MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Last week, we wrote about one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in Milan Puskar Stadium history when Syracuse came down to Morgantown in 1992 and stole a football game from the Mountaineers.
 
Here's the link for a refresher.
 
Well, there is a postscript to that story. It came a year later in the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, New York, on Saturday, Oct. 30, 1993. 
 
West Virginia 43, Syracuse 0.
 
And that final score could have been far, far worse.
 
The fired-up Mountaineers couldn't get out of their own way in the first half, West Virginia's two-man kicking tandem of Tom Mazzone and Todd Sauerbrun missing a couple of makeable field goal tries in the second quarter that could have made WVU's seven-point lead a much more enjoyable 13-0 at halftime.
 
Then, late in the game when Harold Kidd recovered Roy Willis' fumble at the Orange 29, veteran coach Don Nehlen ran backup running back Jeff Nixon five straight times into the middle of Syracuse's defeated defense. 
 
Nixon advanced the football 26 yards to the SU 3-yard line where West Virginia had one last opportunity to rub some more salt into an open wound. A touchdown and the extra point would have given West Virginia a message-sending 50-0 victory.
 
Who could blame them after what took place the year prior when the loss to Syracuse cost the Mountaineers a bowl appearance and basically ruined their season?
 
All of those still-agitated West Virginia players standing on the sidelines next to Nehlen were imploring him to score one more touchdown and twist the knife a little bit deeper into Syracuse's heart.
 
But the gentlemanly Hall of Fame coach ignored their pleas and ordered third-string quarterback Chad Johnston to take a knee and run out the clock.
 
No more points were necessary. Forty-three were plenty, in Nehlen's eyes.
 
"Nehlen wasn't quite that kind of guy," offensive tackle Rich Braham once recalled.  
 
"Nehlen and (former Syracuse coach Dick) MacPherson were pretty tight so, yeah, it didn't surprise me and looking back on it he did the right thing," quarterback Jake Kelchner added. "It was such a blowout that it wasn't even funny … and it could have been a lot worse."
 
Kelchner's right.
 
Syracuse's offense had 10 first downs and gained just 44 yards on its 25 rushing attempts, and the dude who played a big role in the bench-clearing brawl and all of the controversy surrounding the 1992 game in Morgantown, quarterback Marvin Graves, completed only half of his 28 pass attempts for 144 yards before being lifted late in the game.
 
The Orange crossed the 50-yard line just once in the first half and when they were unable to score from West Virginia's 10-yard line early in the fourth quarter, WVU running back Robert Walker turned the Dome upside down when he blew past the entire Syracuse defense for a 90-yard touchdown run.
 
"What some people forget about Robert was that he was a state champion sprinter," former Mountaineer defensive coordinator Steve Dunlap recalled. "He wasn't always great going sideways, but going straight ahead not many people could catch him."
 
On West Virginia's next possession, all runs, the Mountaineers marched 60 yards in five plays to put seven more points on the scoreboard. More points followed when Charles Emanuel's interception and return to the SU 20 set up Nixon's 1-yard touchdown run. 
 
That made it 43-0.
 
Then came Willis' fumble and Nehlen's supreme act of sportsmanship. His sportsmanship rubbed off on some of the players, too.
 
Mike Collins, one of the three players thrown out of the 1992 Syracuse game in Morgantown, clearly remembers wanting to hurt Graves for what he started in Morgantown.
 
Collins had Graves by the ankles after tackling him for a loss and thoughts of slamming the quarterback's legs to the ground were running through his head, but he ignored them and begrudgingly extended his hand to help Graves up.
 
"I just remember thinking to myself, 'I just want to punch the (expletive) out of him,'" Collins once recalled. "And he kind of gave me a look like he was expecting it, to be perfectly honest."
 
Two days prior, Collins, as one of the team's three captains, was required to say a few words to the players after each Thursday practice once Nehlen was done addressing them. 
 
Collins said his speech before the Syracuse game was quick and to the point.
 
"There's really not much to say. These (expletive) took one from us last year so let's go up there and get it back!" he said.
 
Not another word was said. All of the guys walked off the field, went up to the training table to eat their dinner, went home, got up the next morning and got on an airplane and flew up to Syracuse.
 
Dunlap recalled seeing something during pregame warmups that he had never seen before or since in more than 40 years of coaching. The linebackers he was responsible for that night refused to take part in pregame warmups.
 
All of them stood at midfield with their helmets on and watched the Syracuse offensive players while they warmed up.
 
"I was like 'Come on guys, let's go run through some drills and get ready for the game,'" Dunlap said. "They were like, 'No coach, we're good. We're ready to play.' I told (defensive line coach Bill Kirelawich) when we were walking back into the locker room after warmups, 'My guys are ready to kick the (expletive) out of them!' He said, 'Yeah, mine, too!'"
 
Still, more than two decades later, some of the West Virginia players believed the 43-0 victory wasn't satisfying enough for what had happened to them in Morgantown the previous year.
 
Nehlen's demonstration in sportsmanship didn't resonate with them.
 
"Help me with the lesson again," Studstill said in 2012. "All I know is we wanted to put 50 on them that day.
 
"I did some things I wasn't supposed to do in that game because I just wanted to score more points," he added. "I changed a couple of calls to try and score a couple more times because I knew that was the last time I had a crack at those guys."
 
But some of the younger players around for the '92 loss to Syracuse did have another crack at them, and they also blanked the Orange 13-0 the following year in Morgantown.
 
It was the only time in the 60-year history of the WVU-Syracuse rivalry that West Virginia shut out Syracuse in back-to-back years.
 
So there were really two post scripts to that 1992 loss in 1993 and 1994.