FORT WORTH, Texas - There is an idea inside the Puskar Center, the place that houses West Virginia's football program, that suggests the Mountaineers are a whole lot like TCU. There are facts to support this, as well, facts WVU likes and maybe needs to recite as it takes a three-game losing streak into Thursday's matchup with the fifth-ranked Horned Frogs.
The 7:30 p.m. game at Amon G. Carter Stadium will be televised by Fox Sports 1.
"We're two equally matched teams," said WVU running backs coach JaJuan Seider, who knows as well as anyone the first three games since each joined the Big 12 in 2012 have been decided by 1, 3 and 1 points with TCU winning the one-point games on the road.
They entered the conference together, and both actually defected from the Big East. The Mountaineers had been there since 1991. The Horned Frogs stayed for just a few months and actually never competed within the conference.
"Before we got into the Big 12, we both had success and won BCS games. We both have great tradition," West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen said. "When we came into the league, we both probably dealt with the same stuff initially. Both teams, I believe, were 7-5 and 4-8 their first two years, and we were trying to build depth and get not only their players but their fan bases and all that accustom to what the Big 12 is all about."
If they traveled a similar path their first two seasons - and it's hard to argue they did not - then the Horned Frogs started to accelerate and, at the minimum, progress faster last season. They finished 12-1 and narrowly missed the inaugural College Football Playoff. But they were close, and it seems just as difficult to believe now as it was then that TCU wasted a 58-37 lead with 11:38 to go in a game it lost to Baylor 61-58.
The Mountaineers and Horned Frogs both made it to bowl games in their third Big 12 season and faced off against SEC teams, but TCU destroyed Ole Miss, which was ranked as high as No. 3 and beat the same Alabama team was ranked No. 1 and opened the season with a win against WVU. The Mountaineers were soundly beaten in the Liberty Bowl by a Texas A&M team that lost 59-0 to Alabama.
And now the Horned Frogs (7-0, 4-0 Big 12) are again competing for a national title. The Mountaineers (3-3, 0-3) would like to play in a bowl game, and a road win would help but could also could bring the team back closer to TCU.
"It's a good measuring stick with where we're at," Holgorsen said.
It is, but for how long? The Mountaineers arrive at their annual meeting with their partner in transition trying hard to merely keep pace. Their union has an expiration date, and even though TCU did sneak out of Mountaineer Field with a game-winning field goal last season, these two haven't been all that close since the start of last season.
TCU has lost once in the past 19 games. WVU, which started the season wondering why it couldn't be this season's TCU, has had a losing streak of at least three games in each of the past four years and five of that length or longer since joining the Big 12. A loss tonight would be just WVU's fourth four-game slide since 1980, and two would belong to Holgorsen.
The Horned Frogs have a Heisman Trophy candidate at quarterback, and Trevone Boykin's candidacy is more serious this season than it was a year ago. The Mountaineers have been hampered by their quarterback's accuracy and turnovers, but Holgorsen said Skyler Howard remains the team's best option.
TCU has one of the nation's most productive receivers, and Josh Doctson's leads the country with 152.4 receiving yards per game while his 12 touchdowns trail only Baylor's Corey Coleman (17). The Mountaineers have Shelton Gibson, whose 23.48 yards per catch is the third-best average in the country, but they've had issues finding consistent complements and last week broke freshman quarterback David Sills' redshirt to play him at receiver, where he'll start opposite Gibson tonight.
Now, the two teams do indeed have something in common on defense. WVU lost all-conference and likely All-American safety Karl Joseph to a torn ACL earlier this month. Stating cornerback Terrell Chestnut might not play tonight because of a bad shoulder. Reserve cornerback Ricky Rumph will not play because of a death in the family. The secondary's depth is taking hits, and the Mountaineers can't use personnel combinations they need to use to hang with an offense like TCU's, which averages 616.3 yards and 50.1 points per game.
But TCU had it worse. The Horned Frogs started the season looking to replace six starters from the Peach Bowl champion. Coach Gary Patterson then needed to replace eight starters in the first three weeks of this season.
They're still standing and thriving, weathering the challenges while they adapt and some of the lost starters return.
"If you can't stand the fire," Patterson said, "get out of the pan."
What's next for the defense remains unknown and trusted to things it hasn't worked on and people it hasn't worked with very much. Some of what's happened is out of their control, but whatever happens next is up to them.
"That was part of the meeting we had, and I told the kids last week, 'Listen, do you think anybody feels sorry for us for the way we're playing right now?'" WVU defensive coordinator Tony Gibson said. "Our goal was to change the mindset of defensive football at WVU this year. That was the No. 1 goal. We wanted to change that, and we wanted it to be different.
"Obviously, right now we need to finish, but we've still got a lot to play for. We can go 9-3. What's wrong with that? What we want is our kids to get better and finish what they started. No. 8 (Joseph) would give his right arm to get back out there and finish this year. What we'd better do is go out and perform."