I wasn’t a fan of the empty backfield either, but it did significantly reduce the risk of a botched exchange of the football. They took the legitimate safe shot at the TD and had a great safety net with UCONN not having a timeout and being able to kick the FG to close out the game. I think that’s pretty reasonable, yes?

Duke’s victory over NC State makes our loss less impressive and helps explain computer rankings that have us in the high 304.Great to get a lucky win today. Let’s go Pitt

It is nitpicking but why not leave Hyno in and still run the sneak?

Anyway, all Hail Bill Stull, One drop, two wide open misses, two interceptions. booed while he throws a touchdown, and he still has enough character to overcome the odds. Big plays made by many. Lewis is a stud.

It was only UConn, but if we can cut the mistakes we will be a pretty good team. The O-line is the most improved from last year. Who would have thought we wouldn’t miss Shady. Gunn has done well replacing McKillop. We do miss Tags on special teams, especially kick off returns. The D-line turns it on when they need to. The depth is better than we thought considering, Tags, Fields and Berry were out.

Graham did well but lets hope Saddler heals fast.

Great clock management at the end.

Huge win, Hail to Pitt.

Good 1st quarter, good 4th quarter. The gameplan to start looked pretty good and the coaching staff called a good game at the end.

We basically handed UConn at least 13 points with the Lewis drop, the Pick 6, INT in end zone.

The defense really stepped up in the 3rd quarter. Played pretty well without Berry and Fields – but UConn is not a throwing team.

Our punt returns remain abysmal. There is no one on the team better than Smith? His longest return of the year may be a fair catch.

Let’s not get on the boo-ing Stull nonsense again. I can understand why he was booed – he made 2 stupid decisions on the INT’s and he missed open receivers other times. However, he wasn’t booed when his play improved.

A win is a win is a win is a win. By the way upitt was a bench warmer!

Take the win and move on! I do agree though that Cignetti had two better choices at the end of the game. 1. Give the ball to Hyno. OR 2. Insert Palko and have him do the slide play. That is why he was on the sideline wasnt it?

Only thing I had running through my mind over & over again before that last field goal was flashbacks of the Nebraska game a few years ago where the ball was snapped off the holder’s helmet to lose the game…anyone remember that one?

Thank God, better outcome this time…despite that wierd empty-backfield call…I remain infinately thankful for Cignetti over Cavanaugh.

Hail to Pitt!!

Who could forget the great deflection off Andy Lee’s helmet and Goldilocks picking it up for a half-assed scramble. Of course there was the subsequent 2nd attempt that was botched from the inception. That game was rough. It was pretty cool to see that on-sides kick recovery to start out the 2nd half of that game.

HTscriptP

UConn’s punter didn’t boot anything more than 35 yards. Aaron Smith did a REALLY good job catching the short punts and not muffing anything, since the kicking team was barreling in on him.

Ricky Gary made me not want to see Aaron Berry again anytime soon.

Great game by the offensive line as well.

HTP!

Upitt sounds like he’s Unit…

Probably a brancher nitwit lover, wannabe yinzer complainer. Who needs em?

great comeback win today of the type that builds character. But what would nits know of character??

I’ll echo the sentiments above…Pitt did a good job digging itself a fairly sizable hole today, but they did an even better job digging themselves out. I obviously don’t have the qualifications that UPitt has to comment with any authority on this, but I’ll ask you all to trust me when I say I’ve played on my share of sports teams and followed sports long enough to know that wins like this are signs of a team that is improving its standing and a program that is on the way up.

Yes, there is plenty of blame to go around for Pitt digging the hole it did, but the kids and the coaches all deserve credit for coming up big on several instances over the last 20 minutes.

Stull impresses me with his resliency and for the most part today, he did a good job finding his receivers. He did a great job buying some time and then hitting Byham on the fourth down conversion. On the tying touchdown, he did a terrific job using a pump fake to freeze the LB that was covering Dickerson; the fake allowed Dickerson to get free deep. The throw he made to McGee on the 2PC was terrific as well.

I love to see that Cignetti has started using the middle of the field on the passing game. I was really impressed with what I saw of Shanahan as well. Came away very impressed with Jarred Holley, and as mentioned above, I thought Ricky Gary did a nice job in relief of Aaron Berry.

All told, a win is a win and we’re 5-1 right now. We’re two wins away from another bowl game and more importantly, we’ve still got direct control of the our destiny as it relates to the Big East title.

Hyno bobbled the handoff on that second down play at the goal line – it was right in front of me. We were lucky he didn’t lose that ball. The staff did exactly the right thing by having Stull hold on to the ball on a sneak… the 6 points wasn’t important at all – certainly not enough to risk a TO. It was a chip shot FG by our kicker and the staff played that last series perfectly.

Leave too early in any game and you may wind up kicking yourself in the rear afterwards. Many years ago when I was a student my roommates left a Pitt vs WVU game at the half or just before. It was the game that Bobby Bowden says to this day was the most disappointing game he ever coached. Pitt was down 8-35 at the half and won the game 36-35.

The papers said a lot of people left early yesterday. They called them Pitt fans… The ones that stayed were loud, great to hear on tv, and the announcers noticed too. As a long suffering Pitt fan, I worried about the fourth quarter mistake but it never came. I am hoping we just witnessed another major corner turned.

Pitt’s lines dominated most of the game, it should have been a blowout, but perhaps the way this one was won was even better for the teams confidence. It was pretty hard on the hearts of those that bleed blue and gold.

Upitt, I am sad for you, we all know that this is not a top ten team yet, but there are a lot of skilled players and a few that will play in the NFL. It is a shame but it seems like you would be happier if they lose. So what if the Big East is not the SEC. The ACC stole three of our top teams and yet we survive. Besides Joe Paterno does not have the courage to play us and would rather play Temple, a team that was thrown out of the Big East and has not and will never beat PSU. East Illinois 5 games into the season? ( methinks Upitt is a closet PSU fan)

I think the thing with stull that frustrates fans is a mixture of his inabiliity to play consistently and playcalling. Why throw the ball on first down when Pitt is getting 5 yards a carry deep inside your territory? Why throw a fade which exposes stull to throwing a pick or showing his general lack of touch? Does he show glimpses of quality? Yes. But the fear most fans have is that in a close game and all things being equal stull will come up short. Plus he just misses so many throws during a game that most di qbs should make. In short, stull is just too inconsistent and is usually more of a negative than positive for Pitt. That said, a great final drive by him yesterday. And hopefully it leads to more consistent play. As for the booing, I have no problem. Wanny’s been at Pitt five years, this is the most talent Pitt has had in a while and fans want a winner and they have to watch a qb who barely seems like he should be on the field most of the time.

I haven’t read all the comments here yet but Chas made a great point on one of his Twitters. Toward the end of the third quarter and Sweet Caroline this game had the feel of a college game. The team clearly felt that. And UPitt…not only was the team celebrating so were the fans! It was a big win with a team never quit.

I haven’t read all the comments here yet but Chas made a great point on one of his Twitters. Toward the end of the third quarter and Sweet Caroline this game had the feel of a college game. The team clearly felt that. And UPitt…not only was the team celebrating so were the fans! It was a big win with a team never quit.
These guys have heart.

wow, a lot of negativity towards stull, and he earned some of it, but i for one will admit that he earned some respect from me. the way he came back after the pick 6 was nothing short of impressive. he will never lead us to national championship and may not get us a BE championship but he did show a lot of heart and character. also, UCONN is no joke. They have some good NFL caliber players and have every year since they’ve been in the conference, and we totally outplayed them. sure we made too many mistakes and let them hang around, but the bottom line is we wore them down on both sides of the ball. this is a good thing because it shows that we not only have talent but also depth (except maybe in the secondary). It’s weird to me that I am in the minority for feeling pretty good after this one

For all the Stull haters, don’t look now. Bill Stull has moved up to 4th in the country in passing efficiency with a rating of 163.5. ESPN statistics also has Lewis ranked 3rd in rushing and Romeus tied for 3rd in sacks!!!

My problem with the empty backfield call was that I have no faith in our kicker. It would be different if we still had Connor Lee. He missed an extra point in the first game I thought and the papers talked about how he can’t hit over 40 yds all week (but he did kick one this game). This is just nitpicking though for something to talk about. Hopefully we can beat Rutgers for once in the Stache era.

Howard – what does your faith in our kicker’s ability to hit a FG from over 40 yards have to do with a chip shot from the .5 yard line? Hutchins was 6/6 in FGs during the season up to that point – and if you actually watched the game where he missed that one extra point it was because of a bad snapper-holder exchange.

BTW – the media didn’t say he couldn’t hit from over 40 yards – it said that DW wasn’t comfortable putting him in for a FG attempt at that range… there is a big difference. It says more towards DW way of thinking then it does on the probibility of success from that range.

However – DW has all the confidence in the world in Hutchins on shorter range kicks obviously – he put the outcome of Saturday’s game squarely on our kicker’s foot.

Watch the pre-game warmups sometime and concentrate on Hutchins – he hits 45-50 yarders pretty consistently.