It's been brought to my attention that this photo exists. Don't worry, I'm not scared. Ok, maybe a little. #WVU #TCU pic.twitter.com/DKv0qFvIf8

— Geoff Coyle (@GFCoyle) January 27, 2015

Late in the day, the hard-luck Horned Frogs gave 10-time defending league champion Kansas everything it wanted before bowing out with another close loss.

Earlier, though, the TCU coach was publicly reprimanded by the Big 12 for his antics following Saturday’s loss to West Virginia.

What are the game officials, shall we say, in the middle of WVU games? A theory within a story about how these Mountaineers continue to win because of and in spite of themselves.

Tuesday’s game had one of

ficial who had called a pair of WVU games and two who hadn’t seen the Mountaineers at all — and this sort of thing keeps happening, like it did in Saturday’s terribly officiated TCU game. One of Tuesday’s two works mostly SEC and Atlantic Sun games. The other does mostly Big 12 games and is one of the 10-busiest in the country. The pair came into the game with a combined 91 games this season and not one at the end of January featured the Mountaineers.

One of those two called a technical foul on Holton just 17 seconds into the game. Holton got in an opponent’s face as he tried to play defense and the official thought that was a bit much and signaled a T for taunting. No warning. No prior knowledge of Holton, an extreme presence who jumps and screams on the baseline and counts to five as a way to complicate inbound passes.

For periods of the game, it seemed some combination of the crew was searching for how to adjudicate the press and the way Kansas State did or did not handle it. Before long, Wildcats coach Bruce Weber, who afterward called the way the game was played both “awful” and “bad basketball,” earned a technical foul for thinking the Mountaineers were getting away with too much. He promptly got a call in his favor and things seemed to even out, though the Mountaineers just cannot get an official to call the other team for traveling out of one of their traps.

Oh, it almost happened against TCU, but a second official intervened from far away, overturned the call and gave Adrian a foul. It just feels like WVU’s fouls and frenzy can fatigue officials, too, and Tuesday night saw a rebound go out of bounds under the Kansas State basket late in the second half, and the official standing right there shrugged his shoulders and asked for help.

A “Big 12 refs suck” chant cascaded again from the student section, and you better believe that’s not the last we’ve heard it this season.