By Dave Morrison
West Virginia (8-3, 4-2) will have to find a way to win on the road when it visits Rutgers Saturday.
The game will kick off at noon, and ESPN will televise the game live.
The Scarlet Knights (8-3, 3-3) are 4-2 at Rutgers Stadium, losing to Cincinnati 47-15 in the season opener and Pitt 24-17 Oct. 16.
But it’s not so much Rutgers’ home record as West Virginia’s away mark of 1-3, the only win coming at Syracuse Oct. 10. WVU was 7-0 at home, the first time it’s run the table at home since 1993.
But still, losing at No. 5 Cincinnati 24-21 was certainly no embarrassment and many felt WVU could have, and maybe should have, won at Auburn. WVU had six turnovers in the 41-30 loss.
But it’s not those games that coach Bill Stewart can’t get out of his mind.
“We had a three-point loss at Cincinnati, and we didn’t do well toward the end at Auburn. Those were tough losses against two very good teams,” he said. “The one game that sticks in my mind, and the one game that I won’t be able to forget for a very long time, are quarters two, three and four at USF. If we do that Saturday, we’re dead.”
He said a game last season is one he is rallying around.
“I thought about that and I take it back to the 2008 Connecticut game,” he said. “They had 11 wins at home, and no one had beaten them until we did.
“We put this approach to go up there and set our alarms. That’s when I started the 6 a.m. workouts because it was a noon game. Same scenario — Rutgers has not lost to many at home. This is going to be a tough opponent.”
The players know about their road woes, too.
“People just tend to feel more comfortable playing at home,” cornerback Brandon Hogan said. “We get out on the road and we start off slow for some reason. We just need to snap into it faster and execute our game plan.”
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Tyler Bitancurt is the antithesis of former WVU kicker Pat McAfee, who, for lack of a better phrase, was quite often “the life of the party.”
McAfee is now the punter with the undefeated Indianapolis Colts and also serves as the holder on field goals and PATs.
He once tried his hand at professional wrestling, and during the Fiesta Bowl media day, he carried a camera and interviewed teammates.
Bitancurt, a redshirt freshman, is reserved and laid-back. But he has done something McAfee never did — kick a game-winning field goal.
His 43-yarder beat Pitt 19-16 as time expired last week puts him in a category with Bill McKenzie, who did the same with a 38-yarder in 1975.
Interestingly enough, it was just McKenzie’s second field goal of the season (he finished 4-of-11 that year), but he had been 39-of-39 on PATs coming into the game. Bitancurt was 38-of-39 coming into the Pitt game.
Interesting side notes on that 1975 game: Steve Dunlap, now the Mountaineers’ secondary coach, had an interception for WVU on a tipped pass and Bobby Bowden, who announced his retirement earlier this week after becoming a coaching icon at Florida State, was the WVU coach.
Last Friday’s winner excited the not-easily-excited Bitancurt.
“I figured it was going to come down to me when there was only a minute left and we starting to let the clock run out before calling a timeout,” he recalled this week. “I just tried to clear my head and kick it like every other kick.
“I can’t describe how I felt when it went through the goal post. It’s like a dream come true. It was amazing to win against a great team that played with their all. The locker room was fun place to be after the game.”
Only McKenzie knows how he feels.
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The return of three prominent starters to West Virginia’s defense full-time — Scooter Berry, Sidney Glover and Reed Williams — is paying dividends to the Mountaineer cause.
“Having those three guys back full-time speaks volumes,” Stewart said. “To have Reed Williams in the huddle and just on the field for 65 plays is immeasurable. You can’t, as a coach, script that.”
— E-mail: demorrison@
register-herald.com
