Instant Analysis - Nov. 27
West Virginia 19 ... Pitt 16
Pete
Fiutak
It’s forgivable to lose a rivalry game, especially on the road and especially in a close battle. It’s not like West Virginia is miserable, and it’s certainly not a major upset that Pitt lost. But it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out and how this is spun if the Panthers don’t beat Cincinnati.
This has been a resurgent season for Pitt, thanks to a team loaded with talent and playmakers, but for Dave Wannstedt to end any buzz about how his excellent teams consistently come up short, he has to win one of his last two games.
If Pitt beats Cincinnati and goes off to the BCS, then it’ll mean that everything has finally come together for the program. Wannstedt has come up with several excellent recruiting classes in his tenure, and beating the Bearcats and getting to a big bowl would mean everything to a program that should be in the Big East title hunt year after year. But to lose in what amounts to the Big East Championship after losing the Backyard Brawl would make the bowl game very, very important.
On the flip side, West Virginia can be fired up again about the possibility of a ten-win season. By any measure, the season will be a success if the Mountaineers can finish with a win over Pitt, a win at Rutgers, and a win in the bowl game. Bill Stewart needed to show that the program could reload under his watch, and while WVU might not win the Big East title, this was the type of victory the program can build on.
Matt Zemek
1) Since these were the second- and third-best teams in the Big East (with South Florida having an argument, provided the Bulls can bump Miami tomorrow), this game was going to say a lot about Cincinnati’s strength of schedule. The overall quality of the Big East – which has only slightly more than half the teams in the SEC, Big 12 and ACC – hinged on both the outcome and the progression of the evening’s events in Morgantown. The conference needed Pitt and West Virginia to put on a show; Cincinnati needed Pitt to win a well-played game.
But of course, this being a prime-time Big East game on a weeknight, the league absorbed an acute embarrassment. (Almost every non-Saturday game the Big East plays turns into a dud. Only Louisville-Rutgers 2006 stands out as a pronounced exception.)
The old Pitt – the team that lost 3-0 to Oregon State in last year’s Sun Bowl – came back at the wrong time. The ever-shaky Mountaineers deserve commendations and congratulations for pulling out a hard-earned and justly-deserved win, but they still left points on the board and have yet to max out the way they did in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl against Oklahoma (the last time they played like a big-time program). Had Pittsburgh won a B-plus-type battle, a court of football law would have ruled Cincinnati’s body of work to be superior to TCU’s. Instead, the Horned Frogs should own a clear edge over the Bearcats, following this D-plus downer in Appalachia.
2) No, this isn’t nearly the upset that A&M over Texas or Auburn over Alabama would have been, but nevertheless, this was an instance in which a struggling, scuffling underdog knocked off a team that had a single digit in parentheses next to its listing in the box score. RIVALRY. GAMES. CONFOUND. Can we learn to treat these tilts as the unique creatures they are? Texas and Alabama deserve a great amount of credit for merely surviving on the road; Pittsburgh couldn’t, and that’s the difference between elite teams and merely decent teams. Don’t downgrade what the Longhorns and Crimson Tide achieved this week; Dave Wannstedt could tell you why.
Michael Bradley
Unless you consider the loss of bragging rights a catastrophe – and plenty of Pitt fans do – the Panthers’ loss to West Virginia Friday night wasn’t as crushing as it might seem to some. That’s because Pittsburgh can still win the Big East title and secure a BCS berth next week with a win over Cincinnati. Of course, if the Panthers decide to stay out of the end zone on five drives inside the enemy 30, they can forget about reaching such lofty heights. Pittsburgh’s offensive stalling will no doubt make coach Dave Wannstedt upset every minute of the coming week, because you can’t have too many dry sockets against the high-scoring Bearcats. While Pitt tries to regroup and take a shot at the title, WVU can bask in its big Backyard win and bask in the big-play ability of Noel Devine and the clutch performance of freshman kicker Tyler Bitancurt. The Mountaineers can’t win a title, but 10 wins are still possible, including a New Year’s bowl berth. That’s not so bad, especially when a victory over Pitt is already on the resume.