By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — On Saturday night, long after his West Virginia football team had sleepwalked through a victory over Louisville, Coach Bill Stewart sat down before his television to watch the most frightening show he’d seen since the glory days of “The Twilight Zone.”
This one wasn’t produced by Rod Serling, however. Instead, it was the creation of the inventive mind of one Brian Kelly, the Cincinnati coach who runs perhaps the brightest, most inventive offense in college football.
When it was over, Kelly’s Bearcats had put up 47 points and needed nearly every one of them as a brave Connecticut team lost yet another heartbreaker, 47-45.
West Virginia puts its season on the line Friday night in Cincinnati against the No. 4, undefeated Bearcats.
If there was some hope in seeing Cincinnati give up 45 points, it had to be lost in an avalanche of Bearcat yardage that wound up at 711, or 438 more than WVU could record against a mediocre Louisville defense.
“Cincinnati is powerful,” said Stewart. “I don’t know what we are going to do.”
Now pumping up your opponent while downplaying your own chances is as old a trick as football coaches have, dating back to the days of Paul “Bear” Bryant and beyond. They would have the public think they the only thing that can save them from a terrible defeat is a bus wreck on the way to the stadium, while in private they build confidence in their own team.
Well, if that’s what Stewart is doing, it is best that any members of his team who regularly read these pages cancel their subscription, for he’s going to scare them half to death.
”They are just potent. I look at their scores — they are averaging 40 points a game. We can’t cancel it, so we are going to have to go do the best we can,” he said.
How good that is, well, Stewart isn’t going to let on, saying nothing more than “we’ll probably be 20 or 30-point underdogs.”
The thing about that is, he may just be right.
How good is Cincinnati offensively?
Well, as Stewart noted, through the early part of this season Tony Pike was their quarterback and they were flying high.
Then he was injured and replaced by Zach Collaros.
“Tony Pike was up for the Heisman at one point this season, and he can’t even get on the field,”
Stewart noted. “This is a juggernaut. I don’t know what we’ll do. We’ll just have to hang on.”
It is almost amazing the way Collaros moved in after Pike injured the arm he broke last year.
Collaros’ passing efficiency rating is an unheard of 210.2, with 76 completions in 100 passes. One of every 10 passes he throws goes for a touchdown.
“Zach is playing lights out. He’s special. You can’t sit him down,” Stewart said.
Collaros came to Cincinnati out of Steubenville, Ohio, where he was probably a better baseball player than football player, a potential major league prospect.
“There are probably a lot of people who aren’t going to give us a chance, so this is another game we’re going to have to fight our way through,” Stewart said. “We are going to have find some way to win. They are clicking and hitting. They are the media darling. They are an assaulting offense.”
WVU does have a history of playing well against Cincinnati.
“We played them the last two years as tough or tougher than anyone else,” Stewart said. “We won a very hard-fought game there in 2007 and last year was an overtime win for them here. I think we’ll hang on and do the best we can.
“They are a team that everyone is talking about and they are up for the national championship. That’s really good for our league, but we have a chance to play them and we’re going to see if we can make a mark as well.”
NOTES: While the Mountaineers were banged up, no one was declared out of the Cincinnati game … Stewart said he expects both quarterback Jarrett Brown and running back Noel Devine to play, although Devine’s ankle is presently a problem … With the short week there is no day off for the Mountaineers … According to this week’s BCS standings, WVU is No. 25 and Cincinnati is No. 5.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
