Local Sports

Emotional victory

MORGANTOWN -- It took a gutty, gritty, gutsy performance by the West Virginia football team to shine a light through what might have been one of the darkest days in modern Mountaineer sports history as it beat TCU, 24-21.

It took a pair of fourth quarter blocked field goals by defensive linemen Mike Lockhart and Sean Martin to seal the game that was played with a furor seldom seen on a college football field with both teams heaping out physical punishment on each and every play.

Two WVU players -- safety Aubrey Burks and linebacker Trey Lathan -- had to be carted off the field and taken by ambulance to a hospital near the stadium.

There was a late-night update on the injuries to Burks and Lathan.

Both remained in a Fort Worth area hospital overnight.

Burks, who suffered a head or neck injury, was being held for observation while Lathan will undergo surgery for his lower leg injury.

These were not just injuries. They were casualties, serious enough to lay a hush over an entire stadium that was roaring through the taut and physical play on the field.

First it was Burks, who brought both teams to their knees, some praying, when he suffered what was either a neck or head injury. It was obvious immediately he was badly injured as they brought out a back board, brought the cart out onto the field and tended to him cautiously, removing his helmet and cutting away his uniform.

He was carted off to an ambulance and taken to a hospital just a couple of miles from the stadium.

He would get company in the fourth quarter when Latham suffered his sickening injury, again having to be loaded onto a cart with an air cast on his lower right leg. The redshirt freshman gave a thumb's up signal to worried teammates.

"It was an emotional night," coach Neal Brown admitted. "I don't think I was ever part of a game in which two players were carted off."

Earlier in the game starting guard Tomas Rimac also had to leave the game with a leg injury suffered while blocking for an extra point.

As if that were not enough, back home in Morgantown, the men's basketball team suffered a loss of its own as their phantom superstar, Jose Perez, was taken off the roster.

Perez, who has been a year-long soap opera as he transferred from Manhattan, spent the year awaiting a transfer waiver only to be denied, says he was dismissed from the team for what seemed like an academic reason.

All new coach Josh Eilert said of it in a release saying they were parting company was "We wish Jose the best in his future endeavors."

Perez, via social media, had a lot more to say.

"Gave me your word to come back. I went to bat for you in all meetings, went behind the scenes to get recruits, recruited/hosted every player since I've been here.

"Then got thrown to the street like a dead animal."

He claimed he was put into undergraduate classes after graduating.

"I never accepted being put in undergrad classes, but people wanted me eligible. Only disagreement was not going to study hall and that's where the decision was made nowhere else. Literally nowhere else to go. Don't make it seem like I'm the bad person because I truly wanted to play here and was one of the reasons I came back because the 'boss' gave me his word he would have my best interest.

"Now I am once again entering a phase of depression and I can't play the sport I love. It's been two years since I suited up and still decided to come back. Good luck, wish nothing but the best to Mountaineer Nation."

This was a game in which Garrett Greene returned to claim his starting quarterback role, but while he seemed rusty passing, he completed some big plays and used his legs to eat up a team-high 80 yards for 12 carries and two touchdowns.

But right from the start his biggest contribution may have been getting the juices flowing with his team, beginning the night on the first possession getting into a fiery conversation with the TCU defense.

The night went on like that from the start, TCU coach Sonny Dykes drawing an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on the sideline after a rare second defensive holding call on a defensive lineman trying to contact center Zach Frazier.

But, as it has been throughout this first four-game winning streak since 2018, it was the defense that provided the electricity to it all, even while suffering those two terrible-looking injuries.

And then there was special teams which produced those two blocked field goals that could have tied the game.

"I told Sean, I told Lee that I was going to block the field goal," said Lockhart, the Georgia Tech defensive lineman who has been nothing short of spectacular with his plays from sideline to sideline.

And Martin's blocked field goal came in the closing minute of the game, right after replay overturned a sack he had produced, calling it an incomplete pass as quarterback Chandler Morris tried to throw it away.

"I was just kind of frustrated they took a tackle from me. I had to make up for it," said Martin.

The Mountaineer defense turned the game around by holding TCU to 1 total yard in the third quarter after the Horned Frogs took a touchdown lead into the locker room and held them to 120 second half yards after they had run up 321 yards in the first half.

You couldn't count high enough to name the defenders who stymied TCU. Lee Kpogba had 11 tackles, 8 solo with a sack, a tackle for a loss, a pass broken up and 3 hurries; Bishop had 9 tackles, 7 solo and 2 pass breakups, Hershey McLaurin had 7 tackles, 5 solo, 2 for a loss and broke up 2 passes, and Tomi Durojaiye had 5 tackles, 1.5 for a loss and half a sack.