MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- While Dave Wannstedt's signature moment as Pitt coach may well have arrived in that 13-9, Backyard Brawl upset a year ago, Bill Stewart believes he put his imprimatur on this West Virginia team and perhaps his Mountaineers program in a different sort of environment: in an early-season loss.

In overtime.

At Colorado.

A Rocky Mountain low turned high?

"I was so proud of them out at Boulder," Stewart said this week, assessing his first 100 days or so as an in-season head coach, his first 11 months in the office previously occupied by Rich Rodriguez. This 17-14 loss, after West Virginia rallied from a 14-0 deficit within the opening five minutes, "that's the night we became a football team. Even though we lost the game, we jelled as a football team. I was very pleased how we handled ourselves and conducted ourselves after that game. It meant a lot to me that these young men stayed the course.

"The guys just believed in the plan. ... and they've done exactly what we've asked them to do. We fixed it. We just got better and better and better. And we've never looked back since Boulder."

With six victories in seven games since, Stewart's Mountaineers (7-3, 4-1 Big East) confront Wannstedt's Panthers (7-3, 3-2) at noon tomorrow in Heinz Field. It constitutes another critical speed bump in West Virginia's quest for a fifth consecutive New Year's Day bowl. Sure, it's the 101st Brawl, ever meaningful to this man from New Martinsville, W.Va. But he reaffirms that football is a game, and life is represented in the note he prepared to read his team about a cancer-stricken young fan preparing to die.

This isn't Stewart's first college-football rodeo. He went 8-25 in three seasons at Division I-AA Virginia Military Institute. Throw in the Fiesta Bowl victory that got his bosses to shed his interim tag, and the Mountaineers' new head coach has equaled that victory total already. But it came with plenty of lessons for a 56-year-old.

"I don't know if you ever know what it's going to be like until once you're through it," Stewart said of his expectations for this experience. "I thought it would be a fun year, and, for the most part, it has been. I thought it would be an interesting year, and, for the most part, it's been that.

"[Flagship radio-station announcers] Greg Hunter and Tony Caridi, they should be fortune-tellers: They said, 'Bill Stewart is the most popular man in the state until he plays his first game.' And that's true. You know what? That's the way I want it. I want these people -- my people, I'm one of them, and I hope they always will remember that -- to always feel like I'm family. And you always give your family more hell than you do the next guy. So, it doesn't bother me. I'm glad our fans are passionate. I'm glad the stadium is full. And I'm glad they care. If they didn't care or it wasn't important to them ... then West Virginia wouldn't be such a special job to me or anyone else."

What he doesn't relish is a win-big greed:

"When we don't do well, it disappoints them. Even when we win, and don't win in style, that frustrates them. That has changed all over America, that part of the game. And that's the only part I don't like. ... " He blames himself for the East Carolina loss the game before Colorado, for failing to give his players the proper "mind-set" to deal with stoked Pirates.

"I say this proudly: That's the only thing in my craw," Stewart said. "Maybe you need to get beat like that. That to me was the ultimate low. 'Cause apparently I didn't do a good enough job convincing them that they were going to get their butts handed to them."

While fans may question clock management, play selection, using either Patrick White too little or too much -- such as late last week in Louisville when the star quarterback was limping -- Stewart offers no regrets about how he has handled the program off the field.

Tuesday, he suspended his ninth player from the program in 10 months. That list includes James Ingram, Ed Collington, John Holmes (whom officials and he allowed to return), Evan Rodriguez, Kendall Washington, Charles Pugh, then Jeremy Kash and Max Anderson two weeks ago, and walk-on Mark Sampson this week. He motions his right arm, not to signal a first down but rather the straight and narrow path he seeks for players, from whom he asks for faith, citizenship, being good students and being solid Mountaineers.

"We're going this way," Stewart said. "We're going to do it right, I promise you."

NOTES -- Mt. Lebanon High graduate Doug Slavonic, a fifth-year senior defensive lineman at West Virginia, was named second-team Academic All-American today. Slavonic, who has 24 tackles and 2 1/2 sacks, is pursuing a masters in business administration.