MORGANTOWN - In the hard-to-believe department, West Virginia's football team today finds itself in the best position for which it ever could have hoped heading into the final five games of the season.
MORGANTOWN - In the hard-to-believe department, West Virginia's football team today finds itself in the best position for which it ever could have hoped heading into the final five games of the season.
Oh, sure, it would be nice to be 7-0 instead of 5-2, but that's water under the bridge.
The fact is, the same team that a week ago was struggling with an offense that was going nowhere and facing - at least from a perception standpoint - a must-win game against Auburn, now finds itself playing near-flawless football and sitting solidly in the driver's seat in the race for a Big East title and a BCS bowl berth.
That's what a dominating performance against the Tigers and a bizarre weekend of Big East results will do for a team.
"I agree 100 percent,'' West Virginia coach Bill Stewart said Sunday when all those positives were spread out on the table. "It's just, how am I going to convince these guys to not look down the road? That's the only thing worrying me.''
Indeed, with five Big East games remaining - beginning with Saturday's noon road game against Connecticut (6-2, 2-1 Big East) at Rentschler Field - perhaps the biggest obstacle facing West Virginia (5-2, 2-0) would have been unthinkable as recently as a week ago: overconfidence.
There is certainly a case to be made for some confidence, however:
In a 34-17 win over Auburn Thursday night, West Virginia looked every bit the team that was ranked No. 8 in the nation in the preseason. Offensively, the Mountaineers rolled up 455 yards and scored 31 straight points on a defense that is among the best in the country. Defensively, the Mountaineers have played well for five straight games now.The Big East standings show only one unbeaten team remaining - WVU. A week ago, Pitt and South Florida were considered the class of the conference and the only two ranked in the Top 25. Then USF lost 24-20 at Louisville to drop to 1-2 in the league and Pitt was absolutely smashed at home by Rutgers, giving up 54 points to the No. 115 scoring offense in the country. The only other unbeaten league team heading into the weekend, Cincinnati, was hammered 40-16 at Connecticut.
Far from sitting back and enjoying his team's newfound favorite's status, though, Stewart on Sunday was intent upon reciting history and cautioning that what happened to Pitt and USF is always just a weekend away from happening to any other team, including West Virginia.
"If anyone gets through this league 7-0, I don't know,'' Stewart said. "I watched those scores [Saturday] and who woulda thunk it, as they like to say.''
Indeed, in the last five years there has been only one unbeaten Big East champion, West Virginia in 2005. Last year the Mountaineers shared the title with UConn, both at 5-2. Stewart's point is that almost everyone in the league has either four or five Big East games remaining and in just one weekend the whole picture can change.
MORGANTOWN - In the hard-to-believe department, West Virginia's football team today finds itself in the best position for which it ever could have hoped heading into the final five games of the season.
Oh, sure, it would be nice to be 7-0 instead of 5-2, but that's water under the bridge.
The fact is, the same team that a week ago was struggling with an offense that was going nowhere and facing - at least from a perception standpoint - a must-win game against Auburn, now finds itself playing near-flawless football and sitting solidly in the driver's seat in the race for a Big East title and a BCS bowl berth.
That's what a dominating performance against the Tigers and a bizarre weekend of Big East results will do for a team.
"I agree 100 percent,'' West Virginia coach Bill Stewart said Sunday when all those positives were spread out on the table. "It's just, how am I going to convince these guys to not look down the road? That's the only thing worrying me.''
Indeed, with five Big East games remaining - beginning with Saturday's noon road game against Connecticut (6-2, 2-1 Big East) at Rentschler Field - perhaps the biggest obstacle facing West Virginia (5-2, 2-0) would have been unthinkable as recently as a week ago: overconfidence.
There is certainly a case to be made for some confidence, however:
In a 34-17 win over Auburn Thursday night, West Virginia looked every bit the team that was ranked No. 8 in the nation in the preseason. Offensively, the Mountaineers rolled up 455 yards and scored 31 straight points on a defense that is among the best in the country. Defensively, the Mountaineers have played well for five straight games now.The Big East standings show only one unbeaten team remaining - WVU. A week ago, Pitt and South Florida were considered the class of the conference and the only two ranked in the Top 25. Then USF lost 24-20 at Louisville to drop to 1-2 in the league and Pitt was absolutely smashed at home by Rutgers, giving up 54 points to the No. 115 scoring offense in the country. The only other unbeaten league team heading into the weekend, Cincinnati, was hammered 40-16 at Connecticut.Far from sitting back and enjoying his team's newfound favorite's status, though, Stewart on Sunday was intent upon reciting history and cautioning that what happened to Pitt and USF is always just a weekend away from happening to any other team, including West Virginia.
"If anyone gets through this league 7-0, I don't know,'' Stewart said. "I watched those scores [Saturday] and who woulda thunk it, as they like to say.''
Indeed, in the last five years there has been only one unbeaten Big East champion, West Virginia in 2005. Last year the Mountaineers shared the title with UConn, both at 5-2. Stewart's point is that almost everyone in the league has either four or five Big East games remaining and in just one weekend the whole picture can change.
Just as it changed last weekend.
"If you had told me before kickoff [on Saturday] that South Florida or Pitt by that score [would lose], I wouldn't have believed it,'' Stewart said. "That goes to show you how parity in college football and how the emotions of young people play such a big part in this game today. I wish it was all blocking and tackling because I know what we do there. We'll see. We'll just try to stay the course and take care of our business and hopefully we'll show up to play better next week than we did this week.''
Of West Virginia's five remaining games, three are on the road at UConn, Louisville and Pitt. The home games are a week from Saturday against Cincinnati and the finale on Dec. 6 against USF.
The schedule could be easier, of course, but at least it comes at a time when the Mountaineers seem to be hitting their stride. Then again, Pitt seemed to be hitting its stride with a win at USF and a rout of Navy on the road, then collapsed against a Rutgers team that had started the season 1-5.
"I think, in my heart and my mind, that we are getting better as a football team. I see momentum gaining every week,'' Stewart said. "I'm just hoping it can last for this stretch run. I hope we can take this thing and really build some momentum. But if you start that stuff, then they start seeing down the road. We can't look down the road. We've got to go one at a time. We've got to know that we've got to go to UConn and play the game of the year.''
"Our people better get that through their heads real early. They celebrated Thursday night and Friday and they enjoyed it a little bit [Saturday]. But our Mountaineers better crank their engines and know that we've got a juggernaut up there. If you saw the fourth quarter at UConn, holy cow. I saw a defense get after people. And that was impressive.''
BRIEFLY: When last WVU and UConn met, the teams were playing for the Big East title and West Virginia won 66-21.
"You think they're not going to show that 66-21 score to those guys?'' Stewart said. "We better be ready.''
The UConn game will be the third in the last four with a noon start, the first on the road. In the other two the Mountaineers struggled to beat Rutgers and Syracuse."I worry about playing at noon. These knuckleheads don't get out of bed early enough, I guess,'' Stewart said. "Maybe I need to start getting them up at 6 [a.m.] and practicing. If we don't come out up there lathered up at 12 o'clock next Saturday we're going to be in trouble. We're going to have another East Carolina on our hands.''
Defensive lineman Scooter Berry missed most of the Auburn game with a knee injury, but Stewart said Sunday that an MRI exam showed no serious damage.Stewart spent Sunday morning at a hospital where his son, Blaine, had surgery on an arm he broke last week during a middle school football game.Reach Dave Hickman at 348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.
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