Mountaineers still remember loss

November 28, 2008 at 12:01a.m.

Pitt’s 13-9 win a year ago cost West Virginia a shot at the national championship.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — 13-9.

It’s not likely many West Virginians played those numbers in any lottery combination this year. They’re still too recognizable, too painful, too emblematic of one of the bleakest days since the Mountaineers began playing football more than a century ago.

13-9.

The score that cost West Virginia a national championship game appearance, and may have sent former coach Rich Rodriguez packing for Michigan.

Forget it? How could they? The score triggered so much anguish, so much second-guessing, so much finger-pointing, so many significant changes that it would be impossible for the Mountaineers to forget in only 12 months’ time.

“It was a terrible, terrible feeling,” cornerback Ellis Lankster said of that 13-9 upset loss by then-No. 2 West Virginia to Pitt a year ago this weekend. “Just terrible.”

The Mountaineers (7-3, 4-1 Big East) have insisted all week that revenge won’t be a factor when they play neighboring but not neighborly rival Pittsburgh (7-3, 3-2) in a nationally televised game tonight. They may be kidding only themselves.

Because the Mountaineers lost a game on their home field a year ago that virtually no one in their home state thought they could possibly lose, many West Virginians fear they may never again see their team so close to winning the national title.

“We ruined everything for them,” Pitt kicker Conor Lee said.

Winning tonight’s game, when only a non-major bowl bid may be decided, won’t ease West Virginia’s pain.

But this is the first time the Mountaineers have played the Panthers since they lost the game of their lives, and they don’t want to lose again.

Not to Pitt. Not again.

“It’s just an hour up the road, just like Florida-Florida State,” West Virginia assistant Doc Holliday said of the 101-year-old rivalry known as the Backyard Brawl. “Any time you get schools that close together, you get fans and their passion, too.”

It’s why West Virginia residents proudly wear Pittsburgh Steelers T-shirts, but wouldn’t be caught wearing anything that says Pitt Panthers.

“I don’t know if they’ll say it, but they’ve been gunning for us all season,” Pitt linebacker Scott McKillop said. “As a player, we ruined their season last year, a lot of fans’ dreams of playing in a national championship game, so they’re going to be pumped for us.”

West Virginia has a flicker of hope of winning the Big East, but it would take the Mountaineers beating Pitt and South Florida on Dec. 6 and No. 16 Cincinnati losing to Syracuse on Saturday. Pitt’s chances ended when it lost 28-21 at Cincinnati last Saturday.

If Cincinnati beats Syracuse to claim the conference’s automatic BCS bowl bid, the West Virginia-Pitt winner could wind up in the Sun Bowl, with the Gator an outside possibility.