West Virginia’s 24-2 win over TCU ended the same way the game had gone for much of the night: with the Horned Frogs coming up short when they needed a response.
David Afogho delivered the finishing blow, stripping TCU quarterback Jaden Craig, and linebacker Ben Cutter fell on the football to lock in the victory for WVU.
Afterward, TCU head coach Sonny Dykes didn’t hide his frustration. His postgame session was built around the same theme over and over again: his team kept getting into scoring range, then unraveled.
“They got us a couple of times today. They zero blitzed us on one of the sacks.
We were supposed to throw hot; we didn’t do that. I didn’t see the last one.
Somebody walked in front of me, so I can’t really tell you exactly what happened on the last sack. We’ve given up way too many (sacks), so that’s obviously something that we’ve got to get corrected and address, and we will.”
Dykes pointed first to the offense’s failure to finish drives, and he made it clear that the problem went beyond one bad series. TCU repeatedly moved the ball into West Virginia territory and still walked away empty-handed too many times.
“I think the biggest thing for us right now is just the inability to finish on offense. We drove the ball down the field to their end of the field over and over and over again, and then we shot ourselves in the foot.
We had three turnovers on that side of the field. We missed a field goal.
We turned the ball over on downs. You can’t do that.”
The numbers told a strange story, and Dykes leaned into that too. TCU had the edge in yards, first downs, third-down efficiency and possession, yet still finished on the wrong side of a 24-2 score.
“We outgained them almost two to one. The time of possession was almost two to one.
We were 8/14 on third down; they were 4/12. I mean, all the things that you look at that you say, ‘Okay, you’re going to win the game.’
We had 29 first downs; they had 17. We almost doubled them in first downs, almost doubled them in yards.
We almost doubled them in time of possession; we converted over 50% of our third downs, they converted 30% of theirs, and you lose. It’s just a matter of not being able to make plays in critical situations, and it’s happened to us over and over and over again this year.”
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Honor Huffs West Virginia Future Just Took Another Turn
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Huff has a hearing scheduled for next week that could determine whether he gets a preliminary injunction to play elsewhere. For West Virginia, the situation adds one more layer of uncertainty to a roster that already has no obvious opening for him, leaving his future to be decided first by the legal process and then by whatever opportunities remain once that process plays out. [Read more 🡒]