It is two days until Dave Wannstedt's fourth Backyard Brawl with West Virginia and almost four years since the coach announced his intentions to pen up Pitt's own yard. So it seems time to peer over his figurative fence designed to keep Western Pennsylvania's top high school football prospects at home.

"They have put up a fence, but it's hard to keep everybody out," Joe Butler of Metro Index Scouting said yesterday. "They'll parachute their way in.

"It's hard to keep every [prospect] here. But Pitt is doing an admirable job of getting kids from this region. He's gotten a lot of kids to stay who might have left."

True, Ohio State snagged Terrelle Pryor from Jeannette. West Virginia and Penn State, moreover, haven't gone completely bereft of players from the WPIAL, City League or area schools from Erie to Johnstown. The overall figures, though, do appear to show a Pitt uptick.

The Panthers (7-3, 3-2 Big East) will trot out more locally bred starters onto Heinz Field at noon Friday than West Virginia (7-3, 4-1) and Penn State have combined to play regularly this fall: nine Panthers against four Mountaineers and three Nittany Lions. With a half-dozen, Pitt's offense almost starts as many as the other nearby programs.

Contrast the current number of nine starters to Pitt's totals the previous four seasons: seven each from Western Pennsylvania in 2004, '05 and '07 and eight in '06.

"Oh, yeah," West Virginia coach Bill Stewart said yesterday upon mention of the subject. "David Wannstedt is a tremendous, tenacious and very talented recruiter. And he does it right, with hard work. I have nothing but praise for that guy.

"Now we go head to head. They've landed some we've wanted, we've gotten some they've wanted. He can't keep them all up there."

In February, Stewart landed one sizable fish -- tight end Tyler Urban of Norwin. But he was West Virginia's only WPIAL catch in an incoming class of 25 newcomers. The Mountaineers' roster of Western Pennsylvania products has dwindled to an even dozen, down from 19, 20, 16 and 18 the previous four years.

Penn State's numbers are even smaller, with just seven scholarship players from this historically football-fertile end of the commonwealth.

Pitt has 51 players from Western Pennsylvania -- nearly half of its roster.

"I think recruiting has shifted a little bit," Butler said. "Penn State is going into eastern Pennsylvania -- they got four commitments from there. And Ohio State comes in here hard now; they create a lot of competition for Pitt, Penn State and West Virginia.

"West Virginia comes in [to Western Pennsylvania] and spot-checks this area. If they like a kid, they come after him hard. That doesn't mean they're not recruiting here."

After circling a 300-mile radius around Pitt as his recruiting base, Wannstedt uttered these memorable words in 2005: "We're going to be competing with Penn State and West Virginia because they're there, but we're going to eliminate most teams from even coming in here. We're going to put a fence up around it, and we're going to dominate that area. And I don't care who it is." Then again, as former Mountaineers coach Rich Rodriguez half-joked, every fence has a gate or two, right?

The latest statistics tilt in Pitt's favor, though. It has 80 starts this season by 11 different Western Pennsylvanians overall. West Virginia has 38 by six. Penn State has 25 by three.

For the sake of full disclosure, though, standout linebacker Sean Lee of Upper St. Clair would have added significantly to Penn State's total were it not for season-ending surgery. And, conversely, a healthy Reed Williams at West Virginia middle linebacker would have erased six starts by McKeesport's Anthony Leonard.

Still, Pitt has seven positions that have been manned almost full time by local products thus far: three offensive-line spots (by Baldwin's Jason Pinkston, West Allegheny's C.J. Davis and Franklin Regional's John Malecki), tight end (Franklin's Nate Byham, Central Catholic's John Pelusi and West Allegheny's Dorin Dickerson), quarterback (Seton-LaSalle's Bill Stull), middle linebacker (Kiski's Scott McKillop) and strong safety (Thomas Jefferson's Dom DeCicco and Duquesne's Elijah Fields). The number could well have been nine positions, but both linebackers who were returning starters have been injured since September -- Kiski's Adam Gunn and Central Catholic's Shane Murray.

"Pitt's got a good base here," Butler said. "They've established themselves as a good program. They're going to go to a bowl game this year. But like any program that's in the Big East or Big Ten, you've got to recruit on a semi- or total-national basis. Because you can't expect to stay here ... there's competition. And you're going to get kids who want to go out of state, which is normal."

"My class," Urban added of the local 2008 signees, which included one of his Norwin teammates and best friends, receiver Mike Shanahan, "the majority of them went to Pitt."