College Football – (7) Horned Frogs Hope to Hop (20) Mountaineers

(7) TCU Horned Frogs at (20) West Virginia Mountaineers (+5.5, 74 o/u) 

Now that the College Football Playoff Rankings are out, No. 7 TCU (6-1, 3-1 Big 12) knows exactly how close it is to reaching the final four. The Horned Frogs schedule isn’t friendly with No. 20 West Virginia (6-2, 4-1 Big 12) next on tap and No. 9 Kansas State laying in wait. But, if the Frogs can win both, they should find themselves in the top four.

TCU head coach Gary Patterson said, “I don’t know if any of the games that we played on the road, except for the Baylor game that we played this year, would [have] more magnitude than … this ballgame …”

He added, “We wanted to get to be bowl eligible, we got to that point. Now everyone counts once. Two tough games in a row. West Virginia going to Morgantown, really they’re playing really well right now on both sides of the ball, and then Kansas State. You can say the same about them.”

The nation’s highest-scoring team (50.4 PPG), TCU will be led by quarterback Trevone Boykin. The Heisman hopeful will face a tough Mountaineers defense that, in recent weeks, has contained the high-flying offenses of Baylor and Oklahoma State.

Offensively, West Virginia hopes quarterback Clint Trickett and running back Wendell Smallwood can out duel the TCU point-scoring machine.

West Virginia head coach Dana Holgorsen knows it will be a great showdown. “Now we’re both sitting here with six wins and are doing pretty good things here on all three sides of the ball. As far as … we’re concerned, it’s another big game. It’s another Big 12 game.

“It doesn’t matter where it’s at, shoot, it’s going to be a big game. Last week we had a pretty big game against Oklahoma State that we were able to do what we needed to do to be able to win. To be able to come back home…we know it’s going to be a great game. It’s going to be a great, exciting weekend,” said Holgorsen.

TCU has been involved in nail-biters against two other top teams (Baylor and Oklahoma), which is why taking the home dog and the points is the right play.

(Photo credit: Karen Blaha (Flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode]. Photo has been cropped from its original.)