How 'bout them 'eers now?
http://wvgazette.com/section/Sports/2007120144
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=3 width="95%" align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=showdate>December 02, 2007
</TD></TR><TR><TD>Stunning disbelief across the state
</TD></TR><TR><TD>By Mitch Vingle
Sports Editor
</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top>MORGANTOWN — If you thought it surreal last week, when West Virginia sat one win against a four-touchdown underdog away from a national championship showdown, well, you should have been at Mountaineer Field Saturday night.
There was disbelief.
There were dropped jaws.
And, for WVU’s football team, there were shattered dreams.
In the 100th Backyard Brawl, Pittsburgh made WVU players and fans, well, bawl. So ... very ... close to a slot in the national championship.
Yet, on a fourth-and-3, at Pitt’s 26, after a huge 48-yard Noel Devine kickoff return, Mountaineer tailback Steve Slaton could not pick up the first down.
With 3:00 left in the game, West Virginia could not move enough to score. An ill-conceived throw downfield to little-used Wes Lyons on fourth-and-17 fell incomplete.
Pitt 13, West Virginia 9. The biggest upset in the 100 years of the series.
And somewhere there’s an Ohio State Buckeye dancing at this moment. It is the Buckeyes, not the Mountaineers, who will play in the national championship.
And while OSU can thank West Virginia for choking, it would be more appropriate for the Buckeyes to thank Pittsburgh for the gift.
For the Panthers fought. They scratched. They made the statement.
All season you’ve heard that “the only team that can beat West Virginia is West Virginia.”
That was proved not true on Saturday. Pitt stopped WVU cold on a cold December night.
Yes, there were Mountaineer miscues. A pair of missed field goals. Fumbles.
But Scott McKillop and the Panther defense absolutely shut down the vaunted West Virginia offense. Not even West Virginia quarterback Patrick White riding in on his white horse at the end could save the day.
Stunning.
With ESPN beaming the game, with Holly Rowe on the sideline, with the New York Times and Post and writers from the larger college sports Web sites in town, West Virginia struggled mightily.
Meanwhile, Pitt tailback LeSean McCoy fought mightily.
It was the Panthers that proved more sparky. WVU was outplayed and outhustled — on Senior Night. On national television. During a rivalry. One with national title hopes on the line.
Baffling. Perhaps we forgot that on Senior Night there were no seniors starting along West Virginia’s offensive interior front. A total of 104 rushing yards.
We got an idea in the first half that it would be McCoy — not White, nor Slaton, nor Devine — that would prove the most impressive offensive player on the field.
While McCoy fought, the Mountaineers had 60 rushing yards on 15 carries in the first quarter.
The 100th edition of the Backyard Brawl was on.
And then, with 5:12 left in the second quarter, White was out. The diagnosis: dislocated right thumb. The word from the sideline was White’s condition would be monitored.
Later, with 12:38 left in the third quarter, press box announcer Jack Johns said, “Pat White will not return to the game.”
Jarrett Brown had to play part of Brady Leaf, who tried in vain to replace Oregon’s Dennis Dixon a couple weeks ago.
In the first half, Brown jumped in and, on a third-and-6, escaped from a rush, ran left and gained 14. Then, after Pitt’s Tommie Duhart inexplicably roughed WVU’s Ryan Stanchek after the Panthers smothered Brown on third down, the sophomore QB hopped into the end zone to finally give the Mountaineers a lead.
But it was a weird half. Reed Williams — the smartest player on the team — was called for a personal foul shortly after the touchdown to give Pitt a shot at a field goal. A shot the team converted.
And the weirdness wasn’t limited to the players. The Mountaineer band spelled out “BCS” during their performance. Not a good idea.
Obviously, WVU looked ahead. It collapsed. The team did. The coaches calling the plays did. In the second half, the defense stopped attacking McCoy and started waiting on him.
But this clunker was mostly on the offense.
“Obviously disappointed,” said WVU coach Rich Rodriguez. “We were just off all day offensively. I apologize. I thought we were ready. We just weren’t quite clicking. Picked a bad time to play our worst game offensively in years.”
And no amount of “We Will Rock You” pumped into the stadium, no amount of cheering from a packed house, no press clippings could help.
“The whole thing was a nightmare from the opening kickoff,” Rodriguez said.
There would be no replay of WVU’s finish to the 1988 season. No repeat of the Mountaineers defeating Syracuse in the regular-season finale and, after retreating to the locker room, returning to the field for a victory lap.
Instead, the Mountaineers joined the ranks of those who dropped from contenders to pretenders. Those who fell to the No. 2 jinx.
It was stunning. It was surreal. It flew in the face of the pregame workup.
Beforehand, a Mountaineer fan, wearing Steve Slaton’s numbered jersey, stood atop a car in the December cold and danced.
She expected the team to stand atop the college football world a few hours later. She expected to be dancing even more.
Instead, the Mountaineers joined the other No. 2 teams that have lost this season. By waltzing out of the picture.
To contact staff writer Mitch Vingle, send e-mail to mitchvingle@wvgazette.com or call 348-4827.
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http://wvgazette.com/section/Sports/2007120144
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=3 width="95%" align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=showdate>December 02, 2007
</TD></TR><TR><TD>Stunning disbelief across the state
</TD></TR><TR><TD>By Mitch Vingle
Sports Editor
</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top>MORGANTOWN — If you thought it surreal last week, when West Virginia sat one win against a four-touchdown underdog away from a national championship showdown, well, you should have been at Mountaineer Field Saturday night.
There was disbelief.
There were dropped jaws.
And, for WVU’s football team, there were shattered dreams.
In the 100th Backyard Brawl, Pittsburgh made WVU players and fans, well, bawl. So ... very ... close to a slot in the national championship.
Yet, on a fourth-and-3, at Pitt’s 26, after a huge 48-yard Noel Devine kickoff return, Mountaineer tailback Steve Slaton could not pick up the first down.
With 3:00 left in the game, West Virginia could not move enough to score. An ill-conceived throw downfield to little-used Wes Lyons on fourth-and-17 fell incomplete.
Pitt 13, West Virginia 9. The biggest upset in the 100 years of the series.
And somewhere there’s an Ohio State Buckeye dancing at this moment. It is the Buckeyes, not the Mountaineers, who will play in the national championship.
And while OSU can thank West Virginia for choking, it would be more appropriate for the Buckeyes to thank Pittsburgh for the gift.
For the Panthers fought. They scratched. They made the statement.
All season you’ve heard that “the only team that can beat West Virginia is West Virginia.”
That was proved not true on Saturday. Pitt stopped WVU cold on a cold December night.
Yes, there were Mountaineer miscues. A pair of missed field goals. Fumbles.
But Scott McKillop and the Panther defense absolutely shut down the vaunted West Virginia offense. Not even West Virginia quarterback Patrick White riding in on his white horse at the end could save the day.
Stunning.
With ESPN beaming the game, with Holly Rowe on the sideline, with the New York Times and Post and writers from the larger college sports Web sites in town, West Virginia struggled mightily.
Meanwhile, Pitt tailback LeSean McCoy fought mightily.
It was the Panthers that proved more sparky. WVU was outplayed and outhustled — on Senior Night. On national television. During a rivalry. One with national title hopes on the line.
Baffling. Perhaps we forgot that on Senior Night there were no seniors starting along West Virginia’s offensive interior front. A total of 104 rushing yards.
We got an idea in the first half that it would be McCoy — not White, nor Slaton, nor Devine — that would prove the most impressive offensive player on the field.
While McCoy fought, the Mountaineers had 60 rushing yards on 15 carries in the first quarter.
The 100th edition of the Backyard Brawl was on.
And then, with 5:12 left in the second quarter, White was out. The diagnosis: dislocated right thumb. The word from the sideline was White’s condition would be monitored.
Later, with 12:38 left in the third quarter, press box announcer Jack Johns said, “Pat White will not return to the game.”
Jarrett Brown had to play part of Brady Leaf, who tried in vain to replace Oregon’s Dennis Dixon a couple weeks ago.
In the first half, Brown jumped in and, on a third-and-6, escaped from a rush, ran left and gained 14. Then, after Pitt’s Tommie Duhart inexplicably roughed WVU’s Ryan Stanchek after the Panthers smothered Brown on third down, the sophomore QB hopped into the end zone to finally give the Mountaineers a lead.
But it was a weird half. Reed Williams — the smartest player on the team — was called for a personal foul shortly after the touchdown to give Pitt a shot at a field goal. A shot the team converted.
And the weirdness wasn’t limited to the players. The Mountaineer band spelled out “BCS” during their performance. Not a good idea.
Obviously, WVU looked ahead. It collapsed. The team did. The coaches calling the plays did. In the second half, the defense stopped attacking McCoy and started waiting on him.
But this clunker was mostly on the offense.
“Obviously disappointed,” said WVU coach Rich Rodriguez. “We were just off all day offensively. I apologize. I thought we were ready. We just weren’t quite clicking. Picked a bad time to play our worst game offensively in years.”
And no amount of “We Will Rock You” pumped into the stadium, no amount of cheering from a packed house, no press clippings could help.
“The whole thing was a nightmare from the opening kickoff,” Rodriguez said.
There would be no replay of WVU’s finish to the 1988 season. No repeat of the Mountaineers defeating Syracuse in the regular-season finale and, after retreating to the locker room, returning to the field for a victory lap.
Instead, the Mountaineers joined the ranks of those who dropped from contenders to pretenders. Those who fell to the No. 2 jinx.
It was stunning. It was surreal. It flew in the face of the pregame workup.
Beforehand, a Mountaineer fan, wearing Steve Slaton’s numbered jersey, stood atop a car in the December cold and danced.
She expected the team to stand atop the college football world a few hours later. She expected to be dancing even more.
Instead, the Mountaineers joined the other No. 2 teams that have lost this season. By waltzing out of the picture.
To contact staff writer Mitch Vingle, send e-mail to mitchvingle@wvgazette.com or call 348-4827.
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