Difficult to Figure
December 02, 2007 11:39 AM | General
December 2, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – If there is anything – anything – that can be taken from Saturday night’s stunning 13-9 loss to Pitt at Milan Puskar Stadium it is that you can never assume anything when you’re dealing with 18, 19, 20 and 21-year-olds. And you especially don’t assume anything when it comes to a football rivalry like the Backyard Brawl that has now existed for 100 years.
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| Senior Larry Williams sits on the field after Pitt upset West Virginia 13-9 at Milan Puskar Stadium Saturday night.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
Embattled Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt showed more emotion than usual, remarking after the game that his players were faster this year than two years ago. He was making reference to remarks he made at halftime of the 2005 game that his team needed to run faster to keep up with the Mountaineers.
Wannstedt also took exception to some comments made by former WVU coach Don Nehlen in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette earlier this week about the Pitt series losing some of its luster.
“I think that this thing (The Backyard Brawl) started last week,” Wannstedt said. “We tried to bring the tradition of the rivalry alive, so we showed tapes of past games all week long. Coming in, our bus got hit with a rock and LeSean McCoy stood up and said, ‘Hey it’s just like the movies.’ This game will be the first one our team watches next season.”
I walked around the press box in amazement before Saturday night’s game watching veteran sports writers and administrators offering their congratulations to West Virginia people for a remarkable football season. The handshakes and pats on the backs were accepted awkwardly by our people, correctly pointing out that there was still some important business that needed to be taken care of. All of this was taking place within earshot of the Pitt people. It was astonishing to watch.
It wasn’t if West Virginia was going to New Orleans to play either Missouri or Ohio State in the BCS championship game. It was when. It wasn’t if West Virginia was going to beat Pitt. It was by how much.
I know many West Virginians had already hedged their bets and bought airplane tickets and hotel rooms for the BCS game. Some of them were friends of mine. The phone calls and e-mails for national championship tickets were already coming in.
To come up with explanations and reasons for how something like this could happen would simply be giving excuses. It’s pointless. People will be trying to figure this one out for ages.
This has happened to West Virginia before. The Mountaineers had two great teams in 1954 and 1955 and both were upset by Pitt, knocking West Virginia out of New Year’s Day bowl games on both occasions.
West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez, a man that had lost just four times in his last 36 games and has had the Mountaineers in the national rankings for the last three years, was at a lost for words after the game.
“I haven’t slept well all week, and I probably won’t sleep well for a couple more weeks,” Rodriguez said. “It is going to be a hard four weeks, but we’ll bounce back.”
Wannstedt, still three games under .500 at Pitt and given a three-year contract extension by new Panther athletic director Steve Pederson on Friday, earned perhaps the biggest upset victory in school history. His team will once again be watching games on television over the holidays but they can take great satisfaction in knowing that they eliminated their most hated rival from national championship contention.
The consolation prize for West Virginia is a BCS bowl game someplace warm – the time, place and opponent to be officially announced later this afternoon. It’s difficult for me to comprehend that the words ‘consolation’ and ‘BCS bowl’ could ever be used in the same sentence.
Pitt is to be congratulated for their performance in the face of great adversity. LeSean McCoy looks like he’s going to be a player that the Panthers can build their offense around. Defensive coordinator Paul Rhodes had a great plan for stopping West Virginia’s offense that scored 66 points a week earlier against Connecticut and rolled up 90 points in two previous games against Pitt.
“It was just a nightmare,” said Rodriguez. “The whole thing was a nightmare, just a flat-out nightmare."
Rich Rodriguez will rally his troops. He’s too good a coach and too hard a worker to let this one fester. Don’t forget, the seeds for West Virginia’s great victory against Georgia in the 2005 Sugar Bowl were sewn back in 2003 when the Mountaineers endured a pair of humiliating losses to Maryland – one coming in the 2004 Gator Bowl.
For West Virginias diehards, the sting from this loss will linger for a while but eventually time marches on.
And like so many other West Virginia-Pitt games, this one will never be forgotten – by either side.
