Football: Last-second field goal gives West Virginia upset win over No. 9 Pitt

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. – After dropping its second game, the Pitt football team is where it has… MORGANTOWN, W. Va. – After dropping its second game, the Pitt football team is where it has wanted to be all season.

“Our goal is to win the Big East,” Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt said after tonight’s 19-16 loss to West Virginia. “We can still do that [with a win] next week [against Cincinnati].”

The Panthers (9-2, 5-1 Big East) lost on a 42-yard field goal by Tyler Bitancurt as time expired. To even get to that point, the Panthers erased a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit. They tied the game with 2:54 when quarterback Bill Stull connected with Jonathan Baldwin on a beautiful 50-yard touchdown pass that only the sophomore wide receiver could catch.

But leading up to that pass it had been a vintage Stull performance. Unfortunately for the Panthers, it was Stull circa last year’s Sun Bowl when he went 7-24 for 58 yards, with no touchdowns and an interception.

In tonight’s defeat, Stull completed 16-of-30 passes for 179 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions.

“It’s hard to win when you lost the turnover battle,” Stull said.

Stull came into the game having thrown just four interceptions and was the nation’s fourth-most efficient passer, and tops in the Big East, with a quarterback rating of 159.37.

While Stull wasn’t the most accurate he’s been, he also didn’t get much help from his favorite target this season, tight end Dorin Dickerson. The senior dropped a few passes, including one that would’ve been a first down on a third-and-3 from the West Virginia 13-yard line with Pitt trailing 6-3 midway through the third quarter. The Panthers ended up tying the game on a 30-yard field goal by Dan Hutchins.

But turnovers and drops weren’t the only Panther problems tonight. While the Panthers only committed two penalties tonight, one was incredibly costly. It came with a little more than three minutes remaining in the third quarter with the Panthers trailing 13-7 and facing a third-and-4 from the West Virginia 26-yard line. Dion Lewis rushed for the first down easily, but not only was the play was called back for a chop block on offensive lineman Jason Pinkston, but the Panthers also lost 15 yards on the penalty.

After a third-and-19 incomplete pass from Stull to Baldwin, the Panthers faced fourth down from the West Virginia 36-yard line. They sent out freshman kicker Dan Hutchins to attempt a 53-yard field goal. Hutchins, whose career best is a 45-yarder, missed the kick.

“We knew we were stretching it a little bit,” Wannstedt said about sending out Hutchins for the attempt.

Earlier in the game, Hutchins also missed a 46-yard field goal.

But West Virginia also left points on the field, twice moving the ball deep into Pitt territory in the first half only to come away with no points on either trip.

Early in the second quarter, after marching downfield in 12 plays, the Mountaineers faced a fourth-and-goal from the Pitt 1-yard line. Instead of kicking the easy field goal, they went for it and quarterback Jarrett Brown was sacked by Gus Mustakas for a 10-yard loss. Later in the same quarter, on West Virginia’s very next drive, the Mountaineers had a fourth-and-nine from the Pitt 28-yard line. Brown rushed for just one yard.

The Panthers also seemed incapable of moving the ball the closer they got to scoring. Pitt entered the red zone, within the opponent’s 20-yard line, on three drives tonight. They came away with only field goals on all three drives. In the red zone, Stull went a combined 0-for-3. On two other drives the Panthers reached West Virginia’s 30-yard line, missing field goals on both trips.

“We stopped ourselves on a lot of drives,” Wannstedt said. “We had a chance to make some plays, but didn’t.”

The Panthers finished with 325 yards of total offense, not far behind West Virginia’s 369 yards. One area where the Panthers didn’t keep up with the Mountaineers, though, is third-down conversions. West Virginia was successful on 9-of-19 third downs, whereas Pitt converted just 2-of-13 attempts.

Even after suffering their first conference loss of the year, the Panthers can still play in a BCS Bowl game by defeating No. 5 Cincinnati (11-0, 6-0 Big East) next week at Heinz Field.

“We’ll turn the page on this one in a hurry and get ready for Cincinnati,” Wannstedt said.

The players are already focusing on their next opponent. Tomorrow was supposed to be an off day for the team, but the captains told the team everyone is to show up tomorrow so they can watch game film and begin their preparation earlier, captain and senior linebacker Adam Gunn said.

“There are a lot of things that need to be talked about,” defensive end Greg Romeus said.

Notes: One positive for the Panthers was Dion Lewis set the all-time Big East record for most rushing yards as a freshman. Coming into tonight he needed 38 yards to tie former Panther LeSean McCoy’s 2007 total of 1,328 yards. Lewis finished the game with 155 rushing yards, his sixth straight game with more than 100 yards on the ground.