Two teams stumble into Saturday’s game at Mountaineer Field and, wouldn’t you know it, TCU and WVU are two of the greenest teams in the country.

The Horned Frogs have played 16  freshmen, and a couple of them are pretty good — like Devonte Fields. Texas has also played 16. No one in the FBS has used more.

“In our case, we had to play freshmen,” Patterson said. “We didn’t have anybody else.”

TCU lost 20 seniors in 2010 and 19 last year. A drug bust in February forced Patterson to dismiss four players and three were starters at linebacker, defensive tackle and cornerback. TCU (5-3, 2-3 Big East) has just 11 seniors on scholarship now.

“Up until last year, I’d never played more than three, but last year, because the Rose Bowl team graduated six wide receivers, we had to play three just at wide receiver,” Patterson said. “Most people don’t understand you only have X amount of scholarships at each position.”

The Mountaineers have played just 12 freshmen. That’s not much of a difference, but there is one note to separate the two. TCU has used freshmen all season, and knew that would be the case. The Mountaineers are still blending them in and increasing the workload.

“We make those decisions based on practice,” Holgorsen said. “We talked here a lot in camp about freshmen receivers and who’d be able to play. We knew there was some promise in there. From a talent standpoint we thought Jordan, Devonte and Travares were going to be able to help us.

“You don’t want to put them out there if guys like (redshirt freshmen) K.J. Myers or Dante Campbell are better. When we made the decisions, we felt like those guys were a little better. We kept practicing and practicing and saw the younger guys getting better while the other guys stayed the same. It comes back to playing time being the biggest motivator for kids. If it is, they’ll continue to get better. If it’s not, they won’t.”