This is how you know expectations for USF have risen. The performance against Pitt was not viewed as a positive event.

All week the Pittsburgh Panthers repeatedly said they were worried about the University of South Florida’s speed. They couldn’t stop talking about the Bulls’ overall quickness.

They meant it as a compliment.

On Saturday afternoon in their first Big East road game, the Bulls showed speed in an unwanted area. After controlling the opening quarter, USF collapsed in a rapid-fire meltdown of turnovers and missed tackles, handing Pitt a 31-17 victory.

“I thought we played horrible,” USF coach Jim Leavitt said. “I didn’t think we battled adversity very well.”

USF Coach Leavitt was apparently really pissed about the way his team played.

Rarely, if ever, has Leavitt been so angry after a game. He let his team know how he felt, and he is likely to reinforce that when it is time to review the tape of this debacle.

“You can’t win with turnovers and missed assignments,” running back Andre Hall said.

And then he shook his head.

“We had a 10-0 lead on those guys — we slowed down, rolled over,” he said.

The Bulls faced neither a hostile atmosphere nor a daunting opponent in this one, but they weren’t up to the job. These are the kind of losses you look back upon with pain when the season is done. The Bulls should have won here, no question.

Horrible. Just horrible.

Anyone care to argue?

Sadly, it’s true with respect to the environment. Pitt fans just did not show up for this game. We got to the lot a little later than anticipated — it was around 11:20am as we came in sight of the stadium and the lots surrounding Heinz Field. They were disturbingly thin. It was an absolutely perfect fall day. In the mid-60s, sunny, a bit windy — but not biting. No excuses, and no people. More students than last weekend with Cinci, but the overall turnout was very disappointing.

To some degree I understand bad fan support the last couple of games. Pitt didn’t just get off to a bad start, it got off to a pathetic, humiliating beginning resulting in national humiliation. Really there is no other way to put it. All 4 of Pitt’s losses came on national TV exposure. The three Pitt wins have come with no TV broadcasts at all. This has hurt.

Still it is disappointing and frustrating for Pitt fans who support the team. I know I was a little pissed that I make the 150 mile trek and see that people within 5-30 miles can’t be bothered.

Sorry about the digression. Back to the Tampa area meida pissing on their team.

South Florida had a 10-point lead on the road against a team that isn’t very good. The Bulls had blocked a punt, forced a fumble, and were basically kicking Pitt’s butt. They had only to put the Panthers away and stay undefeated in the Big East.

That’s what championship teams do.

Alas, instead of putting their foot on Pitt’s throat, the Bulls grasped their own windpipe and didn’t let go until a marvelous opportunity was squandered — oddly fitting, since it’s about the only thing they held onto with regularity all day.

Yeesh. The media really hammered the QBs.

We tend to focus on the quarterbacks, and, lordy, they were bad. …

Look, Pat Julmiste is a great young man and a standup guy, and we don’t mean to be overly harsh. But there was an opportunity here that doesn’t come along that often, and the Bulls — particularly their quarterback — let it vanish in a wave of mistakes that, frankly, shouldn’t be happening this late in the season.

“We’re halfway through the year. We should be sound on our assignments,” Julmiste said.

No argument there, either.

What is strange, is I didn’t think Julmiste was that bad. He wasn’t great, but his receivers were really bad. Yet no one down there is talking about the dropped passes, the alligator arms and the lack of effort from the WRs to help. Instead, the blame is just getting heaped on the QBs.

Julmiste, by the way, seems to be a little sick of being the whipping boy by the coaches and the media for the teams mistakes on offense.

“After a few turnovers and dropping the ball, what would anybody do?” Leavitt said about replacing Julmiste. “That wasn’t a hard decision and then Courtney can’t come in there and do what he did.”

What Denson did was throw an interception on third-and-8 from USF’s 10. Pitt’s Bernard Lay returned the interception 11 yards to USF’s 8.

Pittsburgh scored on the next play to make it 31-17.

Julmiste said he wasn’t surprised he was replaced for the second time in as many games.

“I don’t go against Coach’s judgment to put Courtney to in,” Julmiste said. “Obviously he [saw] when I was in, we didn’t get anything going so he tried to get a spark with Courtney.

“I don’t want to accept [getting pulled], but at the same token that’s the way it is around here. Coach expects perfect play out of his quarterbacks and they were looking for somebody else to find it.”

After Denson’s interception, Julmiste returned and finished the game. Julmiste completed 18 of 35 for 222 yards and one touchdown. He also had 20 rushes — several were avoiding sacks — for 58 yards.

There were some attempts at finding positives — like the fact that Greg Lee was from Tampa.

“It’s exciting to play against guys that I played with or against in high school and this is the only time this year I get to do that,” said Lee, who registered his fourth 100-yard game of the season and the 10th of his career, which leads all active receivers in the Big East. “I wouldn’t mind playing these guys every week.”

Even as he likes to further twist the knife on the Bulls.

“Of course it’s satisfying doing it against a team that didn’t recruit you out of high school,” Lee said.

While on the subject of poor fan support, USF only had 500 or so fans attend the Sun Dome where they were showing the ESPN360 broadcast on screens there. With the Sun Dolls providing additional entertainment.

Fans that attended blamed it on insufficient advertising.

Finally, USF shares Raymond James Stadium with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers like Pitt shares Heinz Field with the Steelers. Well, apparently not nearly so nice a relationship.

Like USF, Pittsburgh shares its stadium with an NFL team, but Heinz Field is much kinder to its college tenants than Raymond James Stadium. Even with the Steelers playing a home game today, Pittsburgh had its name in the north end zone, and the Panthers have their name prominently displayed around the stadium.

It’s an understated, sometimes underappreciated thing, but it is where Pitt plays and there are full-time representations and signage for Pitt all around and in the stadium.

I’d call the perspective from the local papers mixed but towards the positive. Gene Collier was probably the roughest with an analogy that he worked hard to jam in there.

Though it had been evident for more than a month, Pitt and South Florida got together yesterday to demonstrate beyond all contradiction that they are two teams who have no idea what’s going to happen when the ball is snapped.

They’re both the offensive equivalent of those claw-drop amusement games. You might hit it just right and come up with a stuffed animal, but probably not. Better luck next time.

Combining for five turnovers, a blocked punt, a half-dozen dropped passes and three giveaways in their own half of the field in the first half alone, the Panthers and Bulls strung together 147 supposedly offensive plays, some of them even swerving toward competence.

But somehow, despite using something like 27 different offensive line combinations, Pitt stalked out of half-empty Heinz Field with a pivotal, 31-17 Big East Conference win, pivotal in the sense that it’s the win that gives them a reasonable shot at legitimate mediocrity.

But even he seemed to think that there was some progress.

… Generally, the Panthers’ most notable accomplishment was the one Wannstedt described rather aptly. They were “able to mentally not come apart.”

Well, that’s something.

Beat writer Paul Zeise was far more upbeat about what he saw.

There have been times this season that Pitt, despite losing four of its first six games, has shown glimpses that it could be a good team. The Panthers would play well in spurts, for a quarter or a half, but never had they put together a complete game.

That is until yesterday, when they met the South Florida Bulls, a team that came into the game as the Big East Conference’s darling because it had knocked off Louisville a month ago.

Pitt played its best offensive game of the season, beat the Bulls in every phase and came away with a 31-17 win that was, if not a thing of beauty, highly satisfying.

I wouldn’t go that far. The first quarter was shaky to be kind. The offense by committing 2 quick turnovers put the team in a real hole. Special teams in this game was anything but. A blocked punt, some unremarkable return efforts and lousy coverage (covered up by some dumb penalties by USF).

Still, the offense did enough and the defense executed the game plan it should against a one-dimensional offense like USF: stop the run and make them throw the ball. I admit freely to being unsure that Pitt would follow that plan or execute it. They did. USF got one big play from Andre Hall on a short pass that he blew by everyone for 76 yards — about 1/3 of USF’s total passing yards.

Hall was mostly neutralized by Pitt forcing USF to throw. He had 75 yards on the ground on only 18 carries. He had 145 more yards on 8 catches. Hall had 220 of USF’s 368 yards of offense.

Minimizing those big plays and tackling well were among the Panthers’ top priorities yesterday, and it showed as they shut out the Bulls in the second half and held the speedy Hall, the conference’s second-leading rusher, to 80 yards on 19 carries, including a long run of 9 yards.

“We’ve played pretty solid on defense the past few weeks, but we’ve been hungry for turnovers.” said Blades.

“You saw how they can change the game in an instant, and that’s why we, as a defense, feel it is our job to create them. We just needed to change the momentum of the game, and turnovers are an easy way to do that.

“Then to have the offense score touchdowns, that just made us even more hungry.”

Wannstedt’s summation was succinct.

“We didn’t make many mistakes,”

“I thought our tackling was, for the most part, good. We gave up one score, the quick slant to Hall, but, other than that play, I was really pleased with our defense today.”

113 of USF’s total yardage came in the last 5+ minutes. Aside from those, USF had only one sustained drive of more than 7 plays and 30 yards. That resulted in a missed field goal.

LaRod Stephens-Howling made his return noticeable ripping off 92 yards on 13 carries — 41 on one play.

“It felt real good to get back out there,” Stephens-Howling said. “I feel real good now. You don’t think about injuries when you’re in the game, only on the sideline, so I just want to be in the game as much as possible. I think I was in more pain sitting on the sideline, so I’m happy to be back.

“I think I did pretty well in my first game back, but I expect to get better every week. Hopefully, we can continue to improve as a team. It was encouraging to keep running, even when we got down, and that worked out pretty well for us. All of the running backs were glad about that.”

Pitt had a couple chances in the game to put the game completely out of reach but either stalled out the drive or in one case Kirkley had a bad fumble early in the 4th quarter. Pitt was inside the USF 20 and had driven 58 yards quickly when Kirkley just dropped the ball. He was being tackled from the other side, and the ball simply fell out of his hands.

Pitt never seemed to get stressed in this game. The fans were edgy — especially in the 1st quarter — but the team was confident in the way it was playing. Considering the way games have gotten away from Pitt at times this year, that is impressive and props need to be given to Coach Wannstedt for keeping the team even-keeled.

“We’ve just matured,” defensive end Chris McKillop said. “We kept our spirits up and did our jobs they way we’re supposed to.”

“A lot of young guys have grown up now,” linebacker H.B. Blades said. “We came into this game confident. Once you give a young guy confidence, he’s going to go out and rip it up.”

It began to slip away for South Florida on the first play of the second quarter. Palko tossed a screen pass to Lee, who burst 69 yards untouched for a touchdown.

South Florida’s next drive ended after just four plays when running back Ricky Ponton fumbled. Cornerback Darrelle Revis recovered the ball for Pitt at the 44-yard line.

It was the first of three turnovers by the Bulls, and the Panthers converted all of them into scores.

During film study sessions last week, Pitt’s defensive braintrust pointed out that USF had plenty of speed playmakers — but they often were careless when carrying the ball.

Josh Lay ran his mouth the most during the week.

Pitt defensive back Josh Lay, who earlier in the week said he wasn’t concerned about the Bulls’ receivers because they aren’t very physical, said he made sure to back up his talk with his performance. Lay intercepted a pass, was excellent in pass defense and had two tackles for losses.

“Coach told me he didn’t have a problem with what I said, I just needed to go out and back it up,” Lay said.

He was accurate in the statement, and backed it up — holding on to an interception this time.

“Last week, I started running before I caught the ball. This time, I definitely made sure I caught the ball first and then ran,” Lay said with a smile. “I wasn’t going to make the same mistake two weeks in a row. I heard about what happened last week too much from my teammates in practice all week.”

That series was the first and only appearance for USF back-up (and Auburn transfer Courtney Denson).

Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese was in Pittsburgh rather than Morgantown for the game.

More from Florida media later.