WVU should have extra motivation
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MORGANTOWN -- As if the list of incentives West Virginia will take with it onto the field at high noon Saturday to face the No. 9 team in the nation, Penn State, isn't long enough, the Nittany Lions gave the Mountaineers one to emotionally charge them during the off-season with a rub-it-in touchdown in the final seconds of last year's 38-15 defeat in State College.
In case you have forgotten the scene, and you may rest assured that the Mountaineer players have not, here's how it played out.
The game was safely tucked away for Penn State, leading 31-15, as the final seconds were ticking off the clock, 110,747 crazed fans already in victory mode as the Nittany Lions lined up at the 5-yard line.
The assumption was that they would take a knee and waltz into the locker room, happy with the victory. But Coach James Franklin opted, instead, to rub it in by running it into the end zone, Beau Pribula carrying the final 5 yards for a touchdown with 6 seconds left on the clock.
Penn State hadn't changed at all in the 31 years since beating WVU in the last meeting between these once bitter rivals.
They had to have one more touchdown to make the series record stand at Penn State's 49 victories, WVU's 9 with 2 ties and it seemed that Penn State enjoyed rubbing it in with its fifth-straight win since WVU's undefeated 1988 team routed them.
Now don't get it wrong. Penn State has every right to try to score. They had substitutes on the field who took home something to talk about the rest of their lives with that touchdown, no different than WVU walk-on basketball player Spencer Mackey had as he hit his first 3-point shot of his career in the closing seconds of his team's one-sided victory and was carried from the court by his celebrating teammates as fans went wild.
Neal Brown refused to push the issue, but the tone of his voice and the words he used left little doubt that he wasn't pleased with that last touchdown.
"We're not using it, but it is what it is," Brown said in his Monday press conference. "They scored late. I don't necessarily have a problem with it, as far as it goes, but it is what it is."
And what is it?
"If our guys need something like that to motivate them …. nehhhhh … I'll say this, the score of the game is the score of the game and we didn't play very well. We had a chance to win the game in the third quarter and we didn't make those winning plays and they did.
"They beat us and we now have an opportunity to play them at home. This is going to be the last time Penn State and West Virginia are on the field together, especially here in Morgantown, for the foreseeable future. I guess we could play in the playoffs or in a bowl game, but this is the last time in the foreseeable future."
But WVU's players aren't about to ignore this one.
The fire was lit for this year's game before last year's game was over.
"Of course that upset us," Finland born defensive tackle Eddie Vesterinen admitted on Monday. "This past week on the TV's before our meetings, that's the only clip we've been watching. I've seen that clip like 100 times. It just angers me."
Now the Mountaineer brass isn't publicly pushing for that to be part of what drives its team, but the replays wouldn't be played if it wasn't a part of the pregame psychological preparation.
Eddie V., as his coaches and teammates refer to him, has an image of that moment etched forever in his mind.
"I saw this one celebration this one offensive lineman did. I take that very personal," Vesterinen said. "I hope everybody on our team took it very personal."
It adds to what is a game filled with enough emotional voltage to overcome any other pregame hype.
"I think it will be a day to remember in West Virginia history for sure," Vesterinen said.
Think, for a moment, of what is at stake as this game begins. WVU is unranked, Penn State considered a national contender, No. 8 in the nation. The series record tips heavily in the favor of the Nittany Lions.
With nine games in last year's bank and two other games having barely slipped away, WVU believes it is ready to send an experienced team out to win its first Big 12 championship, but an opening victory could sap much of the juice that has been built.
Penn State has always been pictured as the elite of eastern college football, possessing a snobbish image that grew through the Rip Engle and then the Joe Paterno years and that even a sex scandal involving assistant coach Jerry Sandusky couldn't escape that.
Penn State wound up in the prestigious Big Ten when it dropped its independent standard, WVU having to settle for the Big East, which was at the time known as a basketball conference.
That, of course, was a reminder of the social gap between Penn State and its blue collar cousin, West Virginia.
The image lives today. Cornerback Garnett Hollis Jr. transfers into WVU this year from a Big Ten school that has its own "elitist" image in Northwestern. His opinion of Penn State after playing against them, though, was of a school that pictured itself as a special entity.
"I would just say with them playing last year, they kind of did some of the similar stuff that they ran against Northwestern and how they ran against (West Virginia in) in Week 1. They don't show too much respect for their opponents unless it's Michigan or Ohio State, so I think that's something that's similar when they played (against both schools)," Hollis Jr. said.
"I think it's just going out there and outplaying them," Hollis said. "I think that the main key is, don't give them the game. That's what they want. That's what they think every team is going to do, give them a game. But I think when we go out there and punch them in the mouth and take the life from them, I think that's going to be the difference."
Quarterback Garrett Greene says the late TD isn't fuel for WVU's fire.
"Not really, we're just looking toward this year," Greene said Monday. After the game we were more teed off about what we didn't do as an offense to score enough points to win. The third down right after halftime (that WVU could not convert) … there were several key plays in there where if we converted, the game looks different.
"So, the play at the end of the game doesn't really affect us," he said.