MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- They expected to wage Backyard Brawls such as Friday's side by side, as brothers in arms, all in the West Virginia family.

Instead, they are years apart. They are 'Eers apart.

Jason Gwaltney, the ballyhooed big back, is a Pioneer at Division II C.W. Post, where he was suspended twice in three months ... where he's giving it a fifth different college try.

Scooter Berry, the unheralded half-brother recruit, is a stand-up, standout Mountaineers defensive tackle at West Virginia.

"The two brothers, same team -- that would be so big," Berry said in a quiet moment the other day, away from the shadows of this 101st Brawl Friday at Heinz Field between West Virginia (7-3) and Pitt (7-3), which has dropped from the national rankings. "Not just for football and this team, but for my family, you know?

"It's kind of strange [to be apart]. But I can't think about it, 'cause it's not going to happen, you know? It's hard to talk about with my brother or my father or anybody else in my family. I just try not to bring it up. I'm just doing my thing here. He's back home playing ball."

Richard Berry's boys matriculated at Morgantown with the brotherly ambition of playing together.

"That's what it was to begin with," the father said over the telephone this past weekend from his home in North Babylon, N.Y. "When you go to college ... , you make the best of the situation. [Scooter's] definitely done that. I'm very proud of what he's doing, not just on the field, but in class and as a young man."

Indeed, the brothers took divergent paths.

Gwaltney, after a stellar start to his freshman season, fell out of the program three separate times: in December 2005, summer 2007 and last August. C.W. Post, at least his third college, suspended him for two games at midseason for missing a treatment on an injured knee -- one of his original downfalls with the previous West Virginia head coach -- and then suspended him from the season's final two games for missing a Friday walk-through without explanation. He rumbled for 118 yards per game in a half-dozen contests. He scored 10 of the Pioneers' 16 rushing touchdowns. He once won Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference offensive player of the week. Yet once more, Gwaltney must meet a coach's academic and non-football conditions if he hopes to play college football again.

"He's doing all right in the classroom first and foremost," Richard Berry said. "There's no doubt at West Virginia that's what didn't work out for him. It wasn't football. It was off the field."

Meantime, the younger Berry, after starting school in January 2006 as an academic gray-shirt and then redshirting that next season, fell into a steady situation and nestled there.

Stewart jokes that Scooter has been at West Virginia longer than the coach with nine years of uninterrupted service. Still, this 6-foot-2, 280-pound redshirt sophomore has 19 starts that almost equals the sum total of the rest of the Mountaineers' defensive linemen. He has become a keystone to that front wall, one about to face Pitt's LeSean McCoy, the Big East's second-leading rusher at 112.4 yards per game.

Berry relishes the line, where he talks and plays a good game -- he has 26 tackles, 3 1/2 sacks, 3 batted passes and a team-leading two fumble recoveries. He makes sizeable plays, too, such as the fourth-down batted pass late against Rutgers on the zone-blitz he bugs coaches to call, or the key fumble recovery at Connecticut.

"Oh, yeah, I love it. I like hitting people," Berry said. "I just like having the chance to come out and strike, hit somebody every play."

As for his newfound jawing, "I don't try to be like a jerk, but it makes the game fun."

He refuses to get personal, though: "They actually did that to me at the [Nov. 8 Cincinnati] game. I thought that was kind of funny."

What was it?

"I can't even say, it was way too explicit."

About his brother?

"About my mom. It was the same guy after the game who told me I killed him all day."

The brothers still talk by phone a couple of times each week, when not texting. Berry aims to lose 10 pounds this offseason and bulk up to 290 for next fall, to progress on the field and in the classroom and around campus. He aims to keep his brother 450 miles away on a parallel path.

"It's like, he could always do football with school," Berry said of Gwaltney.

"The big deal now: Can he do school with football? It seems like he's ready to do the right thing. Hopefully, it works out, and he'll be playing again next season."

For different 'Eers.