MORGANTOWN — If ever West Virginia needed a football victory it is now and what better opponent to get it against than Oklahoma.

True, West Virginia has never beaten Oklahoma as a member of the Big 12 and just as true, the Mountaineers have never beaten the Sooners in Morgantown, where they play at noon on Saturday. FS1 carries the game.

And, it’s also true that Oklahoma, which is suffering its own problems with a 5-4 record and 2-4 Big 12 mark, is looking for its 10th straight victory over the Mountaineers.,

But historically, when WVU has been at its lowest, Oklahoma has shown up on the other sideline to provide the Mountaineers with a landmark victory that turned around the program’s fortunes. And, at 3-6 with only one conference win and a three-game losing streak, Neal Brown’s West Virginia team needs another miracle.

In 1982, as Hall of Fame coach Don Nehlen was trying to establish his program at WVU after five years of losing under Frank Cignetti, West Virginia traveled to Norman as a large underdog to face a Sooner team that four years earlier laughed its way past the Mountaineers. 52-10, in a game where the OU starters had their shoulder pads off on the sideline in the second half.

Well. Nehlen unleashed quarterback Jeff Hostetler loose on Oklahoma that day for 324 passing yards and two touchdowns in a 41-27 upset that told the world the Mountaineers were back in the national picture.

Then, in 2007 coming off the devastating 13-9 loss to Pitt and the defection of coach Rich Rodriguez, WVU was paired with No. 3 Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl under then-interim coach Bill Stewart.

Despite losing star running back Steve Slaton on his first carry of the game, WVU exploded on the Sooners with a 48-28 victory built on big play after big play, quarterback Pat White hitting wide receiver Tito Gonzales with a 79-yard touchdown pass, Noel Devine breaking loose for 65 yards, White for a 47-yard gain and Owen Schmitt becoming the Runaway Beer Truck with a 57-yard TD run.

By the time they added up the stats White had rushed for 150 yards, Devine for 108 and WVU had rolled up 530 yards of total offense.

The sting from the Pitt upset was eased, Bill Stewart became head coach and West Virginia not only saved face but maybe had saved its football future.

Things are little different now and if ever there was a right time to face Oklahoma, a team with a new coach in Brent Venables with a decimated roster as many defected after coach Lincoln Riley left for USC.

What’s more, the Mountaineers nearly pulled off an upset last season, losing 16-13, as Oklahoma drove the field on its last possession to win.

Both coaches voiced similar approaches to their problems.

“The way I look at it is this — football problems, those are better than 99.9% of other people’s problems,” Brown said this week. “I’m not going to get too hung up on them. I hate it because the investment level’s high … and when things don’t go like you want them to go, that’s disappointing but you always have the next game.”

“Sometimes it’s easy to sit outside and judge and say, ‘Well, the season, you lose your fourth game and the season’s over,” Venables said. “That’s one way to look at it. To me, if you judge it that way, then when bad things happen in life, you just kind of pack it in. That doesn’t happen when you invest in it, invest in the game of football or any sport.”

Brown’s answer this week as he expects his slumping quarterback JT Daniels to bounce back with a big game after a dreadful performance against Iowa State in which he completed only eight passes for 81 yards in a 31-14 defeat, is to up the tempo and offer a more “entertaining” offense.

“We’ve got to get into a better rhythm,” he said. “We got to play at a faster tempo. We were really, really slow on Saturday. We’ve got to get faster.

“We’ve got to change the picture and make it more difficult on the defense. We didn’t move, we didn’t motion, and do some adjustments as much as we had in the past. We’ve got to push the ball downfield more and we’ve got to do some things off our run game.”

The run game should get a boost from the return of starter Tony Mathis, who along with CJ Donaldson, missed the Iowa State game. Donaldson, a freshman who had compiled four 100-yard rushing games and was a force on the goal line and in short yardage, is out for the season after leg surgery.

But, in the end it comes back to Daniels as cries call for a change at the position either to Garrett Greene, who is more mobile, or true freshman Nicco Marchiol, who could play the final three games without using up his redshirt season.

“You have those discussions,” Brown said. “I think JT earned the starting position and I think there’s been some times where I think he’s played that position as well as anyone in our league this year.

“That wasn’t the case on Saturday. I think Garrett is getting better and probably deserves the opportunity to play a big more but JT is our starting quarterback and will be on Saturday.”

Garrett has been used at wide receiver and running back, as well as quarterback and inserted late against Iowa State at the position led WVU to a score, completing 4 of 5 passes.

No matter who plays where, this figures to be an old-fashioned Big 12 shootout with Oklahoma averaging 33.2 points on offense and giving up 21.9 on defense and WVU averaging offensively 32.1 points while giving up 34.2 per game.