We should be so lucky to have history repeat itself Saturday and see a game at Mountaineer Field that’s as exciting as the ones in Waco or Lubbock last weekend.

Baylor scored the final 24 points in the last 11 minutes of a 61-58 victory against really good TCU. (Aside: What happens to the Horned Frogs this week? That’s the thing I’m most interested in the Big 12 this weekend.) WVU grabbed the last 17 points int he final eight minutes to beat meh Texas Tech 37-34. (Aside again: This is your chance, Clint Bowen! You can run all over the Red Raiders.)

Now, those are different achievements. The Horned Frogs looked everything like a national championship contender for 48 minutes. And WVU was on the road in place that oftentimes makes it difficult for opponents to pull off such reversals of fortune. The Bears have that trick in their bag because they’re so dangerous on offense. The Mountaineers, well, it appears they’ve learned a thing or two about getting back into games they would have walked out on in the past.

They’re both going to score points Saturday, but when is most interesting on the eve of Round 3 between these two teams. Early? Late? Throughout? In waves?

Whatever the answer there, you get a feeling these teams, whether in lead or in the rear view mirror, won’t let this one end until the bus driver is threatening to leave them in the parking lot.

“Just believing that you can win more than anything,” Holgorsen said. “You’ve got to have kids that are experienced that believe that they can win. You better have a tight team that sticks together when they’re down. They clearly have a tight team with all the games they’ve been able to win.

“I can’t say enough about our coaches and players. We had a great halftime, we were down 21-10, made a lot of adjustments, motivated, challenged each other. Nobody gave up, everybody stuck together and found a way to win there at the end.”

After Baylor trailed by three touchdowns against TCU, it had scoring drives of four plays for 45 yards, five plays for 92 yards and five plays for 91 yards to tie the game at 58-58. Meanwhile, the TCU offense had 18 plays for 53 yards on three drives that didn’t muster a point.

“It’s just amazing to me the team that we have,” Baylor quarterback Bryce Petty said. “I was going up and down the sideline like ‘Hey guys, we got this’ and they would look at me like ‘Yeah, I know.’

“It’s just confidence, that I got your back, you got my back, we’ve been through worse. It was just a matter of time before things started picking up.”

But before all of that, you have tonight and the Gold-Blue Debut at 7 p.m. at the Coliseum.

Prepare yourself for the coming basketball season with the modern day, watered-down version of Midnight Madness and a 30-minute intrasquad scrimmage. And grab a roster so you know who’s who. But pay attention to the people you know.

Devin Williams is going to look different to you, too.

People ask and talk about the five newcomers and the two players who are now eligible. Bob Huggins is alarmingly optimistic about Jonathan Holton and what he’ll bring to the team by presence alone. And Juwan Staten is everybody’s All-American.

I don’t think I’m overstating this when I say that after talking to Huggins three times this preseason and to players twice that Williams is the one who made the most of himself and the offseason.

One explanation? The 6-foot-9, 260-pound sophomore has a handle on his asthma after letting it handle him last season.

What Williams was working with was really no different than a teammate handling the ball with a bum wrist or an opponent cutting on a bad ankle. It was only a matter of time until he was overcome. The big man was breathing hard and laboring from point to point, which is less than ideal for the player WVU tried to rely on for rebounds on defense and touches close to the basket on offense.

“I couldn’t make it to the first media timeout,” he said. “I was usually trying to fight through it by then.”

His father had asthma when he was younger and Williams’ brothers outgrew it, too. Williams was different because it crept up on him later in life and saddled him when he was in high school. If he thought he had it under control helping Florida’s Montverde Academy to the National High School Invitational championship, he learned otherwise with the Mountaineers.

Yet Huggins had to learn to live with it, too. Williams had good days and bad days, but the Mountaineers coach came to recognize the days were not predictable, which meant the team couldn’t find a pattern for playing time and breaks to keep Williams fresh.

“If was different all the time,” Huggins said. “We couldn’t say that if he goes a certain amount of time it was going to hit him. It varies. I’m sure the weather and what the climate was like were factors and different things affected it, but it wasn’t a predictable thing.”