Agonized Dana Holgorsen Says OSU’s Experience, Cornelius Were Difference in OSU-WVU

Dana Holgorsen is example No. 1 of what you’ll find when you type in “poker face antonym” into your google machine. He tells it like he sees it, good or bad, pulls no punches and leaves no facial expression un-made no matter the ramifications.

West Virginia’s head coach showed all his cards Saturday night after his team, which led by as many as 17 points over OSU, punted the lead away in the final minute to fall 45-41 to Mike Gundy and the Cowboys. Holgorsen, the former OSU offensive coordinator, said OSU’s experience was a huge factor in its ability to go toe-to-toe for the duration.

“Congratulations to Coach Gundy and Oklahoma State,” he said.”They’ve been in a lot of these games, and you could tell they had a little bit better mindset than we did. So it’s disappointing we had them on the ropes and couldn’t close them out. Great teams close people out, and we couldn’t do it.”

Holgorsen was asked about his decisions to go for it on fourth down in the fourth quarter and responded with a, “Everyone in the stadium saw that” when he was teed up about West Virginia not being able to stop OSU’s offense late in the game.

“They wore us,” he said. “Got it going. That dude [Cornelius], he’s a good player. He’s gotten better every week. He’s been there for awhile, and every week he’s getting better. We couldn’t get pressure on him. Couldn’t get off blocks. He scrambled around and kept his eyes downfield. 6-5 guy, kept playing.”

This GIF is a nice summary of what the entire 5-minute presser was like. So much angst. So much frustration. So little hair.

West Virginia fell to 6-2 in league play tied Texas for second, but it controls its own destiny for Big 12 title hopes. With one regular season game left on deck, the Mountaineers must knock off Oklahoma on Friday in Morgantown to keep their conference championship hopes alive.