Thursday Game: Backyard Brawl

Since school should be taking up a considerably smaller amount of my time this week, I’ll try to devote a little more of it to what looks to be a very exciting weekend of college football because, well, because I’ve got nothing better to do. And since I’m kind of tired of having to scroll down so far to check my picks on Saturdays, I decided to throw my so-called analysis over here. Anyway, we get started with the Thursday game:

#8 West Virginia (-11) at Pittsburgh

For the third week in a row, ESPN treats us to a important game in the race for the Big East championship. Now, Pitt did decide to go and make this a lot less interesting by losing their last three conference games, but they still have an opportunity to play the spoiler against their archrivals because, let’s face it, anything short of a BCS bid would make this season a miserable failure in the minds of most of the West Virginia faithful. If the Mountaineers come up short, well, there are worse places to ring in the New Year than in Jacksonville, I guess.

As I said before, the Panthers are currently riding a three-game Big East losing streak that consists of losses to Rutgers, South Florida, and Connecticut. Hard to believe that they were recently sitting at 6-1 as a dark horse contender for the conference title. They finally got their ground game going against a pedestrian UConn team after being held to 67 and 55 yards in consecutive games by the Scarlet Knights and Bulls, respectively. That means that quarterback Tyler Palko will likely be forced to put the team on his shoulders this Thursday night, which isn’t necessarily a good thing for Pittsburgh.



The Mountaineers, not surprisingly, whacked Cincinnati last week in a effort to get over the disappointing loss to Louisville. West Virginia is going to score points, and they’re going to run for over 300 yards. That isn’t good for a Pitt defense that surrendered 317 to a considerably less impressive Connecticut rushing attack just a week ago. The key to the game is whether the Panthers can score enough points to keep up with the Mountaineers’ breakneck offensive pace, and I just don’t think they can.

West Virginia has been somewhat susceptible to the pass this year, and Palko is a decent enough quarterback, but Pittsburgh simply doesn’t have enough firepower to score the 35 or 40 points they’ll likely need to have a chance in this game. It is a rivalry game, where strange things always seem to happen, but the fact that this game is in Morgantown can more than make up for that. After a sluggish first quarter, West Virginia rolls.



West Virginia - 38, Pittsburgh - 20