On Saturday night, West Virginia football suffered defeat at the hands of Baylor, falling to 5-5 overall on the season. While the loss marks another frustrating moment in a season full of disappointments, their are a few ways in which this particular loss was historically significant in the history of the program. Let us take a look at what the loss means in context of the program.
1. Baylor secures their first-ever road win in Morgantown
WVU and Baylor didn't meet for the first-time on the gridiron until the Mounatineers joined the Big 12 in the 2012 season. Entering this season, the two teams had met 12 times, and Baylor was 4-8 against WVU.
However, all four of those Baylor wins had occurred for the Bears on their home turf in Waco, Texas -- their inability to win in Morgantown dates back to a 70-63 shootout loss to a Geno Smith-led WVU team, continued with an upset loss as a Top 5 team in 2014 that led to riots in Morgantown, and the ship had yet to corrected.
Until Saturday, that is. The Bears finally knocked a monkey off their shoulder with the win, and Baylor is now 1-6 against WVU in Morgantown and 5-8 against the Mountaineers overall.
2. WVU will now finish 2024 with a rare losing season at home
The Mountaineers dropped their fourth home game with Saturday's loss, which moves WVU into pretty unchartered territory at Milan Puskar Stadium.
The Mountaineers can now finish with a 3-4 home record at best this season, with a potential 2-5 home record still on the table if things go south against UCF this coming weekend. Dating back 40 seasons, this will mark just the fourth time WVU will finish their season with a losing record at home -- the others came under current coach Neal Brown in 2019, with the other two coming under legendary coach Don Nehlen in 1990 and 1986.
If the Mountaineers drop their final home contest with the Knights this Saturday, it will be just the third time in program history the team drops five home games in one season, with the 1986 and 1990 being the others.
3. 2024 will finish as Neal Brown's fifth season at WVU with 7-or-less regular season wins
This is a stat that doesn't jump out as significant at first, but is sort of significant for a few reasons.
Sure, a 7-win regular season is still a winning season -- if the Mountaineers can get there. But win you look at the dividing line between 7-or-less win regular seasons and 8-or-more win regular seasons at WVU, a trend emerges.
Dana Holgorsen, the previous head coach at WVU, was only able to win 8-or-more regular season games three times over and 8-year tenure -- that means Neal Brown is about to hit the magic number of 7-or-less win regular seasons that forced the previous coach out of town, and it took two less years in Morgantown to achieve.
While Holgorsen wasn't fired, there was definitely a lack of interest in renewing his contract after his final season, and he was drawing plenty of ire from the fanbase. And one of Holgorsen's 8+ win regular seasons came in his final year at the helm, showing that even a 8-win season wasn't enough to save the job.
Why is this dividing line viewed as where mediocre football begins in Morgantown? Well, Rich Rodriguez and Bill Stewart won 8-or-more regular season games during 9-of-10 seasons leading the program. In 14 seasons under Holgorsen and Brown, that has happened just four times. Now, you can possibly attribute this to the higher level of competition that came after the team jumped from the Big East to the Big 12 in 2012 (Holgorsen's second season). But now, with Texas and Oklahoma gone from the league, it looks a lot more like the old Big East, and Brown is just 5-5 overall and 4-3 in the league.