They are trying to get juiced for the game down in Morgantown.
It’s Pitt week, time for the Backyard Brawl.
“There’s an extra buzz around the team,” center Tim Brown admits.
He should know something about it. This is his sixth time going through Pitt week.
“People are hitting harder. Even the scout team is bringing it a little harder,” he said.
Pitt does that.
It’s a rivalry that dates to 1895 between schools not 100 miles apart. Dominated by Pitt until the 1950s and then again in the 1970s, West Virginia has gone 11-4-1 against the Panthers in the past 16 games.
“Every game is a big game,” Brown said, “but this is the biggest. It’s circled every year at the first meeting coming into training camp.”
Pitt week is unlike any other week in the year.
“Mines vs. the mills, the Backyard Brawl,” senior linebacker Scott Gyorko said. “It’s like growing up. You have a fight with your family, it gets out of control and you go at it.”
“We call it ‘Pitt Camp,’ ” senior safety Jahmile Addae said. “It’s the most intense week of the year. We basically get down and dirty and build ourselves back up from the roots.”
Interesting. I have to wonder though, if both teams might be feeling that the game is just a touch anticlimatic. Pitt just won a huge game in ND, that is still having aftershocks. WVU just pissed away their BCS hopes in a gakker at home against BC. I mean when a columnist in the WVU student paper is actually talking about being optimistic for Hoopie sports now that basketball season is here.
In the not-so-unlikely scenario that WVU makes Pitt quarterback Tyler Palko look like Tom Brady on Thanksgiving night, do not feel compelled to run to the bathroom and experience your turkey dinner for a second time.
Take heart, Mountaineer fans: Basketball season is upon us.
Kind of strange that the WVU kids are saying that. We kind of expected us to be the ones talking that way.
Then you have columnists trying to say that being 8-2 isn’t really that bad for the team. Say what? Now that is pathetic homerisms. You can look at columns like that to say, yeah, being the coach with papers like that isn’t too bad afterall.
One WV writer notes with some sadness that Syracuse AD Jake Crouthamel will be retiring in June. Crouthamel was instrumental in helping to get WVU into the Big East. First in football then all in. Wonder if Crouthamel staying until June might save Pasqualoni for another year? Let the next AD choose the guy. Or does he saddle the next AD with a coach he didn’t pick?
Now a plea to our presumably exhausted and time crunched mole in Morgantown. John, we need some reports on the mood down there. How are they gearing up for the Brawl? What’s the word? Hope the new kid is starting to sleep a little longer each night.
