MORGANTOWN -- Neither Bill Stewart nor Tommy Tuberville are about to admit it. And from a purely mathematical point of view they are both right in downplaying it.
MORGANTOWN -- Neither Bill Stewart nor Tommy Tuberville are about to admit it. And from a purely mathematical point of view they are both right in downplaying it.
Still, in the grand scheme of things, isn't tonight's West Virginia-Auburn game a must-win for both?
Sure, from the West Virginia point of view nothing about the Mountaineers' ultimate goal for the season hinges on the outcome of tonight's game at Mountaineer Field. Win or lose, WVU still has five Big East games remaining and as good a chance as anyone to win the league title and earn an automatic berth in a BCS bowl.
For Auburn, well, an SEC championship has already gone down the drain (the Tigers are 2-3 in their league). Ask any Tiger fan and the season is already a bust anyway. What's one more loss?
Still, when West Virginia (4-2) hosts Auburn (4-3) in an ESPN-televised game, the perception of the losing team is going to take yet another nose dive. And for two teams that once were expected to battle for national championship positioning and now are merely trying to regain some measure of respect, the last thing they need is to take another hit.
OK, so maybe it's not a must-win. Call it a must-not-lose.
"No, we can't do that,'' Tuberville said this week when asked if he saw this as a game his team has to win. "If you look at our team and how we've played and start putting that type of pressure on our guys that are practicing hard and are trying to get better, there is no way you can do that.
"Of course we're going to go to play the best game that we've played, but West Virginia is going to do the same thing. It's two teams that are trying to get back on track.''
It's actually not a matter of two teams trying to get back on track as much as two teams trying to get on track for the first time this season. Almost from the start, these teams have failed miserably to live up to expectations, winning only early-season games against inferior competition (Villanova for the Mountaineers, Louisiana-Monroe and Southern Miss for the Tigers) before struggling to generate any kind of offense against rather so-so opponents. Even the wins -- all of them -- have been unimpressive, including Auburn's unlikely 3-2 win over Mississippi State and West Virginia's down-to-the-fourth-quarter, 17-6 victory over awful Syracuse.
Winning impressively, though, is secondary to Stewart, under fire in his first year because WVU's once high-powered shotgun offense has been reduced to a cap pistol.
MORGANTOWN -- Neither Bill Stewart nor Tommy Tuberville are about to admit it. And from a purely mathematical point of view they are both right in downplaying it.
Still, in the grand scheme of things, isn't tonight's West Virginia-Auburn game a must-win for both?
Sure, from the West Virginia point of view nothing about the Mountaineers' ultimate goal for the season hinges on the outcome of tonight's game at Mountaineer Field. Win or lose, WVU still has five Big East games remaining and as good a chance as anyone to win the league title and earn an automatic berth in a BCS bowl.
For Auburn, well, an SEC championship has already gone down the drain (the Tigers are 2-3 in their league). Ask any Tiger fan and the season is already a bust anyway. What's one more loss?
Still, when West Virginia (4-2) hosts Auburn (4-3) in an ESPN-televised game, the perception of the losing team is going to take yet another nose dive. And for two teams that once were expected to battle for national championship positioning and now are merely trying to regain some measure of respect, the last thing they need is to take another hit.
OK, so maybe it's not a must-win. Call it a must-not-lose.
"No, we can't do that,'' Tuberville said this week when asked if he saw this as a game his team has to win. "If you look at our team and how we've played and start putting that type of pressure on our guys that are practicing hard and are trying to get better, there is no way you can do that.
"Of course we're going to go to play the best game that we've played, but West Virginia is going to do the same thing. It's two teams that are trying to get back on track.''
It's actually not a matter of two teams trying to get back on track as much as two teams trying to get on track for the first time this season. Almost from the start, these teams have failed miserably to live up to expectations, winning only early-season games against inferior competition (Villanova for the Mountaineers, Louisiana-Monroe and Southern Miss for the Tigers) before struggling to generate any kind of offense against rather so-so opponents. Even the wins -- all of them -- have been unimpressive, including Auburn's unlikely 3-2 win over Mississippi State and West Virginia's down-to-the-fourth-quarter, 17-6 victory over awful Syracuse.
Winning impressively, though, is secondary to Stewart, under fire in his first year because WVU's once high-powered shotgun offense has been reduced to a cap pistol.
"I've said it before and I'll say it again; I'd much rather win a game ugly than lose a game and get style points,'' Stewart said. "If we win with defense and the kicking game, so be it. I don't have a problem with that as long as we win.''
Still, perception counts for a great deal in a sport in which polls are used to gauge a team's success. And West Virginia, after being ranked in those polls for 47 straight weeks, hasn't even managed to muster a vote in the last three weeks.
Stewart, though, isn't as concerned about the way his team is perceived nationally as it is in its own back yard.
"It's more important for us, this team, the people in this building, this town, this state,'' Stewart said. "We can control what we can control and not much other than that. We'll take a win any way we can get it.''
Truth be told, the stakes probably are higher for Auburn than for West Virginia. The Mountaineers have that Big East race to look forward to and the outcome of tonight's game won't affect that. West Virginia is 2-0 in the league and has everything in front of it.
Auburn, though, is in a rather precarious situation in trying to get to any bowl game at all. The Tigers have just five games remaining (including this one) and need at least two wins just to have a shot at a bowl game. Three of those five are against giant-killer Ole Miss, No. 10 Georgia and No. 2 Alabama.
It's not a stretch to think that Tuberville's job hangs in the balance in these final five games, even though he defends what his team has done to date.
"I don't know whether we'll win any of these last five games, but I can tell you one thing: All you have to do is look back at the first seven,'' Tuberville said. "We led every game at halftime. Some things didn't work out in the second half, but we fought hard in every game. We played well. We haven't been beat by 30 points.
"There are times when you'd think we lost that game by three or four touchdowns and it came down to basically the last play or so. That's this football team. I'm proud of how they've worked, of how they've put it together; the coaches, how they've done it. Again, good football teams don't win every game and I'm looking forward to the next few weeks and seeing how much we improve.''
Reach Dave Hickman at 348-1734 or
dphickm...@aol.com.
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