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West Virginia went undefeated at home for the first time since 1993 with its win over Pitt Friday.
Yet, the Mountaineers haven’t had the same success away from Milan Puskar Stadium.
Losses to Auburn, South Florida and Cincinnati have all come on the road. The Mountaineers lone win away from Milan Puskar Stadium was against a lowly Syracuse team in the Carrier Dome with more than 10,000 open seats and a bare student section.
When the 23rd-ranked Mountaineers travel to Rutgers Saturday, head coach Bill Stewart and his team will set their goals to break their bad luck on the road.
"I’m very disappointed that we’ve only won one on the road this year," Stewart said.
In his nearly two-year head coaching career at WVU, the Mountaineers are just 3-6 in road games. Wins have come over lower-echelon Big East Conference teams Syracuse, Louisville and Connecticut.
West Virginia is 2-0 in neutral site bowl games under Stewart, though. WVU beat Oklahoma in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz., under Stewart, who was the interim head coach. Last season, the Mountaineers defeated North Carolina in the 2008 Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte, N.C.
"We’ve won some games on the road prior and during my time as head football coach. We’ve won bowl games on the road," Stewart said. "We’ve got to transform that into this week."
The Mountaineers have a 7-2 record at Rutgers Stadium in the program’s history. The stadium itself has changed since WVU last faced the Scarlet Knights in Piscataway, N.J., in 2007 – a 31-3 rout in a downpour.
The stadium’s south end zone was enclosed with seating, upping the capacity by more than 12,500. The Scarlet Knights are averaging more than 6,000 additional fans this season compared to 2008.
One of the biggest worries Stewart has is the noon start time. Last season, WVU had trouble focusing in early quarters of noon starts. For that reason, he made some of the team’s spring practices at 6 a.m.
That has helped the team this year, as the Mountaineers have won all of their noon starts in 2009.
"We are focused on setting our alarms, being an adult, getting ready to go to work. It’s not grade school anymore," Stewart said. "We have to get our lunch pails like all West Virginians and get ready to go to work."
To rid themselves of the road issues, Stewart wants his team to "finish the fight," unlike it did against Auburn and South Florida.
"That’s all I want to do," Stewart said. "We have to take care of business."
The second-year head coach said he still struggles to get over the frustrations of the final quarter against Auburn, when the Tigers came back to beat WVU 41-30, and the final three quarters against South Florida, in which the Bulls shut down the Mountaineer offense in a 30-19 loss.
"People just tend to feel more comfortable playing at home. We get out on the road and we start off slow for some reason," said WVU cornerback Brandon Hogan. "We just need to snap into it faster and execute our game plan."
While the Mountaineers lost to the fifth-ranked Bearcats 24-21, Stewart said it was the best the team played outside of its victory over Pitt because of his team’s intensity.
"I can’t apologize for that loss. It was a three-point loss to the fifth-best team in the country, which is now 11-0," Stewart said. "I thought we played pretty well."
It could come easier against a Rutgers team that the Mountaineers have beaten in 14 straight games.
Not so fast, Stewart said, though.
"I know what kind of talent (Rutgers) has, and when they are clicking they will run us right off the field just like they did South Florida, Louisville and others," Stewart said. "We have to strain a little bit more, we have to dig a little further and reach down a little bit harder."
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