Time to look to the game on Saturday. One of the best things I’ve read, is that the Pitt players are looking to keep their foot on the gas. Regardless of whether they need to or not.
Pitt (7-3) needs to beat the South Florida Bulls (4-6) Saturday and it will win the tiebreaker for the Big East championship and head to either the Sugar or Fiesta Bowls. There is a backdoor into the BCS party, however, as Pitt likely can still earn the berth with a loss.
Under that scenario, the Panthers’ fate would rest with pollsters and computers.
According to Pitt quarterback Tyler Palko, the Panthers aren’t interested in allowing others to determine their fate. They’ve been down that road before and didn’t like it.“It is all in our hands now, we are back to where we were at the beginning of the season, it is all on us,” Palko said. “We need to have a great week of practice and guard against any kind of letdown. We hate to lose and we’ve played those what-if cards too many other times this year, you know, sort of hoping on someone else. We didn’t take care of business and had to put our hope in Syracuse.
“We need to take care of this business. We’re not going to hold anything back. This is going to be an intense week. We don’t want to have to rely on anyone else, we don’t want to have to wait around to figure it out, we want to know, we want to do it ourselves, for ourselves. That’s the way it has to be.”
Interestingly, Kicker Josh “Sunshine” Cummings has been to a BCS bowl before when he was still with Oregon.
During the week, I want to read stuff about how seniors like Petitti, Crochunis and others still remember that loss to the Bulls in 2001. Maybe even some recollection of the humiliation of losing at home and being booed by their own fans. More to fire them up. Remind the other players of how important it is to win this game.
With being ranked this week, it’s the first time in about a year since Pitt was in the top 25. Seems longer.
Joe Bendel has a good piece about the criticism of Pitt being BCS bound.
Some might say it is unfair that a 7- or 8-win team gets the lucrative berth. Others, though, could argue that Tranghese is a savvy commissioner, considering he retained the league’s BCS affiliation even after the defections of powers Miami and Virginia Tech to the Atlantic Coast Conference this past year.
For Pitt’s part, it took advantage of a situation that will earn the athletic department up to $4.5 million when all the bowl money in the Big East is distributed. The BCS tie-in sends up to $17 million into league coffers, which is then distributed among league members.
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Truth be told, Pitt cannot control how the conference is viewed, but it could certainly improve appearances by winning at South Florida (4-6). By doing so, the Panthers could climb into the mid-teens of the Top 25 poll. The Panthers will have won 6 of their last 7 games going into the BCS game if they defeat South Florida, with three of those victories coming against Boston College, West Virginia and the Irish. The latter two were ranked when facing the Panthers.Pitt could enter its BCS game the way LSU did in 2001. The Tigers were ranked 13th and had three losses, but they upset then-No. 2 Tennessee to gain the SEC’s BCS berth, then went out and beat Illinois, 47-34, in the Sugar Bowl.
Let’s face it, winning trumps most criticisms.
Meanwhile, down in Florida…
They are saying the game is not important anymore for any reason. Apparently they are a little bummed with how the Bulls have performed this year, but especially down the stretch.
This is a column about the University of South Florida’s football game Saturday against Memphis. If you have followed the Bulls throughout this forgettable season you know what’s coming next, but please bear with us.
The Bulls were beaten 31-15 by the Tigers, although it seemed more one-sided than that. Memphis, a superior team anyway, was helped along its merry way by USF’s own maleficence – just like the Bulls have done too many other times against too many other teams. That’s how you trudge off the field with a 4-6 record and the promise of only the second losing season in eight years of USF footBull.
There were the usual missed tackles, dropped passes, mediocre quarterbacking, a missed field- goal try. There was the failure, failure, failure – three times – to convert on fourth down. There was some joy in the gloom and props to USF running back Andre Hall, who gained 134 yards. But give bigger props to Memphis tailback DeAngelo Williams, who ran for 263 yards and a pair of touchdowns.
You already know this, but we have to say it anyway.
“We’re just not playing very well,” Bulls coach Jim Leavitt said.
We won’t argue with that.
And to top it off, they have their annual concern that they could lose their head coach. There may be interest in Leavitt from Illinois this year. I have to admit, after reading this portion of his post-game press-conference, I kind of like Leavitt. A bit caustic, but funny.
Nothing up on the South Florida Athletics site. Nor at a fan site.
Looking at some of the numbers for USF, offensively they bare a bit of similarity to WVU on offense, in that they run the spread offense but are very much a running team. They have the 24th ranked rushing offense, but are a bad 106th passing. There is only a little more than 30 yards difference between their average yards per game passing versus running. They have the 9th leading rusher in the country in Andre Hall. Looks like Pitt should expect to be putting 8 or 9 in the box again. Their defense is not that good. Only 83rd against the pass and 68th against the run.
For Pitt, the WVU game actually made the defense look statistically better against the pass. Moving them up, 11 spots from 109th to 98th on pass defense.
You have to expect Pitt to put the ball in the air a good amount of time early to try and salt the game away quickly. Greg Lee could have another big game (he only needs 7 yards to retake the Big East lead in total receiving yards for the season).
