MORGANTOWN - Prior to this season, only a handful of teams had been extraordinarily successful at stopping West Virginia's spread offense running game.

East Carolina managed to do it in both 2005 and 2006, although in neither year did the Pirates have enough offense to make it matter.

Pitt did it a year ago and the results were devastating - a 13-9 loss that knocked the Mountaineers out of a shot at the national championship.

But the team that has been the most consistent in shutting down West Virginia's running game is unquestionably South Florida, which in both 2006 and 2007 not only frustrated the Mountaineers, but beat them, as well.

That's the same South Florida team that comes to Morgantown for Saturday night's 8 p.m. regular-season finale against West Virginia.

And on Sunday the Bulls provided a perfect example for first-year WVU coach Bill Stewart to once again defend his decision to change the Mountaineers' offense to be better prepared to face just such teams.

"We're going to have to pitch-and-catch the ball, much like we tried to do [in a 19-15 loss at Pitt on Friday] and like we've done against some of these teams,'' Stewart said. "These are the guys that started it all off. These are the guys that started the defense. They and East Carolina [and Pitt] are the ones that have given us fits.

"They've stuffed us for two years. They've just flat stuffed us.''

Of course, the one thing more than any other that has defined Stewart's first season in charge of the Mountaineers has been what he and the offensive staff he hired in January have done to West Virginia's offense. While only that small handful of teams had been able to make much progress at all in slowing down WVU's offense in recent seasons, Stewart's wish was to make the Mountaineers more diversified so that teams like South Florida would not be able to continue to stuff the run and so that others would not catch on and be able to do the same.

The results, of course, have been mixed. At times the Mountaineers have been just as overpowering as ever in running the football and at other times they have shown an improved passing game.

The bottom line, though, is that more often than not West Virginia has been mediocre both running and throwing the football while players used to one way of doing things adapt to something else.

Still, Stewart is sticking by his guns - and his offense - because in the long run it will make the Mountaineers more adaptable and more dangerous, even if fans complain as they did following Friday's loss at Pitt.

"We wanted to be balanced [against Pitt]. I tried to be as balanced as we could because of what happened the year before,'' Stewart said, referring to Pitt holding WVU to 183 total yards in that 13-9 loss. "Those guys play hard, they're very solid inside ... We beat our heads against the wall last year trying to do it and it didn't work. That's why I tried to throw the ball and I thought it put us in a position to win. I'm sorry the interception came and I'm sorry the holding penalty came with five minutes to go in the game. But stuff like that happens.''

What South Florida and Pitt and East Carolina have done in the past - along with Cincinnati this season - is fairly simple, Stewart said. They match up talented cornerbacks against WVU's wide receivers and commit virtually everyone else to stopping the run. If the corners are good enough to make it work, West Virginia hasn't been able to answer in recent seasons.

"[What South Florida has done is] what East Carolina did to us and what Cincinnati did to us,'' Stewart said, later throwing Pitt into the mix, as well. "And we've had no answers here for two years. You've got to be able to throw the ball.

"We've had pretty good coaches here and we haven't been able to run the ball on eight- and nine-man fronts to my knowledge. That's why we had to pass the ball and try to stay balanced. You can't bang your head against the wall. Everybody says to just run one guy. I can't do that. That one guy's going to run into a stone wall. You've got to be able to spread and get the ball out because they lock you down on the outside and load up the box. And you've got to be able to pass the football.

"People who have not been able to lock us down on the outside - the UConns, the Louisvilles - we've had success against them. But that's not going to work against everyone. If I didn't think this was the right way to go I wouldn't be doing it. We can't just line up and run one guy 50 times.''

While Stewart and offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen have taken tons of criticism for the changes to the offense, Stewart said he is grateful that one group hasn't complained. Saturday's game with USF will be the final one for a WVU senior class that includes quarterback Pat White, and they, he said, have never questioned anything.

"We're just going to keep trying to do what we do and it's all going to work some day,'' Stewart said. "And this senior class is going to be my favorite class because they haven't bitched, they haven't complained, they haven't moaned and groaned. They've taken their marching orders about every single thing that we've asked them to do and that's try to find ways to win football games.''