Watched and blogged college football yesterday until my eyes bled. It was that or because of the nasty cold I have. It’s interesting trying to watch all that football at once, not just as a fan of the game but trying to find something to write about particular moments in the game.
During all of the games I couldn’t help but compare some of the teams to Pitt. In terms of progress and how Pitt would do against them.
Michigan State to take a team that kicked Pitt’s rear, took a big humiliating hit from Indiana. Don’t get me wrong, Indiana’s an improving team and Coach Hoeppner is a very, very good coach (I had him on my personal short list to replace Harris back in 2004). Still there is no excuse for the absolute blowout of MSU that Indiana did to them.
There is something about certain schools that never seem to change. For Michigan State, it’s start off strong and then collapse. It’s why PSU dominates them in the Land Grant Trophy. If they pulled an ACC and matched them up in the first game, the record would be quite different. No question Pitt could beat them now. Regardless of who gets hired at MSU, Pitt should push very hard for the game to be sometime in late October or November.
It is fun seeing FSU and Miami no longer scaring teams. Georgia Tech committed so many early mistakes against Miami, but they never had any doubt about coming back and Miami couldn’t do anything to press their advantage. The Miami O-line is not good. FSU never led against Maryland — though Maryland may have one of the worst secondarys in the ACC.
Cinci is a much better team then when Pitt played them. They have figured out who starts at QB and have a RB. Their defense has really tightened up in all aspects.In back-to-back games against USF and Syracuse, their defense really controlled things until the offense got going. Syracuse still hasn’t won a Big East game since their 2004 upset of BC. The good news for the Orange is that they still have UConn to play.
UCLA was still hungover from blowing it against ND. No heart against WSU.
I can’t prove anything, but I think Pete Carroll threw the Oregon State game to make sure Mike Riley remains head coach. Carroll knows his team just can’t win it this year, so he took the loss to the kind of team and coach he knows he can regularly crush. Riley will be able to stay an extra year with the Beavers just on that kind of win.
After seeing a lot of teams, Rutgers is just about right at #16, but the one-dimensional aspect of its offense will cost it against the teams in the top-10 for sure. Unlike WVU, Rutgers rushing attack doesn’t include the QB as well to make things scarier. Also, Pat White is a more accurate passer with much more fundamentally sound receivers than Mike Teel.
Now back to Pitt.
Going into the season — based on what I had read about the opponents, their history, and “name” value — I had marked the schedule with 5 “sure” wins (Cinci, Cidatel, Syracuse, South Florida, UConn), 5 “toss-ups” (Virginia, MSU, Toledo, UCF and Rutgers) and 2 “probable” losses (WVU and Louisville). Obviously Virginia, Toledo and UCF were worse then expected, just as USF is better then expected.
Still, I have to admit to agreeing with Coach Dave Wannstedt that Pitt is improving and there has been noticeable progress from last year.
He said he is a little confused by criticism that Pitt’s six wins came against inferior competition — Virginia, Cincinnati, The Citadel, Toledo, Syracuse and Central Florida.
Wannstedt points out that the six Panthers victories were blowouts. Last year, the same caliber of teams gave Pitt trouble. Ohio University beat the Panthers. In 2004, when Pitt went to the Fiesta Bowl, a BCS bowl, the Panthers needed miracle comebacks to defeat Temple and Furman and lost to a Connecticut team that had been a I-A program for less than five years.
“When you get a taste of the good and you start playing well, it is human nature to want it all right now,” Wannstedt said, “It doesn’t happen that way, it takes a little bit of time. It can be frustrating if you don’t look at the big picture, and I have to continually remind myself that I’m less than 20 games into this thing and I’ve only had one full recruiting class and it will take a few more.
“There has been a drastic improvement from a year ago. We’ve gone out and won a bunch of games we should have won, and that’s a starting point and a lot of the credit goes to our seniors.”
Wannstedt, along with his players, know they are better than last year, but not just because of the wins. He said after both of their losses, they walked off the field feeling that had they made a few more plays, they could have changed the outcome.
Arguably, what happened last year shouldn’t have happened in at least two games. Still, even when Pitt won last year, they weren’t exactly satisfying wins. It usually was because the other team was more inept then Pitt.
I can’t help but also think that losing to Rutgers at home was especially painful because — it was Rutgers. It’s hard to shake the notion of the Scarlet Knights being anything other then the conference doormat. We look at the history of the games and the series and it seems inconceivable that Rutgers could be better and win games against Pitt. (Something that I think afflicts a large segment of Syracuse basketball fans when facing Pitt. Seriously, look at the history of Pitt vs. Syracuse. It’s pathetic. It has to be hard for fans to get past that kind of history to the reality.)
