MORGANTOWN - Cowabunga, dude.
After West Virginia handled Texas before 56,736 Saturday at Milan Puskar Stadium, there were happy faces on the winning Mountaineers. There were whoops of joy and, maybe, just maybe, relief.
Oh, and there was body surfing.
Forget hanging 10. WVU hung 38 on the visiting Longhorns. The celebration afterward mocked that of Texas and coach Charlie Strong, who crowd-surfed his players in the locker room following a 33-16 upset of then-No. 23 West Virginia in 2014. This time, Mountaineer coach Dana Holgorsen caught the wave.
"We wanted to do that, especially after how [Texas] acted last year and two years ago when they beat us," said WVU back Wendell Smallwood.
Apparently, the players were shown the video over and over this past week. ("I was sick of hearing that song," Smallwood said.)
Indeed, for the second week in a row, Holgorsen was riding high instead of being hit with a tsunami that surely would have followed a pair of losses.
Saturday's joy started and ended with the Mountaineer special teams. Literally. Holgorsen sent three players out for the coin flip: punter Nick O'Toole, snapper John DePalma and kicker Josh Lambert.
Maybe it was an omen. Lambert, compared to his last season, has struggled. He'd hit 11 of 16 field goal attempts heading into Saturday's game, but converted his only attempt against the Longhorns.
For most of the game, O'Toole was on task. He nailed three punts inside the UT 20. At the end of the first quarter, he unleashed one of his chip-shot punts with backspin for 46 yards, setting the Longhorns on their own 1-yard line.
Later, WVU's offense went three-and-out, but O'Toole came through with a 50-yard punt. On top of that, Texas made one of its many mistakes, this one a block in the back courtesy of Kris Boyd. UT found itself starting on its own 7.
Then there was the killer special-teams play. On a kickoff, Boyd was returning the ball when he came across Nana Kyeremeh. The redshirt junior forced a fumble at the Texas 22 and Justin Arndt jumped on it, giving the hosts possession. Lambert's field goal moved the score from 28-17 to 31-17 and put momentum squarely in WVU's hands the rest of the way.
"That was a big one there," said Strong.
"On kickoff, my goal is just to squeeze the ball and make sure nothing gets outside of me," Kyeremeh said. "I saw him try to bring it back outside and so I got my head across the ball - and the ball came out.
"It was a huge jump to the team. We got the ball back in great field position and we could put the game away right there."
"It was unreal," O'Toole said. "It meant everything. You saw the momentum shift. We just scored and now we have the ball again."
Holgorsen smiled when talking about the kick coverage team.
"They've been fantastic," he said. "I'd just prefer nobody talk about them."
OK, so "fantastic" is a little much. WVU entered Saturday's game No. 79 nationally in kickoff return defense and No. 57 in punt return defense, but cut Holgorsen slack on this day. His guys on special teams earned their keep. The Mountaineers are 5-4 and within one win of qualifying for a bowl.
"We've maintained our [special teams] health this year," said the WVU coach, "and kept the units together."
At the end there were some hiccups. O'Toole, for instance, had a 31-yard punt. But it didn't matter.
"A lot of people think special teams is just kicking a ball," O'Toole said. "That's really not what it is. At the beginning today, I was really on and Josh was doing his thing. Then, at the end, the wind was in my face and there's not much you can really do. But we can put you in a bad spot, like when they had it at the 1, or we can put us in a bad spot, like when they had it at the 50."
Now West Virginia is in good shape to qualify for a bowl. Life might not be great for WVU's team, but at least it's better.
"During those four games, we had a tough stretch," Kyeremeh said. "Even when we had that overtime loss to Oklahoma State, though, we knew we had a good team. We just had to keep our heads down and take it game by game."
"Going through the four losses, we knew it was the four best teams in the conference," O'Toole added. "Dana made it real clear that we couldn't hang our heads."
Kyeremeh's head was held high Saturday.
"It was exciting," he said. "It's always fun to beat Texas."
Waves of fun, apparently.
"I was just going into the locker room when I saw the guys were already [crowd surfing] Dana," O'Toole said. "We'd been watching Coach Strong and the Texas guys all week. That video irritated everybody.
"It was nice to get 'em back."