West Virginia has lost two straight games by combined scores of 104-28, which certainly qualifies as an ugly losing streak, but it's still simply a two-game losing streak.
Just the other day, head coach Dana Holgorsen was saying he couldn't remember the last time WVU lost two in a row.
It makes sense that Holgorsen doesn't remember those two games. He was at Oklahoma State the last time it happened (Oct. 23 and 29, 2010). It was after those two losses (one by five points, another by a field goal in overtime) that athletics director Oliver Luck went looking for a guy like Holgorsen to reverse that trend - and a few others - in the first place.
Still, Holgorsen had something of a point.
Prolonged losing streaks have not been common at West Virginia in quite a while. As the school points out, WVU has won 95 of its last 126 regular-season games and 99 of 134 overall.
That dates back to the 2002 season. More highlights within that sequence show the Mountaineers winning 70 games in seven years (2005-11), the 11th-best mark in all of college football and 86 in nine years, (2003-11), the 12th-best record in the land.
(Incidentally, TCU, this week's opponent, has an 82-16 (.837) record since 2005, the second-best mark nationally).
What all of that means is there hasn't been a lot of hanging heads and wondering what went wrong in the last decade of WVU football. It's been a quick rebound and onto the next one.
In 2010, after they lost those two to Syracuse and UConn, they closed the season with four straight victories before losing in the Champs Sports Bowl.
The last time West Virginia lost more than two in a row was 2004, when it dropped the last two regular-season games, then was beaten in a second straight Gator Bowl. It was a year earlier the last time the Mountaineers lost three straight in the regular season, but they still managed to win the Big East that year.
West Virginia hasn't lost four or more in a row since 1986, when it lost six straight.
''If 5-2 teams that are coming off of a loss pout, then they are probably not going to finish the year well,'' Holgorsen said. ''There are a whole bunch of teams in the same situation that we are. There are some teams coming off of losses. How you handle those losses comprises what you are going to be made of.''
If it means anything - and it doesn't - West Virginia is 7-4-1 (.625) all-time on games played on Nov. 3.
Stedman's Presence
Holgorsen was asked how much receiver Stedman Bailey's injury has affected the offense.
''I didn't know that our offensive problems were incredibly affected by one guy. Are we better with Stedman out there at 100 percent? Yes,'' he asked and answered.
So let's look at Bailey's impact. He has three 100-yard games, has two games of three touchdown receptions or more, including five against Baylor when he set another WVU mark with 303 receiving yards. Twice, he's had two games of 13 catches. His 14 touchdowns already this season are two more than any individual had ever caught in one season at West Virginia.
