overtheSEC said:

Mike, do you think there will there be a single person not wearing blue and gold in MSG tonight who cheers for the Eers or will everyone favor the exhausted Orangemen? I remember when the fans rallied behind us when we upset BC several years ago but we were the underdog beating the soon-to-defect Eagles (hence the great “ACC!” cheer). Do our three Big Apple freshman earn us any neutral support?

The Garden will be pro-Orange and possibly anti-WVU. NYC crows are fantastic in that they get behind the story. In 2005, it was all about WVU … until the final against Syracuse. Then the Mountaineers found themselves getting rooted against.

Let’s be honest, Syracuse is the protagonist now. You’ll have 20,000 fans in there. Immediately, 1/3 plus are Syracuse fans. That’s the case every year. Another 1/3 is there to cheer for Louisville, Villanova and WVU. The Louisville and Villanova fans will pick sides after their game and you can reasonably assume they’re pulling for Syracuse. For one, it’s the story. And not only that, but the winning side is definitely pulling for Syracuse because they want to see the team that played six OTs and battled through WVU in the final.

WVU will get some support, for sure. There are a lot of fans here and more will arrive today, there are a lot of Ebanks/Jones/Truck fans and there are a lot of people who just like what WVU did last night. It’s a minority, though.

All of that said, the team won’t mind that one bit. They rather like finding motivation.

The Mountaineers thought Pittsburgh was playing it a little too cool while warming up.

“They were over there laughing, throwing the ball around and having a good time,” WVU forward Da’Sean Butler said. “Granted, they beat us twice already, but it was kind of like a slap in the face. They’re sitting over there warming up for what’s supposed to be a good game and they’re acting like it’s nothing.”

The Mountaineers headed to their locker room for what Devin Ebanks reported was a rather brief set of final instructions from WVU Coach Bob Huggins.

“Coach came in and said, ‘They’re not ready to play. We need to jump on them,'” Ebanks said. “We took that pretty serious.”