Coach Stew gets his poll wish. . . sort of

 Little more than two months later, the voters listened to Bill Stewart.

It was the Nov. 2 afternoon after The Associated Press pollsters restored Stew's West Virginia crew to the rankings, at No. 20, for the first time since a September free-fall from No. 8 with a 1-2 start. Saith the coach then: "I don’t want to hear anything about that. That’s where all our trouble started. That’s the worst thing that can happen to Mountaineer football right now. I’d tell every pollster, 'Wait until Game 12, and then you can rank us.' We were ranked all right – we were rank."

Well, it didn't happen until Game 13, after WVU's Meineke Car Care Bowl defeat of home-state North Carolina, but the voters made the Mountaineers No. 23 in the final AP poll released early this morning.

It marked the Mountaineers' unprecedented fourth consecutive Top-25 finish, after being Nos. 5, 10 and 6 the previous Januarys.