MORGANTOWN — Once upon a time there was a collegiate football team trying to make a name for itself, a team that had suffered through some down times and was just beginning to build a program, lacking only a signature victory.

Then came an opportunity against a Virginia Tech team that was ranked in the nation’s top 20, a game few thought this football team had a chance to win. Yet when it ended, the underdog had prevailed, the upset was theirs on a thrilling play in the final minutes of the game.

We thought we would bring that up this week as West Virginia prepares to play East Carolina in a what is anticipated to be monsoon conditions in Greenville, N.C., Saturday. We brought it up because East Carolina has just pulled off such an upset of Virginia Tech, giving the school its first ever consecutive victories over Top 20 teams and putting it on the doorstep of national recognition.

But East Carolina is not the team we were referring to.

Those who can remember back six years can remember that West Virginia, coming off Rich Rodriguez’s first season and 3-9 record, went to Blacksburg, Va., and upset the No. 13 Hokies on Grant Wiley’s goal-line tackle to give the program street cred that it has not yet vanquished.

It was a program-changing victory, just as East Carolina hopes its victory will be. The truth is, if the Pirates can pull off yet another upset of No. 8 WVU, they will be in line to maybe run the table, win Conference USA and earn a BCS bid for coach Skip Holtz.

Holtz understands the significance of what his team did at Virginia Tech, following a bowl victory over Boise State to close last season.

“It was a great win for the program Saturday. It’s a great win from an image standpoint when you look at it on the national stage. I think we got a lot of people’s attention from around the country who are sitting there right now saying, ‘Wow, maybe what they’re doing in Greenville is for real. Maybe we need to look at what East Carolina is doing,’” Holtz said at his weekly press luncheon.

“I think we probably gained a lot of national respect. Our whole pregame talk was about remembering last year. After last year’s game, I talked to the team on the field and told them to remember what that atmosphere was like and to remember what that stage was like, with the national television, the packed house, and the enthusiasm and excitement. I told them they belonged on that stage, but nobody was going to give it to them.

“I said, we’re going to have opportunity to be here again, but the only way we’re going to earn the respect of the country and a lot of the big-time programs is to turn and go out and win one of those games. But don’t expect anybody to give it to us. We’re going to have to go out and earn it. That was my whole talk to them before Saturday’s game.”

And it isn’t any different this week.

“As we go out and play this game, it’s going to be decided on the field and not in the newspapers, or in the stands and not on anything outside the lines. The game will be determined by what happens between those stripes. The biggest thing we had to do was go out and earn it.

“To see the joy and jubilation. They went out and they earned it. They went out and blocked a punt. I was very proud of the way they played all day. I thought they played hard. I was just really proud of what this football team accomplished Saturday.”

But that was last Saturday. Now they have to move forward off that and Holtz, who grew up the son of a Hall of Fame coach with West Virginia roots, understands the psychology involved in being able to sustain success.

On Tuesday, in his team meeting, he addressed that matter, noting that learning how to handle winning is sometimes harder than learning how to win.

“It’s part of human nature to want to beat your chest and pump your ego and listen to everybody tell you how good you are. I think it makes it harder to focus on what you have to do. I think part of learning how to handle winning is learning how to stay humble and hungry for what you have to do, even with all the media activity and attention around you,” Holtz told his team.

All he has to do is point to the foe this week, West Virginia, to understand that lesson. The Mountaineers handled winning as well as any team that rose from the ashes that you will ever see, right up until they rose to No. 2 in the nation and sat on the edge of playing for a national championship.

It was then that they became a little cocky, right from the top on down, and read their own press clippings and believed the rankings and let a pitiful Pitt team ruin their dreams of a championship in a loss that changed their program even more than that Virginia Tech victory had five years earlier.

Now they are facing a team that is eager and hungry for national respect, a team that believes in itself and that has the revenge motive of last season’s ugly 41-7 loss in Morgantown to drive it.

If WVU has a talent edge, certainly East Carolina holds a psychological edge, one that can only be erased if the Pirates fail to understand how to handle their early success.

“I told them, this is big-time college football. If this is what you want and this is the arena that you want to play in, then we have to get accustomed to it and learn how to win with the outside distractions. It’ll be a learning process and there’ll be a learning curve. But we’ve been here before and we’ve had some big wins.”

None, however, as big as the Virginia Tech win and none as big as it would be to ruin West Virginia’s season.

The big difference, however, is the Mountaineers have been through it. They don’t figure to make the same mistake this time that they made last December against Pitt.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.