Hello, all. Sorry for the gap. With a weekend of no games I owed the family some time, and so I we went to the in-laws Friday night for the weekend.
Lots of stale story links that everyone has likely read. So, I’m just getting rid of the tabs from Friday.
Ron Cook now believes Pitt has turned the corner under Wannstedt.
Former Pitt players Torrie Cox and Antonio Bryant (now of the Tampa Bay Bucs) were on the Pitt sideline for the game. Pitt basketball coaches Jamie Dixon and Tom Herrion were also in attendance. Question, does that make Coach Dixon now Pitt football’s good luck charm?
With USF’s spread, safeties Dom DeCicco and Elijah Fields were actually on the field together for much of the game, as Pitt was using three safeties — whether it was nickel coverage or called something else.
The team played well on both sides of the ball.
Carry the ball 28 times for 142 yards and 2 TDs and you too can be the lead player in the coverage. Whether in Pittsburgh or in Florida.
Now, taking a bit of time from the links to mention some complaints that USF Coach Jim Leavitt was not respecting Pitt by talking about how his team made mistakes to cost them the game.
”I thought we tackled poorly,” Leavitt said. “A lot of that is [McCoy] but a lot of that is us, too.”
USF quarterback Matt Grothe completed just 11 of 22 passes for 129 yards, but his 22-yard touchdown pass to Jessie Hester, giving the Bulls’ their brief fourth-quarter lead, was a thing of brilliance. Grothe scrambled left, looking off defenders, before turning to the opposite side of the field, where Hester was wide open.
But USF’s defense allowed Pitt to retake the lead with a three-play, 60-yard drive that lasted just 1:14. McCoy’s 3-yard run put the Panthers ahead to stay.
”We broke down in the secondary too many times,” Leavitt said. “Between our linebackers and our secondary, our pass defense has been very poor.”
Pitt quarterback Bill Stull finished with 228 yards and a touchdown. He completed 16 of 27 passes, none more important than a 38-yard completion to Oderick Turner on the first play of the Panthers’ game-winning drive.
South Florida’s cornerbacks, particularly Tyller Roberts, were exposed throughout the game.
”We were real poor at the end,” Leavitt said.
…
”There were a lot of mistakes, a lot of mistakes,” Leavitt said.
This was his press statement right after the game.
Opening Statement:
We just made a lot of mistakes. We were fortunate to be in that game that close to be quite honest with you with all the mistakes we made in this game. I thought Pittsburgh did a really good job. I thought their coaches did extremely well in getting the team prepared. Defensively, we did not play very good. We did not play real good offensively either and special teams were not very good. Anytime that happens, you are probably not going to win the game. Nobody has gone undefeated through the BIG EAST since we have entered the league and we have to find a way to put this behind us, move forward and get ready to play.
Frankly I’m not seeing too much to be upset. Leavitt is the coach of the Bulls, not Pitt. He has to get his team to play better and respond. He has to focus on what his team is and isn’t doing. Nothing else.
Take a look at Coach Wannstedt’s post-BGSU comments. Should Bowling Green have felt disrespected? That they weren’t getting enough credit for their performance. Instead it was all about Pitt’s mistakes and inexperience.
The Tampa perspective on this game is that this is familiar. Very familiar.
Maybe USF just wasn’t meant to play football on Thursday nights.
For the second year in a row, the Bulls went into a primetime ESPN Thursday game with an undefeated record and big hopes, only to fall to the same weeknight weakness. This time, the No. 10 Bulls overcame poor play to take a lead with six minutes remaining, only to give up a quick touchdown and lose 26-21 to unranked Pittsburgh.
It was an easy storyline and the beat writers ran with it. So did the national writers.
And of course the USF-centric coverage would focus on the Bulls’ mistakes. Whether it was the offense doing nothing, or simply that the team crumbled under the attention.
The NFL and Bowl scouts came to Tampa — ostensibly to see USF. Pitt would like to thank the Bulls for hosting and wining the bowl scouts for them.
Everytime we have a bye week, I wonder if its a good or bad time? Considering we are healthy, have won four in a row, and a big win against usf on the road, is this a bad time to break the momentum?
Or is this a nice middle of the season break to rest up, game plan for Navy, and prepare for the rest of the season and BE schedule?
Or is it completely irrelevant?
I guess you never know until you see the results. Hopefully we stay aggressive and remember what Navy did to us last year. Looks like still no game time for Rutgers? I am assuming it will be an evening game, 6pm?
Sat, Oct 25 Cincy at UCONN
Rutgers at Pitt
South Florida at Louisville
No game times yet. One of these will be the noon Big East game of the week. I guess it all depends on rankings and who wants to see what. Will one of them make ESPN or ESPN U? I’d bet a noon game, though.
I am fairly sure that they have been preparing and practicing for the SFla game since the summer. It is one of the reasons why we lost to BGSU (would not want to put anything on tape for SFla, so the story goes). How else can you explain seeing a team in the first four games that looked nothing like the one that took the field against SFla? This is beyond the players just getting better. The game was coached differently.
On another subject, #24 in AP, not ranked in USA today (in the low 30’s). I think the USA Today has this one right. We need another win over a signature program to be in the top 25 to minimize that loss to BGSU at home (that same BGSU that lost to E. Mich who sits at the bottom of their MAC Div).
HbgFrank, excellent point. For Pitt fans who can remember, that is exactly what Mike Gottfried used to do. He would game plan for Penn State starting with spring drills and come the Penn State game Pitt would use plays nobody saw all year. And it worked as Pitt used to beat them or was at least never blown out in those games while he was here. Problem was, he lost 4 or 5 times to the Bowling Greens of the world getting there. Excellent point that I never thought of. If you are correct, then we are in trouble with some of the games coming up though.
IMO we’ll avoid that same thing for the USN game, but fans expectations might be another thing. I pegged that Navy game last season as a probable loss early on and got hammered for stating that on the message boards. So, while I think we’ll pull out a win in Annapolis – I wouldn’t be shocked if it went the other way.
Too many PITT fans look at the size of the school or the size of the conference, and base projections on that, without looking at what the opposing team actually does. In Navy’s case it’s run the football around and through the other team’s defense with strong regularity, game after game. Again, they are at the top of the NCAA in rushing, as they have been for four years and again we better be prepared to have big gains put up on us. What we have to do is figure out a way to absorb that and still win.
Wild Bill above is correct – the staff better look at Navy’s wins this season and realize this is a team that is capable of winning on any given week. If we go into this game with anything but the attitude that we’ll have a dogfight on our hands we might be unpleasantly surprised.
