I was doing a little research for a story I was working on for tomorrow’s paper and to get some of the needed numbers required googling myself — which is a strange event in one’s life, to say least. Anyhow, I came across something pretty interesting and a paragraph worth passing along.

Rather, the Mountaineers were at the painful end of the season exactly who they were for most of it. It was a very good team that had some very bad habits. Those habits cost them some games this season before ultimately costing them the season.

Sounds like your football team, right? In truth, it was about last year’s basketball team, a pretty good squad that went far despite some sustained flaws. Those flaws — namely foul free-throw shooting, defensive lapses at the worst possible time and slow starts — conspired to cost them the final game of the season.

This is worth noting because your football team is haunted by some of its ghosts. The Mountaineers have periodic bouts against poor tackling and blocking. They start slowly. They often misfire in the passing game. Yet for five straight games, in which any or all of those problems have appeared, sometimes in concert, sometimes with other uninvited guests, they’ve been good enough to win.

Saturday had a little of everything — errors that lead to a loss, a comeback that defined a win — but the postgame dissertation was a little spooky. WVU knows this cannot continue.

“We’re close, so close, but, man, a really good team, a great team — and I think we’re a good team — will find a way to catch the ball, get the tip and catch the ball, and get the ball in the end zone,” he said. “We’re close, but it frustrates me.”

WVU isn’t very far from putting things together. Different parts have come together at different times and it’s sensible to assume sooner rather than later many of those things, and perhaps all of them, will come together at once.

“I don’t know what it is, but whatever it is we need to figure it out as soon as we can,” defensive lineman Scooter Berry said. “If we don’t figure it out soon, it’s going to come back to hurt us.”

That fear remains.

“It’s to the point now I don’t know what to do,” Stewart said. “We’ve got to take teams out of it. We cannot keep waiting and waiting and waiting. We’ve got to make it happen.”