It’s times like these you learn to live again. It’s times like these you give and give again. It’s times like these you learn to love again. It’s times like these time and time again.

And it is games like these that can define a team, a season and so much more. It’s about saving face and presenting a new one for all the observers. It’s about turning things around to start back toward where you were headed. And, true, it could be about the complete opposite. Can we call this a must win? Will we? Why don’t we? Simply put, a loss today jeopardizes even the least ambitious goals for West Virginia’s 2015 season.

This is not, shall we say, lost on the Mountaineers. They’re well aware of the stability of the sky above them and the walls around them, and it is they who are in charge of what happens next. Specifically who is in charge is most interesting, though.

WVU made it back to Morgantown a little before sunrise Friday morning and had that day off. On Saturday, there was a senior meeting in which the team’s elders gathered and spoke amongst themselves and were moved by the words of Karl Joseph.

But the real eye-opener came a day later. Dana Holgorsen led a team meeting, as he does regularly, and then addressed the state of affairs not by demanding more of his players, but by opening the discussion up to them.

He asked the offense — his offense, the one he controls, the one he builds game plans and calls plays for — if the players were comfortable with everything. Did they like what he was asking them do to? Were there things they wanted changed, added or removed?

He was curious and sincere, but he was also bold. There was no way to know what was on the other end of his question.

“In the past we’ve had guys like, ‘What the hell are the coaches doing? What’s this call? What can they do? It’s not us, it’s on them,’ ” Barber said. “I think we’re taking ownership and we understand they might be coaching us and have calls that put us in position, but they’re not in between the lines. That’s us. They’re not playing. We’re playing.”

The players listened to Holgorsen’s questions and thought them over briefly, but they assured him he wasn’t the one who needed to change.

“Everyone said we like what we’re doing,” junior center Tyler Orlosky said. “We know what we’re doing is working — we’re just not executing it. We’re not finishing drives. We’re dropping passes. We’re missing blocks and reads with the quarterback and the running backs. These are fixable things holding us back from being the great offense we think we can be if we start executing.

“I think that was definitely a positive. Once the system starts failing and guys start questioning it, you’ve got to start from square one, and that’s not good. We’re far away from that point.”

This will depend on your side of the fence, but that sounds promising or pessimistic this morning. It’s times like these we make up our minds.