The AP Writer’s pre-season poll is out. Pitt is ranked #17. Other ranked Big East Teams are Syracuse (#6), UConn (#8) and ND (#20). You can see just about all the polls and MSM rankings you out there here. At this point, I’m polled out.

This Andy Katz column to kick off the ESPN.com weeklong love fest for college basketball (and being able to show something other than World Series of Poker reruns). It slips in a key worry about next year’s Big East.

The Big East plays this season with 12 teams before bloating to 16 in 2005-06 with the loss of Boston College to the ACC and the addition of Conference USA teams Cincinnati, Louisville, Marquette, DePaul and South Florida. How the Big East will manage 16 teams is still to be determined, but it didn’t work for the WAC in the ’90s.

To be somewhat fair, it wasn’t the basketball side that did in the WAC so much as the football. Most of the members were also playing football. The Big East is only half of that. Not that that is really much of an improvement.

I’m a little slow in getting to this, but, then it is just an exhibition game. Pitt got off to a slow start against Carnegie Mellon Saturday night, actually being down at the half, before slowly pulling away 97-70. The important story was that Carl Krauser didn’t play because of a minor shoulder injury in practice. The team didn’t play good defense, that Coach Jamie Dixon (I keep waiting for a press release a la Mike Vick announcing that Coach Dixon will no longer be using “Jamie” but “James”) attributed to working in the new players into actual game situations.

Center, Chris Taft, thought part of the problem was that the players weren’t helping each other out on defense like they usually do. The energy with which the Tartans came out and played was also credited.

Ronald Ramon, one of the prized freshmen players, got a lot of positive reviews. He came off the bench first and played 32 minutes. Mostly at the point guard position. He scored 19 points and shot 5-7 from behind the 3-point line. If he can do that in the regular season, he will quickly be playing a lot of minutes at the 2-guard. This led to his own puff piece today.

[A bit of an aside. I don’t know if the Tribune-Review has hired a separate beat writer to now cover Pitt basketball, or if Joe Bendel will be back on the beat after the college football season ends. Just worth noting that most of the articles are being written by a Joe Rutter. No real problem with that or his reporting, except that his puff piece on Ramon is just too loaded with cliches tired comments about Ramon’s height in the beginning.]

Since it’s an exhibition game there isn’t much to really judge on the team. Looking at the box score (PDF) does yield some big potential positives. Chevon Troutman and Taft both shot very well from the free throw line, 9-10 and 6-7, respectively. Two of the big men from the bench Aaron Gray and Levon Kendal played a combined 18 minutes and 5-5 from the field. Indicating both were waiting to take high percentage shots. Gray, however, also had 3 turnovers.

Pitt has one more exhibition on Sunday against Div. III Gannon, before the real season begins against Howard on Nov. 20.

Well, maybe. I suspect there will be some additional stories based on the Walt Harris press conference. As expected, the Pittsburgh papers were focused on the Eagles-Steelers game so no columnists to heap more dirt in the grave.

Stop me if you have heard some of this before from Pitt players and coaches.

“Everybody knew that counter (running play) was coming, but we couldn’t find a way to stop it,” junior defensive end Thomas Smith said. “We defended it right, but we just weren’t tackling. We weren’t tackling anybody.”

That is not a good sign heading into a meeting with a Notre Dame team (6-3) that ran roughshod over the Panthers in a 20-14 Irish victory last season. Notre Dame no longer features tailback Julius Jones, who scorched the Panthers for 262 of Notre Dame’s 352 rushing yards, but their offensive line remains formidable, and backs Darius Walker and Ryan Grant combined for 120 yards on 21 carries in an upset of Tennessee, 17-13, this past Saturday.
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As for Pitt’s running game, it was ineffective against the Orange. The Panthers averaged just 2.6 yards per carry, which came a game after they averaged 1.8 against Rutgers.

Pitt has not had a 100-yard rusher since the third week of the season. Junior tailback Ray Kirkley had 68 yards on 17 carries against the Orange. He was held to 15 in the second half, during which the Panthers managed just 31 rushing yards on 20 attempts.

You know what also burns me a bit about the running back situation. Brandon Mason has not played in 2 (or 3) straight games. The kid’s a freshman who was having a good camp, then suffers ligament damage in his thumb. Expected to be out for the season, he is rushed back and gets into a couple games and actually looks pretty good. Very promising. Then zip. Nothing. Nada. He is buried on the depth chart and his redshirt is burned. In a way this is even dumber than the Paterno burning Morelli’s redshirt and not playing him. Pitt had the guy out with injury, let him rush back foolishly and then wasted the redshirt. Pitt had some depth and a medical reason, and still wasted the redshirt.

Apparently the Pitt players still think they can run the table. Of course, even if they do, they still have to admit they blew the Syracuse game.

“The thing that hurts about this game is we felt like we had it won,” freshman cornerback Darrelle Revis said. “But I don’t know what happened, it just wasn’t our day. We made some mistakes, didn’t score when we had a chance late and us guys on defense didn’t hold when we needed to. We’ll think about this one for a long time.”

Especially after the season when Coach Harris says goodbye.

Of course with Pitt, you never know. I said yesterday that a Walt Harris team can suddenly respond when it is just about too late. The team knows it has to run the table. Starting In South Bend. A place where Pitt hasn’t won since 1986. In the last 12 meetings between Pitt and ND, Pitt is 1-11.

Greg Lee had a great day placing him #8 in the country in receiving yards per game and is on track to have a 1000 yard season. Off the top of my head that would be the 4th Pitt receiver in the Walt Harris tenure to accomplish that (Grim, Bryant, Fitzgerald). The development of WRs and Palko’s development as a QB are to Harris’ credit. Still Lee did not earn Big East Honors.

Offensive Player of the Week went to Kay-Jay Harris of WVU who while collecting only 102 total yards, ran for 2 TDs and caught 2 TDs against Temple. (Temple? Shouldn’t playing Temple be at least a 50% discount on any individual accomplishments?) Well, I guess no one in the Big East was too impressive. Syracuse’s Diamond Ferri was co-defensive player of the week for having 12 tackles and forcing a fumble (recovered by Pitt) — of course when a safety is making that many tackles, well… Possibly even more indicative that they should have skipped the accolades this week, a kicker who went 1-2 (missed from 48, made from 27) was special teams player of the week — Colin Barber of Syracuse. I almost think the BE offices in Providence wanted to smack Pitt publicly for blowing the game.

Any how, the Pitt Game Notes are here (PDF). The always intriguing “Tale of the Tape.”

PITTSBURGH………………………………………………..NOTRE DAME
27.2 ………………………………. Points ………………………………. 24.4
351.4 ……………………….. Total Offense ……………………….. 348.0
107.8 ………………………. Rushing Yards ………………………. 121.8
38.9 ………………………. Rushing Attempts ………………………. 39.5
2.8 …………………………. Yards Per Carry …………………………. 3.1
243.6 ……………………… Passing Yardage ……………………… 226.2
32.8 ………………………. Passing Attempts ………………………. 30.3
13.0 ……………….. Yards Per Pass Completion ……………….. 13.9
23.5 ………………………… Points Allowed ………………………… 18.8
391.2 ……………………….. Total Defense ……………………….. 348.3
125.6 …………………. Rushing Yards Allowed …………………… 95.2
265.6 …………………. Passing Yards Allowed …………………. 253.1
+7 …………………………. Turnover Margin …………………………. +7

Very similar. Of course ND has faced foes like Michigan, Tennessee, BYU and BC. Pitt also faced BC and Nebraska and Rutgers, Temple and Furman.

As I was finishing up the post, the Walt Harris abridged press conference transcript was posted at the Pitt site. Some of the quotes:

Opening Statement

“We had a hard-fought football game at Syracuse. We had our chances to win the game. If you’re a college football fan I would think that you thought it was heck of a football game. If you’re a Pittsburgh fan, you ache like we do. I felt like we had our chances to win the game and we just didn’t get it done. In the overtime we had trouble stopping them and we got stopped on fourth down. It was a hard game to lose because I think our kids played so hard and they gave us everything they had. I don’t think many players left much of anything when they came off the field. It was a hard one to lose. … I like the attitude of our players. We had a good practice last night. We’re trying to put that game behind us. We’re trying to mature. We’re trying to be a winner. What a winner is defined as is what you can do better with yourself first starting with me and permeating down to the players so we can continue to improve so we can win the game at Notre Dame Stadium.”

If there was the begged for follow-up question of, “What have you done to better yourself, Coach Harris?” It wasn’t included in the transcript.

Why do you think the running game has been inconsistent?

“It’s a combination of things. I’m sure we could call better plays. I think we’re calling plays that we feel we could execute. Sometimes it’s just a mixture. Sometimes we don’t quite block it right, one guy doesn’t block his technique as well, one back doesn’t run quite as hard or doesn’t quite make the right read. Those are just some of the things that make it difficult to be consistent.”

Real answer: The line sucks, and the only reason Palko isn’t getting sacked more is because we are keeping the RBs in to block more. Of course he can’t say that, and of course that leads to the question of recruiting the line.

What were the situations surrounding the two missed field goals?

“The first field goal was a 45-yarder, which we feel is very much in his (Josh Cummings) range. Before the game I was told he could kick it from 60 because they were all excited about kicking on turf for the first time…I think he hooked it (45-yarder) a little bit left. The last one was a little mistimed between the signal for the snap, the snap, and when he took off. The snapper snapped the ball a little late. We work hard on trying to have a good operation time and we had a couple blocked the past few weeks in practice and so we tried to upgrade our practice time in the field goal department. Josh jumped a little bit and it didn’t help. He’s a good kicker and that’s why we take those 45 yarders. We think he can make them.”

A bit of backing off on those “flinched” comments, I’d say. But not a lot.