By Bob Hertzel
PISCATAWAY, N.J. — West Virginia University is going to the Gator Bowl.
Even though they weren’t present for much of the second half of the season, the Gator Bowl has decided to let the offense unit join the defense and special teams.
So, if anyone knows the whereabouts of the WVU offense, which is described as have 22 legs, varying shades of hair with a bruised ego as an identifying mark, he or she should contact Coach Bill Stewart at the Puskar Center in Morgantown.
Whether they are found in time to face Florida State — and it is all but official that coach Bobby Bowden’s final game will be against the first major college team he ever coached — is a question no one can answer.
Certainly they weren’t around for Saturday’s regular-season ending 24-21 victory over Rutgers, just as they have been strangely absent for two months now.
The fact of the matter is the Mountaineers managed to gain only 278 yards on a wet, slippery field before a crowd announced at 52,534 but which numbered half of that by the start of the second half.
WVU rushed for 162 yards but it took 45 carries to obtain those yards and quarterback Jarrett Brown passed for only 116 yards on 10 completions in 20 tries.
On third down, the Mountaineers converted only two of 14 opportunities, which would seem to be almost embarrassing if it were held up in comparison to anything but the Rutgers performance, which saw the Knight convert but one of 15 tries.
“We won that battle,” Brown said, his tongue planted firmly in his cheek.
It is difficult to explain just how offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen’s offense has deteriorated as this season progressed, but it must be noted that it has gone seven games without scoring 30 points and that it went into Saturday’s game averaging just 19 points a game over the past four games and put only 17 points on the board in this one, the other seven coming when safety Sidney Glover stepped in front of a Tom Savage pass intended for wide receiver Mark Harrison and ran it into the end zone from 24 yards out for a touchdown.
So it was that West Virginia finished the regular season at 9-3, but had not that defense, led by Glover’s interception and some inspired by play middle linebacker Reed Williams been at its best coach Bill Stewart may not have been able to give the media a tongue-lashing about the way it has underrated his team this year.
He was set off when a media maven asked him if this game was not something of a microcosm of this season, with its ups and down.
“I’ll tell you what I have seen this entire season. I have seen four quarters of not good football by West Virginia,” Stewart began. “I am going to slow this down for you. Listen to me. We’re 9-3. We are 9-and-3. Do you understand how many teams in America would like to be 9-3.
“I’m not scolding you,” Stewart continued. “I’m telling you. I have been keeping this in for too long. But today Bill Stewart is going to push back a little. We are 9-3. We had a bad fourth quarter at Auburn and we had three bad quarters at South Florida. We went to Cincinnati and lost by three points. If you’re going to write about it, write the truth.
“I am not going to let people keep telling me that my players and my boys are not good. They are 9-3. Did we win pretty all the time? No. That wasn’t pretty today.”
It was, quite honestly, pretty. Pretty ugly.
See, the truth lies somewhere between where Stewart thinks his team is and where he thinks the media ranks it.
It is a team that has a lot of faults, far more faults than a 9-3 team should have.
It is a team that again gave up a huge kickoff return to Rutgers, this one for a touchdown. It is a team that has been neither consistent running nor throwing the football. It is a team that turned the ball over six times in that Auburn game, so that 9-3 team really probably should be a 10-2 team.
It is a team that has lived precariously on the edge, but that has eked out a last second-victory over Pitt, a four-point win over Connecticut and managed to make 17 points stand up against a bad Louisville team while playing at home.
It was a team that on this day gained a grand total of 3 offensive yards in the second quarter, and a team that gave up a grand total of 1 offensive yard to Rutgers in that quarter. That’s what West Virginia is.
West Virginia hasn’t been anywhere near a Top 10 team nor is it among the nation’s lower echelon.
Beating Rutgers, as WVU did on Saturday to assure that Gator Bowl bid, is an important step forward but it also is the 15th straight time the Mountaineers have topped Rutgers.
And they were all out to do it.
In the end, it came down to one play.
The Mountaineers were trying to run out the clock, but looking at a 3rd and 6, not wanting to punt.
Mullen sent down from the booth a naked bootleg for Brown to run, the first naked bootleg of the game.
Defensive end George Johnson stepped in. He is 6-4, 260 and he had a shot at Brown and the WVU quarterback stiff-armed him to the ground and ran for 12 yards and a clinching first down, the first WVU third-down conversion since they made a third-down on a pass from Brown to Jock Sanders in the first quarter.
“I guess I have a legacy here,” said Brown, who ruined Rutgers season in 2006 when he started his first collegiate game for an injured Pat White and threw a game-winning touchdown pass and two-point conversion in the third overtime, then pulled off this third down play.
Beyond that, the Mountaineers got a 6-yard TD run from Noel Devine on their first possession, a 1-yard run from Ryan Clarke later in the first quarter and turned matters over to the defense and the special teams, Tyler Bitancurt nailing a 41-yard fourth-quarter field goal into the wind for the winning margin and punter Scott Kozlowski booming nine punts for a 42.3 average.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
