Dana Holgorsen won’t be fired by West Virginia after all, ESPN reports

Update:

Had West Virginia beaten Kansas State on Saturday to move to 8-4 on the season, all would have been well in Morgantown, but according to the Charleston Gazette, West Virginia is considering firing coach Dana Holgorsen after the loss to Kansas State.

As of Monday evening, the decision had not been made. All of the principals — [president E. Gordon] Gee, [athletic director Shane] Lyons and Holgorsen — were in New York. The WVU basketball team is playing a high-profile game tonight at Madison Square Garden against Virginia. There are Big 12 meetings going on. There are College Football Hall of Fame ceremonies going on. Lyons is a speaker at a sports business clinic.

When reached Monday, Lyons said he had no comment on Holgorsen’s status. Reliable sources, however, have said the athletic director and coach have talked about the situation a couple times. Those discussions will continue in the coming days.

West Virginia showed promise this year, with an improved defense and a rebuilding offense, but it was unable to jump into the top four in the Big 12. That said, the Mountaineers were the only team to play the Big 12’s best when all of those teams — Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Baylor and TCU — were fully healthy. They were expected to win six to eight games this year and won seven, and they did it without star safety Karl Joseph for much of the season.

Holgorsen has yet to see the success he had when he brought WVU to the Orange Bowl in 2011, but he’s recruiting pretty well, with a respectable No. 36 ranking in the 247Sports Composite rankings for the 2016 recruiting class.

This would be very late in the cycle to fire a coach, as many spots have already been filled.