So, um, anyone know any good bars near this place?

In an effort to embrace and celebrate the traditions of Western Pennsylvania football, Pitt head coach Paul Chrystannounced today he will be taking the annual Pitt Spring Football Festival and Blue-Gold Scrimmage on the road to North Hills High School on April 14.

“I may be new to Pittsburgh, but I’ve respected and known about the traditions of Western Pennsylvania high school football for a long time,” Chryst said. “As a first-year coaching staff, we feel it is important to get out and engage the people and communities who have built that tradition. The spring game is a perfect opportunity to do this and we’re really looking forward to visiting North Hills in April.”

The gates at North Hills’ Martorelli Stadium will open at 11 a.m. The Panthers will host a youth clinic at 11:30 a.m., followed by the playing of the Blue-Gold Scrimmage at 1 p.m.

The stadium is not at the school. Not sure what the capacity actually is. Pre-2000 renovations, the seating was around 5300. I’m guessing it isn’t too different now.

Update: Not seeing any bars nearby, but there is a beer distributor rather close by. Hopefully tailgating will be allowed.

I got more into that game than I expected. I was trying to be mellow about it. Not take it too seriously. Just try and observe players, but mid-way through the first half I was shouting at the TV, fired-up up about the game and really wanting Pitt to win. It had nothing to do with last year. It was simply that I was watching Pitt play a competitive game and I wanted my team to get the win. I hope I never lose that kind of reaction.

This was a gritty win for Pitt. One that had a plenty working against them. On the road, bad shooting, iffy officiating, defensive breakdowns. Unlike a lot of games this year, though, Pitt got to the other side with a win.

Yes, it helped that Butler was hideous at the free throw line, but that sort of balanced out the one-way officiating. That aspect was extremely frustrating that Butler players could just throw themselves at Pitt inside and toss the ball in the air — and draw foul calls. Pitt players were standing straight, arms straight. And the foul would still be called. I don’t blame the Butler team for doing it all game. I blame the officials for giving them the reason to keep doing it.

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Guess it sums up the CBI. Both the Trib and P-G did not bother sending their beat reporters to the Pitt-Butler game. So, the articles from each paper were written by Indiana-based freelancers.

This game is on HDNet at 8pm. If you have DirecTV (and HD service) it is on channel 306.DISH is Channel 362. AT&T U-verse has it on Channel 1105.  Verizon FiOS is channel 569.  In the Pittsburgh area, Comcast/Xfinity appears to offer it on channel 897.

On the call for HDNet will be Kenny Rice and Keno Davis. Yes, the ex-Providence coach is on loan from the Big Ten Network. As for Rice, he generally handles horse racing and MMA. Shouldn’t be annoying at all.

I’m probably going to be running a bit behind on watching the game, so we’ll stick with the open thread.

There is no way to claim there will be any measure of revenge that can be extracted from this game. There just isn’t. So, no matter what any hack writer tries to concoct for a storyline — forget it. Just as beating Vandy in some regular season or preseason tournament after Barry Goheen could never have made up for 1988. This is as much a notice for any sports writer who comes here looking to gauge Pitt fan feelings for some storyline, as it is for everyone else. There is no revenge here, because there is no equivalency.

Not that we can ignore last year. No. That isn’t going to happen.

Butler’s Andrew Smith and Ronald Nored spent part of Tuesday viewing footage from last year’s NCAA tournament game against Pittsburgh.

They still can’t believe what they saw. The foul at midcourt, the missed free throw, the inexplicable foul on Matt Howard and finally Howard’s free throw to win it.

The final 1.4 seconds of that game will go down as one of the craziest finishes in tourney history. Now, 367 days later, Butler and Pittsburgh have a chance to do it all over again Wednesday night in the College Basketball Invitational tournament semifinals.

“I guess it took about 20 minutes to figure out what was going on because I really didn’t know,” Bulldogs center Andrew Smith said after looking again at the tape.

Sorting it all out is confusing, even now…

Too early to start drinking. Too early to start drinking. Too early to start drinking. Too early to start drinking. Too early to start drinking. Too early to start drinking. Too early to start drinking. Too early to start drinking. Too early to start drinking. Too early to start drinking. Too early to start drinking.

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I’ve waited until spring practice is a third finished before chipping in an article because now we have something of substance to talk about as far as playing actual football goes.  There seems to be a different attitude around the Southside these days.  Gone is the jumping up and down and swearing things are going to fantastic, dammit!!

This version is business, business and more business.  There doesn’t seem to be much false bravado by either the players or the staff.  It feels like that all know that there is a long road to hoe to get back to what a good, solid program is and they want to do it the right way.

Paul Zeise reports hard hitting and fundamental football… “Pitt is playing football again, at least football the way people here in Western Pennsylvania want to see it played.”  That and the OL is shaping up to be the ‘smash mouth’ run blocking unit that PITT and Pittsburghers love to watch.

Our new OL coach, Jim Hueber will take no crap this year judging from his first interview.  You have to laugh just a little when a new coach states that “we have some kids who may not want to be here”.  This coming after we just had a whole coaching staff who ‘didn’t want to be here’.  Perfect!

Now, about that pesky pass blocking…

That said, the reports out of camp are pretty typical interviews and post-practice press conferences – that is if you can actually sit and listen to one of Chryst’s from start to finish.  I really like Paul Chryst and think he’ll be just what we need but it is tough to watch him answer the questions thrown at him when you can tell he really doesn’t want to be there anyway.

PITT is again putting out a nice spring practice website this year with a slew of articles and interviews after each practice.  Here is the March 20^th version.

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Chas has been doing great articles on the spring practices so far so I wanted to add a little something to Chas’ article yesterday about our first verbal.

Chryst just landed TE Scott Orndoff as his first verbal of the 2013 class.  He’s a good one ranked as the #13 TE nationally and a kid who had great offers to choose from.  He would have racked up more as his SR year went on.

Orndoff had verballed to Chryst and Joe Rudolph last summer but with those two leaving Wisconsin he opened his recruitment back up again.  An interesting point in his decision making is that he made his final decision in the car with his father on the drive back from an official visit to Michigan… not too shabby at that, eh?  At that age I would have been asleep or drunk during a five hour road trip.

Here is a good highlight film of Orndoff’s JR season at Seton-LaSalle HS.  He had 20 catches for 385 yards and four TDs last season.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see him get another star if he plays up to potential this year.  One thing about this highlight film though – Orndoff is split wide on every play.

Makes you wonder how good of a blocker the kid is but he’s quick and agile after the catch.  Perhaps the staff is looking at J. P. Holtz as the Nate Byham Memorial blocking TE and Orndoff will fill the anti-Byham role by actually being thrown to.  History with the Wisconsin approach is that the TEs will see some real offensive action during the year.

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I’m not sure there was any other Pitt player from this present era more suited to play, live and enjoy life in Europe.

As with the last game, no TV. Given radio rules, there is no guarantee you can get a free stream on the Pitt flagship, 93.7 The Fan. The best bet is to go with the broadcast from Pitt radio, WPTS.

The competition improves a bit with Princeton. They, were capable of beating Rutgers.

Hopefully, Coach Dixon does give the younger kids more minutes as he said he should. Everyone needs the work.

Spring practices are reaching the pads stage. No more of the helmets and shorts look.

We could try and break down what the O-line will look like. Whether the linebackers will be better. Who will be stepping up to the D-line.  We could. Or we can obsess over the status of the QB position. Give the people what they want.

Here’s the extent to which Coach Paul Chryst has spoken about QBs over the past two practices.

On whether he loses patience over fumbled center-quarterback exchanges:

“No, but they were ugly though, weren’t they? You’ve got no chance. You’ve got to prevent beating yourself first. It’s hard enough to beat the opponent. If that was a game we would say you beat yourself and those are things that need cleaned up and we can’t tolerate it.

“As coaches, negative things happen. We’re going on the assumption that no one wants to have a bad quarterback-center exchange, the receiver doesn’t want to drop the ball, the defender doesn’t want to lose contain. If they’re in there and they want to do that then that’s on us. You can’t tolerate it but making a big stink doesn’t necessarily fix it either.”

And before that:

On whether the quarterbacks and receivers improved today:

“Yeah, I think there were some moments where they did. They better, right? They better keep improving. Tomorrow we’ll be going full pads. You’ll always have some good and you can build on that. And then there are a lot of things you still have got to clean up.”

Gotta lot to go on, huh?

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Didn’t see a Q&A with Princeton coming, did you?

The CBI resumes tonight. Pitt remains TV free for this as HDNet has opted to air the Penn-Butler game tonight. Princeton and Pitt square off at 7pm. If you are looking for free radio feed on the net, check out Pitt’s radio station, WPTS.

Jon Solomon, the editor of PrincetonBasketball.com, and I exchanged some questions. Unfortunately my responses are behind a paywall. So what I said remains a mystery. Not that I said anything you haven’t really read from me before, so you aren’t missing much.

After the jump, you can read the responses from PrincetonBasketball.com

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Or something like that. I swear, the reactions to Pitt and Coach Paul Chryst getting the first verbal for 2013 — at least on Twitter — made it seem like a guy in his 20s finally losing his virginity. There was a sense of relief, along with the repeated surprise that it took him that long to close the deal. Especially since everyone knew it would happen. Plus it was over so quickly.

Tight end, Scott Orndoff  had initially committed to Wisconsin in his junior year. Naturally when the entire offensive staff left — mostly for Pitt — he reoponed his recruitment. Add in the fact that Orndoff attends high school in Western PA at Seton-LaSalle, and this was a long-expected verbal.

Orndoff had scholarship offers from Pitt, Wisconsin, Boston College, Michigan, Michigan State and Virginia.

“I’m definitely glad it’s over,” he said. “All the phone calls and visits had taken a toll on me already. I’m glad to be able to focus on my senior year.”

He had returned from a recruiting trip to Michigan before giving his verbal.

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Everyone is talking about the Ohio impact on the NCAA Tournament. Well, except for Northeastern Ohio, where the focus remains on what the Browns do with the 4th pick in the NFL Draft.

Ratings should be interesting. There are still blue-blood programs in the Sweet 16 with Kentucky, UNC, Kansas and Indiana. Plus huge alumni groups/band wagon fans for Ohio St., Michigan State and Florida. At the same time, there is no west coast presence. Baylor? Four states — Ohio, North Carolina, Kentucky and Wisconsin contain 10 of the Sweet 16.

As much as people want to talk about the Ohio thing, the bigger story is UNC point guard  Kendall Marshall breaking his left wrist. The fact that there is speculation that since it was to his left wrist, leaving open the speculation that maybe he could play, tells you how dire the situation is for UNC at that spot. A nasty reminder that even the best, biggest name schools can’t just stockpile talent at all spots. It doesn’t matter how good or bad the starting point guard is for a team. If he’s starting, then he is almost certainly the best you have.

John Thompson III is lucky to have made that Final Four early. Otherwise, he would have the worst reputation in the Big East for coaching flops in the NCAA Tournament. He hasn’t gotten the Hoyas past the first weekend in the last 5 tries.

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So… everyone happy to have a wrecked bracket?

I sure am. There is nothing more fun than seeing those huge upsets in the first round — as long as it isn’t your team.

My theory that my picks would improve now without Pitt in the NCAA Tournament has been rather effectively destroyed. I’m way down on the list at 84th. My Final Four picks are still intact, but I’ve already lost 3 of 8 Elite Eight teams. I going to need a new “theory” to excuse this pathetic performance.

In the first round, there were a possible 320 points available. The initial leaders are D Morningstar Hook Shot, humza0822 6, and dbkohan 1 with 250 points. They are in the 99.3d percentile at the moment in the complete ESPN bracket challenge. Which is good enough to be 46,842 overall. But it is still wide open considering there were a couple Final Four teams eliminated from the entries.

K-State and Cuse kick off in a few minutes in Pittsburgh. Should be a good one.

Between the new coaches, position swithces and the eligible transfers, there’s a lot to re-learn.

Spring practice is already finished for the morning.  Bobby Engram in Pitt gear has happened.

Yesterday, Coach Paul Chryst did the pre-Spring Practice press conference. He sort of said every position was open — and not really.

 On if any jobs are wide open:

“Eleven on offense and 11 of defense. The great thing about sports and in football is that in every game you have to prove yourself and every year you have to prove yourself. We can all make a pretty good bet on some spots and who should start. The great thing is they still have to go out and do it. There is nothing more important than this team and Pitt football and I talked to the group about that. If you’re true to that then your best 11 players shouldn’t sit out. Your best linemen will play, your best skill guys will play and your best defensive backs will play so I think they really are all open.”

Read into or don’t read anything into that.
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