MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- Carmen Connolly does not know what to say when his turn comes.

When he and the other 22 seniors give their farewell, what-this-football-program-meant-to-me speech on the eve of the final home game, he is not sure what words will tumble out of his mouth.

That's because Connolly, a seldom used West Virginia receiver and Dormont native, isn't sure which words are the right ones.

Was Morgantown the right place for him?

Did he make the right decision?

Should he have played college football somewhere else?

Heading into the game Friday with Pitt -- and after that a regular-season finale at Rutgers and a bowl game -- Connolly did not think a statistical retrospective of his college career would ever be so succinct.

He has caught one pass.

For 3 yards.

It came Sept. 9, 2006, as a freshman against Eastern Washington in a blowout win.

Since then, nothing.

Or, to look at it another way: The 5-foot-11, 189-pound former Seton-LaSalle High School standout, who was one of the most prodigious receivers in Pennsylvania high school history, needs 115 catches in the final two games of his college career to match the total he had in his senior season of high school.

"If I say I didn't have regrets, I'd be lying," Connolly said. "But, in life, you make a decision and you stick with it. I can't dwell on what could have been, because the reality of it is that I didn't do that, I didn't make another decision, I came here. And, I enjoyed my time here and I am going to move forward."

Moving forward, though, is impossible to do without understanding Connolly's back story.

This year's Backyard Brawl is especially tough for him, because that quarterback leading the Panthers downfield with his right arm, Bill Stull, is the guy Connolly teamed with for so much success at Seton-LaSalle.

Stull and Connolly, Mr. Pitch and Mr. Catch, put on a display in high school seldom seen in Western Pennsylvania, especially in the autumn of 2004, when they were seniors.

"They had a rapport as close, on the field, as any two guys I have coached," said Lou Cerro, now the coach at Montour who coached that Seton-LaSalle team to a 13-1 record and a WPIAL Class AA title-game victory against Aliquippa.

"Billy always knew where Carmen was going to be, because Carmen always took it so seriously, he always ran his routes perfectly."

That season, Connolly set a state record with 116 catches for 1,580 yards and 16 touchdowns, the eighth-highest reception total nationally.

In the WPIAL title game, Connolly pulled in nine passes from Stull for 178 yards and two touchdowns.

The two still talk, and Connolly said he was particularly happy that Stull made it through a tough time at Pitt earlier this season, kept his head up and stayed the course.

The question was posed to Connolly the other night, it began with, "In some ways, you helped Billy get a scholarship ..."

Connolly smiled and cut the interviewer off in midstream.

"Billy helped me get a scholarship, too," he said. "We had a great thing going in high school."

But, when high school ended, who could have imagined their careers would have diverged in such fashion?

Stull is first in the Big East Conference in passing at 211.5 yards per game and has thrown 18 touchdowns this season, and Connolly, well, there are the times he thinks back to when he chose West Virginia, in large part, because "it was basically the biggest school that offered me a scholarship, and I wanted to play big-time football."

But, Connolly, who has parlayed that scholarship into an exercise physiology degree and plans to go to chiropractic school, can't help but think about what might have been.

He thinks about that Akron offer he had out of high school. Or, what if he had entertained the offer from Toledo, where his cousin, current Oakland Raiders quarterback Bruce Gradkowski, was a hero of sorts?

There also were overtures from Division I-AA schools Richmond and William & Mary, but that wasn't "big-time" football as far as Connolly was concerned.

"Now, I catch myself thinking a good bit," he said. "What I can take from all of this, I guess what I take away from West Virginia is that I came here, and just because I didn't play, doesn't mean I can't. I know I can go out there and compete with these guys. You can look at it like it is an unfortunate situation for me, but I look at it like it is fortunate for our team that Jock Sanders is the leading receiver in the Big East and Tavon Austin is going to be that in a couple of years and there just isn't a spot for me.

"I was prepared for every situation that I was ever put in and I'm satisfied knowing what I know."

And what Connolly should know is this: That one catch will not solely define all he has done as a Mountaineer.

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