…at least for a week.

With LSU’s 3OT loss to Jeff Long’s Arkansas team on Friday, the BCS Championship picture has become much clearer. The newest BCS rankings look like so:

1. Missouri 11-1
2. West Virginia 10-1
3. Ohio State 11-1
4. Georgia 10-2
5. Kansas 11-1
6. Virginia Tech 10-2
7. LSU 10-2
8. USC 9-2
9. Oklahoma 10-2
10. Florida 9-3

Our Panthers have a very rare opportunity on Saturday — the ability to knock a team out of the title game simply by beating them. Too bad actually beating them won’t be too simple.

If either Mizzou or WVU lose, Ohio State will back into the Championship game. The chance of Missouri losing to Oklahoma in the Big XII conference championship is very possible. That would mean Ohio State plays WVU for the title. What about Pitt beating the Mountaineers? Dan Shanoff says no way.

If BOTH Missouri and West Virginia lose… well, that’s just not happening.

Did you see what West Virginia did to the next-best team in their conference, when WVU realized they had to impress the nation? They hung 66 on them.

They ran up the score, because they knew they had to, in order to silence any doubt spread from, say, Columbus. Those ‘Eers are one cut-throat bunch of s.o.b.’s; they ain’t losing to Dave Wannstedt with a trip to the national championship game on the line.

Since the Backyard Brawl starts at 7:45 and the Big XII game starts at 8:00, there won’t be time to know if Missouri wins or loses though. That means Buckeye Nation not only roots for Oklahoma, but also for Pitt. Other teams hoping that both OU and Pitt win are Georgia, Kansas, LSU, and Oklahoma themselves.

Pitt hasn’t had this many fans in a long, long time. We gladly welcome all of them — maybe someday they’ll come help us fill Heinz Field to more than 35% capacity.

Long, long drive home today. Feeling a bit punchy at this point. Much like the Stanford QB yesterday.

As usual, the note that there is no way Wannstedt is fired. Logisitics-wise it doesn’t  happen because of administration support and lack of an AD makes it a given he is back. I’ll get into how I feel about this with more detail after the season ends. Simply, I am decidedly ambivalent.
I’m still coming to terms with the reality that Paul Rhoads won’t be fired. Sure the past has sucked, but this year has saved his job. I am holding out hope that this will be the springboard to some minor head coaching gig (maybe Utah State will look for a new guy) or some other school will pursue him as their DC — impressed by the numbers this year. That Rhoads finally decides he better move soon before it is too late. I can dream.

At the same time (and perhaps hypocritically), I’m at least willing to give OC Matt Cavanaugh one more year. His side of the ball suffered painfully with all of the injuries — Stull, Kinder, Pinkston, Jacobson and Matha. He also made better adjustments to the college game and his players last year after a rock first season.  A freshman QB that desperately needed a redshirt year and no O-line really don’t permit much. Yes, he has to do more with the TEs and playcalling overall, but all the goodwill hasn’t been completely burned at this point.
That said, offensive line coach Paul Dunn has to be history. Nothing he has done has warranted his return.
Other coaching embarrassments from this game started on special teams.

It isn’t a surprise that South Florida was able to pull off a fake punt in the first quarter — the Bulls successfully ran two fake punts for first downs a year ago against Pitt.

And South Florida coach Jim Leavitt said that if the Bulls had needed to run another one yesterday, he had no doubt it would have worked because of the way the Panthers line up to defend punts.

“We practiced it all week and we really felt like it would be there. It worked out pretty good,” he said. “We saw it on film. We really thought there was a chance for it. We really felt like we could have run it even after that. It was still there. We just didn’t run it. The guys are probably mad at me for that. It was still there on a fourth-and-1 from our own 20.

“We probably could have got it but we could have had a bad snap. I don’t know if you want to go to the well that many times.”

Essentially, more afraid they would stop themselves than Pitt would on that play. Lovely.

Grothe’s 80 yard run, untouched was cited as the game-changing, shoulder-slumping moment for Pitt.

Then Grothe started the second half with the 80-yard scoring run on a quarterback counter to give the Bulls a 17-10 lead. Wannstedt said the Panthers made two mental mistakes: missing Grothe at the line of scrimmage and failing to have a safety cover the middle of the field.

“Pitt overreacted a little bit at the snap of the ball,” Grothe said, “and everything just kind of came together from there.”

Or, in Pitt’s case, fell apart.

…

“You look at the game and you’ve got the 80-yard run, the fake punt that leads to a touchdown and the three interceptions, all big plays,” Wannstedt said. “We just didn’t finish. We did not finish the game.”

Coach Wannstedt put the 80-yard TD as the moment the offense fell apart.

“It is disappointing, the way the game unfolded,” Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt said. “I really thought we were focused to start the game and at the half. And then we went out there in the second half and we give up that one big play and then for whatever reason, after that, offensively just came totally unglued.”

I put a lot of this on the coaches. USF came out in the second half, making adjustments on both sides of the ball. Pitt didn’t make adjustments out of halftime. That was obvious. They went with a “stay the course” and assume the other team would keep doing the same thing.
Coach Wannstedt wants the offense to avoid mistakes, and have the defense win the game. So, then when the defense isn’t able to hold, it’s hard to expect that the offense has to go win the game on demand. Especially when it means throwing the ball twice  as much in the second half against a defense that is a leader in the country in interceptions.