Backyard Brawl Record Book
2 months 1 week ago - 2 months 1 week ago #475
by wvu4u2
Backyard Brawl Record Book was created by wvu4u2
MORGANTOWN — We live in an athletic age where they measure everything and treasure what they measure. Doesn’t matter the sport. We measure speed and strength, angles and spin rates, steps taken and calories eaten.
We analyze situations and tendencies. We perform to eat and eat to perform. Sleep? We measure how much and how deeply we sleep and the day is coming when our dreams will be analyzed as we dream them in the middle of the night.
We know that a baseball travels 444 feet on a home run, not 443 or 445. We know if a pitch is a strike or a ball no matter what the umpire may call and whether a receiver’s foot lands just on the sideline or just past it and it wins games or loses games.
The other day, in the midst of his Monday press conference, Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi reached back for the cliche of all cliches when it comes to rivalry games, declaring that “you can throw every record out” when it comes to the Backyard Brawl.
Quite probably he meant each team’s record, WVU’s standing at 1-1 and Pitt at 2-0, but he also well might have been referring to the records that had been established in the past, WVU owning a 41-62-3 record in the series that dates back to 1895 but having won four of the last five renewals.
But there are other records involved in the rivalry, individual records established during the Backyard Brawl. We felt the timing was right to establish something of a Backyard Brawl Record Book for West Virginia, the best of the best performances against Pitt over the years.
Many you will remember, some you will have forgotten, although at the moment they were established all seemed to be unforgettable.
Here we go:
RUSHING YARDS: QB Pat White, 220 in 2005 and in 2006. Steve Slaton, 215 in 2006. Quincy Wilson, 208 in 2003.
That’s right, WVU’s all-time best rushing performance against Pitt does not belong to a running back, but instead to quarterback Pat White, who rushed against the Panthers for exactly 220 years in consecutive games.
Not that he showed up Steve Slaton at all, for Slaton joined him by rushing for 215 yards in the 2006 game, giving WVU just the third pair of teammates to rush for 200 or more yards in the same game in NCAA history.
And, Slaton wasn’t exactly overlooked in the 2005 game, either, as he rushed for 179 yards and caught six passes for 130 more yards.
It was during the 2006 game when White decided every time Pitt’s PA system would produce it’s Panther “roar” when Pitt had the ball, he’d meow like a pussy cat on the WVU bench, a moment that was caught an posted on YouTube that made him an early internet sensation.
LONGEST RUSH: Noel Devine, 88 yards in 2009.
As many yards that White and Slaton rushed for against Pitt in those two seasons — 839 yards, to be precise — they could not outdo one of the great moments in Noel Devine’s career. Always a breakaway threat, Devine’s 88-yard touchdown dash in the third quarter broke a 6-6 tie in a game WVU would win, 19-16, on Tyler Bitancurt’s 43-yard walk off field goal.
RUSHES: Amos Zereoue, 41 in 1997. Quincy Wilson, 34 in 2003 and Steve Slaton, 34 in 2005.
No history of the Backyard Brawl can be complete without Amos Zereoue carving his name in the record books.
Zereoue’s most famous contribution to the Backyard Brawl came in 1996 as a freshman when he took his first carry 69 yards untouched to the end zone for the most spectacular Brawl debut ever, finishing the game with 12 carries for 135 yards.
But the next year he put his name in the Brawl record book with 41 carries in a three-overtime, 41-38 loss to the Panthers in Mountaineer Field. How important was Zereoue to the offense? There was only one other running back to carry the ball in regulation and 3 overtimes and that was Leroy White, who had one carry for 4 yards. Quarterback Marc Bulger also had one carry for 3 yards but was sacked three times for -24 yards, so Zereoue out rushed the team total.
RUSHING TDs: Quincy Wilson, 4 in 2003. Ed Williams, 2 in 1969 and 1970, Kerry Marbury 3 in 1972, Amos Zereoue 3 in 1987 and Avon Cobourne 3 in 1969.
In 2003, Wilson led the Mountaineers to a 52-31 win in one of the most entertaining Backyard Brawls, scoring a record 4 TDs.
Wilson scored one touchdown early in the game but in the third quarter it was tied at 24-24 when first quarterback Rasheed Marshall ran 12 yards for a score and then Wilson scored three straight TDs on runs of 1, 1 and 36 yards. He finished the day with 208 yards and those four scores while Pitt was held to just 10 rushing yards for the game.
However, Rod Rutherford threw for 416 yards, 185 of them to All-American Larry Fitzgerald to keep Pitt in contention until Wilson took charge of things.
YARDS PER RUSH: Eddie Williams, 18.09 with 199 yards in 11 carries in 1969.
You don’t hear Eddie Williams’ name much anymore but this WVU fullback was a bit of a miracle man himself in the year of the Miracle Mets as he etched his name into the Backyard Brawl record book in a 49-18 win as he averaged 18.1 yards per carry as he gained 199 yards in 11 tries while scoring 3 touchdowns.
What’s more, his quarterback, Mike Sherwood, who you will hear about in the passing segment of this record review, carried 7 times for 109 yards to average 15.8 per carry. Sherwood’s passing on this day was quite pedestrian as he hit 5 of 10 for just 53 yards.
PASSING YARDS: Mike Sherwood, 416 in 1968. Marc Bulger, 409 in 1998, Chad Johnston, 398 in 1984
One year you pass for 53 yards after the previous year setting what was then the WVU school record of 416 yards passing in a 38-15 win over Pitt. Oddly, WVU threw for just 75 yards the whole game.
Marc Bulger made a run at the record 30 years later with 409 yards passing, but came up short in a game WVU won 52-14 with Bulger setting perhaps an even more important record, as you now will see.
PASSING TDs: Marc Bulger, 6, 1998, Allen McCune, 5 in 1965, Major Harris, 4, in 1986; Chad Johnston, 4 in 1994; Marc Bulger, 4 in 1999.
Bulger, the son of a one-time Notre Dame backup quarterback and brother to one of the No. 1 WVU family’s sister act on the women’s basketball team of Kate and Meg Bulger, turned it all loose in that 1998 game and set the then school record of 6 touchdown passes.
He broke a 33-year-old record from 1965 set by Allen McCune with 5 and Bulger’s 6 stood until Geno Smith came along in 2012 when he threw for 8 touchdowns against Baylor in the Mountaineers’ first-ever Big 12 game. Smith had tied Bulger’s record of 6 in the 2012 70-33 Orange Bowl romp over Clemson to end the 2011 season.
LONGEST PASS: Chad Johnston, 81 yards in 1994; Rasheed Marshall, 79 yards in 2002; Marc Bulger, 77 yards in 1998,
The longest pass thrown by a WVU quarterback in the Backyard Brawl belonged to Chad Johnston in what was probably the most thrilling game of the series that grew thrills like farmers grow corn.
Johnston’s 81 yard pass to Rashaan Vanterpool, whom he’d hit earlier on a 46-yard play Don Nehlen had put in during the week that involved a double move that freed the receiver from an aggressive Pitt defender.
The TD came with 1:32 left to play and put WVU in charge at 40-33, but Pitt had a few answers of its own and came back and scored and made a two-point conversion for 41-40 lead with 38 seconds left.
What more could Johnston do? Well, with 25 seconds to play he was flushed out of the pocket, thought about a first-down pass to tight end Lovett Purnell in hopes of setting up a field goal, but then saw Zach Abraham get behind defensive back Denose Mosbey.
Johnston let fly and it went for a 60-yard TD to win the game, 47-41.
“I got flushed out of the pocket and didn’t have time to set my feet and throw it,” Johnston recalled to John Antonik in his book “The Backyard Brawl.”
“It was a perfectly thrown ball and was one of those things where you think to yourself ‘What is this person doing?’” Abraham said. “They were playing prevent and he squatted and I was like ‘Are you kidding me?’ As soon as he did I turned and looked and saw the ball in the air. I’m thinking, ‘Man, I better not drop this one.’
He didn’t.
RECEIVING YARDS: Rahsaan Vanterpool, 205 in 1994, and Pat Greene, 205, in 1997 Zach Abraham, 180 in 1994.
Two of the top three performances came in that same game in 1994, most of it in the final two minutes of play as Vanterpool had 205 receiving yards and Abraham 180. Pat Greene tied Vanterpool’s Brawl record three years later.
And remember, all this was under Don Nehlen, far more famous for his draw play and screen passes than those deep balls.
MOST RECEPTIONS: Pat Greene, 12, in 1997.
This was the same three-overtime game in which Zereoue carried the ball 41 times. Greene had been mostly a complementary receiver through the year and at game time he had caught only 18 passes for 254 yards during the year, but he became Bulger’s go-to guy on this occasion with 12 catches for 205 yards.
LONGEST PUNT RETURN: Willie Drewery, 74 yards in 1984; Lance Frazier, 72 yards in 2002
History loses some players on occasion but it’s hard to forget Willie Drewery and this punt return. While it came in a loss to Pitt, YouTube has it in a tribute video that memorializes his career, one which led to a long NFL career as a receiver and return man. To this day, Drewery holds the school’s career record with 1,166 yards of punt returns.
LONGEST KICKOFF RETURN: Alvin Swope, 91 yards in 1996; Shawn Terry, 89 yards in 2000
In 1996. Alvin Swope was a kick returner and he got a big chance to show off his stuff against Pitt, even though the game was a 31-0 WVU shutout victory. Swope, therefore, returned only one kickoff but he took it 91 yards, so Pitt was probably glad they didn’t have to kickoff again.
FIELD GOALS MADE: Ken Juskowtiz, 5 in 1967; Tyler Bitancurt, 4 in 2009, Jay Taylor, 3 in 1997 and Pat McAfee, 3 in 2008
It is a big part of WVU lore and certainly owns a large place in Backyard Brawl history for not only did Ken Juskowitz. A former WVU soccer player who had been urged to come out for football, Juskowitz had been a star player for the Mountaineer soccer team, even scoring a goal for the U.S. national team in the 1964 Guatamalan Games.
His soccer career came to an end when he suffered a pair of broken ankles, which led him to putting his foot to use in football and it was a good thing for in the 1967 Backyard Brawl, Juskowitz kicked five field goals.
That doesn’t tell the whole story. The final score was 15-0, WVU, with Juskowitz accounting for all the points.
“I remember the fifth field goal because I kicked four in the first game and I think that was a record at the time,” Juskowitz said in “The Backyard Brawl.” The fifth field goal right near the end of the game and what [coach Jim] Carlen did was let me go back in to kick that fifth field goal to break the record I had from the Villanova game, which they don’t do very often. They don’t usually care about records.”
Good thing we care here.
Follow @bhertzel on X
We analyze situations and tendencies. We perform to eat and eat to perform. Sleep? We measure how much and how deeply we sleep and the day is coming when our dreams will be analyzed as we dream them in the middle of the night.
We know that a baseball travels 444 feet on a home run, not 443 or 445. We know if a pitch is a strike or a ball no matter what the umpire may call and whether a receiver’s foot lands just on the sideline or just past it and it wins games or loses games.
The other day, in the midst of his Monday press conference, Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi reached back for the cliche of all cliches when it comes to rivalry games, declaring that “you can throw every record out” when it comes to the Backyard Brawl.
Quite probably he meant each team’s record, WVU’s standing at 1-1 and Pitt at 2-0, but he also well might have been referring to the records that had been established in the past, WVU owning a 41-62-3 record in the series that dates back to 1895 but having won four of the last five renewals.
But there are other records involved in the rivalry, individual records established during the Backyard Brawl. We felt the timing was right to establish something of a Backyard Brawl Record Book for West Virginia, the best of the best performances against Pitt over the years.
Many you will remember, some you will have forgotten, although at the moment they were established all seemed to be unforgettable.
Here we go:
RUSHING YARDS: QB Pat White, 220 in 2005 and in 2006. Steve Slaton, 215 in 2006. Quincy Wilson, 208 in 2003.
That’s right, WVU’s all-time best rushing performance against Pitt does not belong to a running back, but instead to quarterback Pat White, who rushed against the Panthers for exactly 220 years in consecutive games.
Not that he showed up Steve Slaton at all, for Slaton joined him by rushing for 215 yards in the 2006 game, giving WVU just the third pair of teammates to rush for 200 or more yards in the same game in NCAA history.
And, Slaton wasn’t exactly overlooked in the 2005 game, either, as he rushed for 179 yards and caught six passes for 130 more yards.
It was during the 2006 game when White decided every time Pitt’s PA system would produce it’s Panther “roar” when Pitt had the ball, he’d meow like a pussy cat on the WVU bench, a moment that was caught an posted on YouTube that made him an early internet sensation.
LONGEST RUSH: Noel Devine, 88 yards in 2009.
As many yards that White and Slaton rushed for against Pitt in those two seasons — 839 yards, to be precise — they could not outdo one of the great moments in Noel Devine’s career. Always a breakaway threat, Devine’s 88-yard touchdown dash in the third quarter broke a 6-6 tie in a game WVU would win, 19-16, on Tyler Bitancurt’s 43-yard walk off field goal.
RUSHES: Amos Zereoue, 41 in 1997. Quincy Wilson, 34 in 2003 and Steve Slaton, 34 in 2005.
No history of the Backyard Brawl can be complete without Amos Zereoue carving his name in the record books.
Zereoue’s most famous contribution to the Backyard Brawl came in 1996 as a freshman when he took his first carry 69 yards untouched to the end zone for the most spectacular Brawl debut ever, finishing the game with 12 carries for 135 yards.
But the next year he put his name in the Brawl record book with 41 carries in a three-overtime, 41-38 loss to the Panthers in Mountaineer Field. How important was Zereoue to the offense? There was only one other running back to carry the ball in regulation and 3 overtimes and that was Leroy White, who had one carry for 4 yards. Quarterback Marc Bulger also had one carry for 3 yards but was sacked three times for -24 yards, so Zereoue out rushed the team total.
RUSHING TDs: Quincy Wilson, 4 in 2003. Ed Williams, 2 in 1969 and 1970, Kerry Marbury 3 in 1972, Amos Zereoue 3 in 1987 and Avon Cobourne 3 in 1969.
In 2003, Wilson led the Mountaineers to a 52-31 win in one of the most entertaining Backyard Brawls, scoring a record 4 TDs.
Wilson scored one touchdown early in the game but in the third quarter it was tied at 24-24 when first quarterback Rasheed Marshall ran 12 yards for a score and then Wilson scored three straight TDs on runs of 1, 1 and 36 yards. He finished the day with 208 yards and those four scores while Pitt was held to just 10 rushing yards for the game.
However, Rod Rutherford threw for 416 yards, 185 of them to All-American Larry Fitzgerald to keep Pitt in contention until Wilson took charge of things.
YARDS PER RUSH: Eddie Williams, 18.09 with 199 yards in 11 carries in 1969.
You don’t hear Eddie Williams’ name much anymore but this WVU fullback was a bit of a miracle man himself in the year of the Miracle Mets as he etched his name into the Backyard Brawl record book in a 49-18 win as he averaged 18.1 yards per carry as he gained 199 yards in 11 tries while scoring 3 touchdowns.
What’s more, his quarterback, Mike Sherwood, who you will hear about in the passing segment of this record review, carried 7 times for 109 yards to average 15.8 per carry. Sherwood’s passing on this day was quite pedestrian as he hit 5 of 10 for just 53 yards.
PASSING YARDS: Mike Sherwood, 416 in 1968. Marc Bulger, 409 in 1998, Chad Johnston, 398 in 1984
One year you pass for 53 yards after the previous year setting what was then the WVU school record of 416 yards passing in a 38-15 win over Pitt. Oddly, WVU threw for just 75 yards the whole game.
Marc Bulger made a run at the record 30 years later with 409 yards passing, but came up short in a game WVU won 52-14 with Bulger setting perhaps an even more important record, as you now will see.
PASSING TDs: Marc Bulger, 6, 1998, Allen McCune, 5 in 1965, Major Harris, 4, in 1986; Chad Johnston, 4 in 1994; Marc Bulger, 4 in 1999.
Bulger, the son of a one-time Notre Dame backup quarterback and brother to one of the No. 1 WVU family’s sister act on the women’s basketball team of Kate and Meg Bulger, turned it all loose in that 1998 game and set the then school record of 6 touchdown passes.
He broke a 33-year-old record from 1965 set by Allen McCune with 5 and Bulger’s 6 stood until Geno Smith came along in 2012 when he threw for 8 touchdowns against Baylor in the Mountaineers’ first-ever Big 12 game. Smith had tied Bulger’s record of 6 in the 2012 70-33 Orange Bowl romp over Clemson to end the 2011 season.
LONGEST PASS: Chad Johnston, 81 yards in 1994; Rasheed Marshall, 79 yards in 2002; Marc Bulger, 77 yards in 1998,
The longest pass thrown by a WVU quarterback in the Backyard Brawl belonged to Chad Johnston in what was probably the most thrilling game of the series that grew thrills like farmers grow corn.
Johnston’s 81 yard pass to Rashaan Vanterpool, whom he’d hit earlier on a 46-yard play Don Nehlen had put in during the week that involved a double move that freed the receiver from an aggressive Pitt defender.
The TD came with 1:32 left to play and put WVU in charge at 40-33, but Pitt had a few answers of its own and came back and scored and made a two-point conversion for 41-40 lead with 38 seconds left.
What more could Johnston do? Well, with 25 seconds to play he was flushed out of the pocket, thought about a first-down pass to tight end Lovett Purnell in hopes of setting up a field goal, but then saw Zach Abraham get behind defensive back Denose Mosbey.
Johnston let fly and it went for a 60-yard TD to win the game, 47-41.
“I got flushed out of the pocket and didn’t have time to set my feet and throw it,” Johnston recalled to John Antonik in his book “The Backyard Brawl.”
“It was a perfectly thrown ball and was one of those things where you think to yourself ‘What is this person doing?’” Abraham said. “They were playing prevent and he squatted and I was like ‘Are you kidding me?’ As soon as he did I turned and looked and saw the ball in the air. I’m thinking, ‘Man, I better not drop this one.’
He didn’t.
RECEIVING YARDS: Rahsaan Vanterpool, 205 in 1994, and Pat Greene, 205, in 1997 Zach Abraham, 180 in 1994.
Two of the top three performances came in that same game in 1994, most of it in the final two minutes of play as Vanterpool had 205 receiving yards and Abraham 180. Pat Greene tied Vanterpool’s Brawl record three years later.
And remember, all this was under Don Nehlen, far more famous for his draw play and screen passes than those deep balls.
MOST RECEPTIONS: Pat Greene, 12, in 1997.
This was the same three-overtime game in which Zereoue carried the ball 41 times. Greene had been mostly a complementary receiver through the year and at game time he had caught only 18 passes for 254 yards during the year, but he became Bulger’s go-to guy on this occasion with 12 catches for 205 yards.
LONGEST PUNT RETURN: Willie Drewery, 74 yards in 1984; Lance Frazier, 72 yards in 2002
History loses some players on occasion but it’s hard to forget Willie Drewery and this punt return. While it came in a loss to Pitt, YouTube has it in a tribute video that memorializes his career, one which led to a long NFL career as a receiver and return man. To this day, Drewery holds the school’s career record with 1,166 yards of punt returns.
LONGEST KICKOFF RETURN: Alvin Swope, 91 yards in 1996; Shawn Terry, 89 yards in 2000
In 1996. Alvin Swope was a kick returner and he got a big chance to show off his stuff against Pitt, even though the game was a 31-0 WVU shutout victory. Swope, therefore, returned only one kickoff but he took it 91 yards, so Pitt was probably glad they didn’t have to kickoff again.
FIELD GOALS MADE: Ken Juskowtiz, 5 in 1967; Tyler Bitancurt, 4 in 2009, Jay Taylor, 3 in 1997 and Pat McAfee, 3 in 2008
It is a big part of WVU lore and certainly owns a large place in Backyard Brawl history for not only did Ken Juskowitz. A former WVU soccer player who had been urged to come out for football, Juskowitz had been a star player for the Mountaineer soccer team, even scoring a goal for the U.S. national team in the 1964 Guatamalan Games.
His soccer career came to an end when he suffered a pair of broken ankles, which led him to putting his foot to use in football and it was a good thing for in the 1967 Backyard Brawl, Juskowitz kicked five field goals.
That doesn’t tell the whole story. The final score was 15-0, WVU, with Juskowitz accounting for all the points.
“I remember the fifth field goal because I kicked four in the first game and I think that was a record at the time,” Juskowitz said in “The Backyard Brawl.” The fifth field goal right near the end of the game and what [coach Jim] Carlen did was let me go back in to kick that fifth field goal to break the record I had from the Villanova game, which they don’t do very often. They don’t usually care about records.”
Good thing we care here.
Follow @bhertzel on X
Last edit: 2 months 1 week ago by wvu4u2.
Please Log in to join the conversation.