Final home game and it’s a nooner.
The University of Pittsburgh’s Nov. 12 football game versus Connecticut at Heinz Field will be televised by ESPN Regional and have a noon kickoff.
ESPN Regional will televise the game as part of its Big East Game of the Week package.
Looks like I’ll be hitting the highway before daybreak.
Well, it’s important to have vital background information. Now, while they are amateur works and a little dated here are the always important cheerleading and “Ladybirds” dance team sites for Louisville. I must concede some disappointment, I was led to believe Louisville was high ranking for its “spirit” squads. Definitely unimpressed.
Coach Wannstedt talked a bit about the upcoming game in his press conference.
On Louisville’s offense in comparison to Notre Dame’s:
It’s probably comparable. It’s different. Notre Dame’s offense is more vertical, down the field. Louisville is more of a ball control team, even though they score maybe more points and put up more yards. You don’t complete 70 percent of your passes like [Brian] Brohm is doing, their quarterback, without taking what the defense gives you. Both of them have outstanding running attacks. Both of them are balanced. There are some similar things about both offenses at the end of the day you could say that, but looking at it a little closer, they attack in different ways.
There’s no question that defensively we’ve kind of matured or evolved, progressed. I think we’ve gotten better. If you look at our defense in the last five or six weeks — and take out the blocked punt, or take out the fumble or an interception that’s run back — and really look how many times the team has taken the ball and moved it 70 or 80 yards on us. It hasn’t happened a whole lot. I think that’s why this week will be a challenge for us because these guys do [move the ball]. They explode. Sixty-four points per game at home, I think, is what they’re averaging. As I said yesterday, Matt Cavanaugh’s got his work cut out for him figuring out how to score 65.
I guess he wasn’t totally kidding about scoring points. How serious?
On the importance of Pitt’s running game:
We’re going to have to throw the ball to score points, but we’re going to have to run the ball to make some first downs this week and keep their offense off the field a little bit, and slow down the pass rush. All the reasons that people don’t think the running game is important, we just mentioned three critical reasons why in this ball game it is. We’ve got to find a way to block these guys and make some yards running the ball.
[Emphasis added.]
For the record, because Louisville scores so quickly, they are at the bottom of the BE in terms of time of possession. So keeping Louisville off the field sounds good, but is not enough. The coaches will have to score points, and really, really will have to use the passing game.
Now on defense, Pitt will be facing the dreaded spread offense. Something I believe many Pitt fans have been cursing for the last 4 years. It’s the one offense, that has become the bane of DC Paul Rhoads. So how does Coach Wannstedt approach it?
On handling a spread-out offense like Louisville’s:
We have to tackle good, and you’re always talking about not giving up the big play. And that’s what our guys have done the last two weeks on defense, and I think that’s why we’ve had some success.
Now to be fair, the defense tended not to give up the big play — at least not intentionally. It’s been the lack of the former where the problems and the big plays have been. Pitt will have to tackle. Not hit — and all eyes are on you, Tez Morris — tackle. The defense has to get both arms around them and drag them down. No arm tackling or diving at the guy with the ball. Fundamentals.
Now what is going on at Louisville? You can listen to the press conference with Louisville Coach Bobby Petrino (about 13 minutes), along with comments from Junior RB Kolby Smith — Bush’s back-up (3 minutes) and Senior WR Joshua Tinch — leads the team in receptions (4 1/2 minutes).
Bobby Petrino: He emphasized that the game is considered big to them because it is their chance to get back in the national spotlight and get higher in the polls. He had no explanation for the Louisville road/home split other than vague mentions of crowd noise and getting turnovers.
He sees Pitt as a better team than when they started. The team has improved in all facets in the last month.
Mentioned that he beat Palko’s father when they both QBs in college. He kept referring to LaRod Stephens-Howling as “the little guy,” in talking about the Pitt running backs.
Nothing too interesting beyond normal coachspeak for the most part.
Kolby Smith: Eager to get back out and help the team (he’s been out with an injury).
Joshua Tinch: Thursday night games are big games for Louisville. It is the game everyone is watching that night. All year, this game was circled, and even now it will make the difference for the teams this season.
And finally, the game notes from Louisville are available (PDF).
With the short week and probably a decent amount of news coming quickly, I figured to get this done a little earlier than usual. Here was my ballot from last week. 2 of the 3 teams I had on “stand-by” went down so it was a little weird at the bottom. It finally happened. The made the list. I’m truly terrified.
Out: Stanford, Northwestern
In: Rutgers, Georgia Tech
Games seen in whole or part: OSU-Minn., Purdue-PSU, Clemson-GT, BC-VT, Fla-Ga, Mich-N’Western; Tx-OkSt., Toledo-Central Michigan
An article handicapping each BCS conference bid.
Big East
In control: West Virginia. The Backyard Brawl with Pitt is in Morgantown, but that Dec. 3 game at South Florida, rescheduled because of Hurricane Wilma, could be a trap.
Ready to pounce: The critics who question why this motley crew is still worthy of an automatic BCS bid.
Lurking: Pittsburgh. The Big East’s worst nightmare: The team that lost to Ohio wins the conference.
Forecast: West Virginia loses at South Florida, but wins the league and tries not to get embarrassed in the BCS.
The piling on the BE should reach screeching levels sometime around Thanksgiving.
Now, yesterday when I was pointing out what BE teams need to do and have happen to win the conference, I mentioned that no matter what, you could count on columnists to rag on the BE.
Today’s example:
A deserving team is going to be left out of a BCS game because the champ in the watered-down Big East gets an automatic berth. Leader West Virginia (6-1, 3-0), ranked No. 18, is in firm control, with remaining games against Connecticut, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. The Mountaineers have only one win worth noting, and that came against Louisville.
This league is so poor that Rutgers and Pittsburgh are tied for second. Rutgers, which became bowl-eligible by defeating Navy, lost to Big Ten doormat Illinois. One of its wins came against Division I-AA Villanova. Pittsburgh needed a three-game winning streak to get to 4-4.
But those teams would make for a great conference tournament. In basketball.
This will be an ongoing theme from here on out as the BCS bids start looming larger.
I wonder what it is for NCAA violations.
Mark Blount, who was a brief (2-year) “star” for Pitt in the mid-90s during the Ralph Willard error, has had his name and college history come up during a nasty little trial (via SportsProf). Seems his legal guardian Maurizio Sanginti, is a star witness and has been detailing his past crimes:
… including (apparently) fraudulently helping Mark Blount obtain the requisite SAT score to play basketball at the University of Pittsburgh.
It should be noted that Sanginti sued Blount back in 2001 for $250,000, claiming that Blount never paid back a loan. Notwithstanding the veracity concerns of such an agenda-driven witness, Sanginti has made other notable revelations (and, importantly, made them under oath). As Blount’s “guardian,” Sanginti traveled with Blount across the country on recruiting trips and witnessed the following:
- Blount received $20,000 in cash from an alumnus of the University of Louisville on a recruiting trip;
- Blount received cash from an alumnus of the University of Cincinnati on a recruiting trip, apparently on instruction from coach Bob Huggins;
- Blount received periodic cash payments from University of Pittsburgh boosters (Blount played there for two years); and
- Blount took steroids (with assistance from Sanginti).
It’s now 10 years later. Willard was fired from Pitt in early ’99 and is now a “respected” coach at Holy Cross while his son is now stitting next to Louisville Coach Rick Pitino as an assistant (the job Ralph had before Pitt hired him). Blount has some absurd $36 million or so 7-year contract from the Celtics (hah!).
I would hope that there will be nothing to come back to Pitt, but with the NCAA you never know.
There isn’t a lot for Pitt football today. Pitt’s had a bye. The weekly Big East teleconference and Dave Wannstedt press conference is later this morning, so the news is sparse.
A good notebook article observing that this game is not quite of the importance it was expected to have at the beginning of the season.
Coach Wannstedt was actually happy about the timing of the bye, which wasn’t too shocking considering the team had played 8 straight games and needed the break. That allowed many of the players to get closer to full health, and recover from the bumps, bruises, strains and sprains. In fact the only questionable player is defensive tackle Thomas Smith.
I have to wonder if Coach Wannstedt said this with a straight face or with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.
Louisville has had a much more productive offense at home than on the road. The Cardinals are averaging 64 points per game at home but only 29 points per game on the road.
Wannstedt said because the Cardinals offense appears to be virtually unstoppable, the pressure to come up with a winning game plan is not going to be on defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads.
“They average 64 points a game at home,” Wannstedt said. “That means we have to score 65 so it is [offensive coordinator] Matt Cavanaugh‘s problem.”
If you take that seriously, then that means Pitt will be throwing the ball — despite going against their nature. It actually makes some sense since Louisville is only ahead of Rutgers and Cinci in pass defense.
Related to that, Derek Kinder gets a puff piece lauding how far he’s come on the field this season.
With 228 yards on 28 catches and two touchdowns, Kinder doesn’t exactly have the numbers of a strong No. 2 receiver, but such is exactly what he’s become for Pitt.
Kinder, who was recruited as a running back, caught eight passes for 81 yards, including an 11-yard touchdown, in Pitt’s win against Syracuse on Oct. 22. Against Rutgers on Sept. 30, he hauled in 10 receptions, a career-high, for 78 yards and a touchdown.
More important, since he took over the starting flanker position the third game into the season, Pitt has gone 4-2 and now stands at 4-4 overall, 3-1 in the Big East headed into its showdown Thursday night in Louisville.
Over the past three games, opponents have failed to hold Pitt to less than 30 points and the Panthers are undefeated in those contests. The rapid development of Kinder, according to coach Dave Wannstedt, has proven a major factor in Pitt’s sudden offensive firepower.
“He’s a guy who has gotten better every week,” Wannstedt said of Kinder. “He’s kind of a self-made type of receiver. He was a running back in high school. Nobody works as hard. He never makes a mental mistake. Every long run we have, he’s down the field blocking. He’s on the punt team and making tackles on the kickoff coverage team. The guy is, probably, one of the unsung positive stories that people don’t talk about enough.”
Kinder deserves major props for the way he has taken the #2 receiver position. There has been no debate or argument about his performance earning the promotion.
Powered by WordPress © PittBlather.com
