewer than it was averaging in coach Lincoln Riley's first three games against West Virginia that resulted in 59-31, 59-56 and 52-14 Sooner victories.
Tonight's game more closely resembled West Virginia's 16-7 defeat to the Sooners in 2013 - the closest the Mountaineers have come to defeating Oklahoma in Norman since their 41-27 upset victory to kick off the 1982 season.
West Virginia is now winless in nine tries against the Sooners since joining the Big 12 in 2012, and missed out on an opportunity to get its biggest ranked road win in school history. WVU was also attempting to get just its 19th road win ever versus a ranked opponent.
"Since we've joined the Big 12 Conference in 2012, Oklahoma has been the team to beat," Brown said. "When you look at it, we've tried outscoring them and that didn't work so when we got here (in 2019) and put in our foundation for how we wanted to build this thing to win our league, we felt like we had to do it with great defense.
"If you go back to when we got beat by Texas Tech in 2019, since then we've played pretty good defense minus a game or two," Brown added. "I thought we had a really good plan coming in tonight and I thought we had a good plan to keep them off the field."
The Mountaineers return to Morgantown to face Texas Tech next Saturday at Milan Puskar Stadium. The Red Raiders lost for the first time this season earlier today at Texas.
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September 26, 2021 at 11:25AM
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West Virginia Comes Up Short at No. 4 Oklahoma - West Virginia University Athletics - WVU Athletics
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