Give some credit to the O-line in the loss to Louisville. They may not have opened up much in the way of running room for the game — why break a tradition for the decade — but they did a good job in providing pass protection for Palko. Keeping Dumervil almost the entire game without a sack is a feat no one else can claim this season. I think it might have been the first game where he didn’t tally a sack in the first half.

The bad, of course, was the offense as a whole — though the focus was on the drops from Lee.

It was the sound of a running game that never quite got in gear. It was linemen taking penalties at crucial times. Mostly, though, it was the sound of passes thudding off receivers’ hands.

The offense managed just a touchdown and two field goals, and it was shut out in the second half. The Panthers twice moved the ball inside the 40-yard line, but they came away with nothing.
…
Louisville (6-2, 2-2) began the third quarter with a snappy, six-play TD drive to build a 29-20 lead. Pitt tried to counterstrike, but its drive fizzled at the 37 with three straight incompletions.

Wideout Greg Lee dropped passes on second and fourth downs. On Pitt’s next possession, after the Cardinals tacked on a field goal, Lee came up empty on the next two balls thrown his way.

On a sideline timing pattern, he never turned around to see the pass thrown by quarterback Tyler Palko. On second down, Lee failed to hang onto what could have been a 25-yard pass play.

Lee finished with seven catches for 95 yards, but nearly all of that came in the first half. After halftime, he made one grab for 10 yards.

“He had a bad night,” Wannstedt said with a shrug.

The drops were especially costly, since Louisville was able to put up field goals both times after getting the ball back.

“It was very frustrating,” offensive tackle Charles Spencer said. “We had a bunch of three-and-outs, and you can’t have that against a great team like Louisville. It definitely hurt us.

“But everybody makes mistakes. He’s got to keep his head up. We can’t let ourselves get down on each other.”

Lee was second-team All-Big East last season, when he made 68 grabs for 1,297 yards and 10 touchdowns.

This year, he was a preseason All-American selection, but he has not lived up to the hype. Lee leads the team with 41 catches for 805 yards and five touchdowns, but he has been plagued by drops and mental mistakes.

The entire team from the head coach down is willing to cover for Lee, but at this point, his drops have become glaring. Whether he has his head in NFL dreams already or is just not responding to the support, something needs to change. He is the #1 receiver on a team that is not shown to be particularly deep at the position. Pitt has no chance against WVU in 2 1/2 weeks. If he doesn’t snap out of the funk the team is toast.

Finally, the ugly goes to this piece from Paul Zeise regarding the team for the season. I’ve been a fan of what Zeise has to say about the team — especially in his Q&A — but he is wide of the mark here. He is ostensibly pointing out the problems of the team this season — where individual players have underachieved and where overachievement last year hasn’t been matched. Yet, he quickly glosses over the problems and mistakes from the coaching staff this season. In fact, he again, passes it back to the players.

The coaching staff also had a period of adjustment, but, to their credit, coach Dave Wannstedt and offensive coordinator Matt Cavanaugh admitted that the transition from the NFL to college was a little tougher than they had anticipated.

The two also have taken far more than their share of the blame for some things that have gone wrong and for some weaknesses that existed before they arrived.

And that leads to a point that is tougher to quantify, but one some players believe is a big factor in the team’s struggles — some players have not been able to raise their own bar to meet the lofty expectations of the new coaching staff.

Wannstedt has brought a “championship mentality” to the program and has forced the players to dig deeper in order to reach their maximum potential. He has demanded a higher level of mental and physical toughness, and that has taken some players out of their comfort zone. He has made it an open competition at almost every position.

While most players have responded to and welcomed the change, a handful, mostly upperclassmen, have struggled with it. But Wannstedt has made it clear he wants to take the Panthers to the highest level and has committed himself to making it happen. He expects the same from his players.

Now I’m the first to admit I’m not there in the practices and seeing what happens from week-to-week, but Coach Wannstedt hasn’t had much of an open competition at most positions since the spring practices — go ahead try and explain why TE Eric Gill remains the starter.

He doesn’t exactly get into how the coaches have made mistakes or had problems other than to say that they have had issues with the transition. Gee, thanks. Instead he lays most of it on the players — especially the upperclassmen who have gotten comfortable.

You know, a cynic might think that Zeise is playing a bit of an access game. At this point, with 2 games left, the senior players are as good as gone. It might be best to play up to the underclassmen who will be back, along with the coaching staff. That will provide more and better stuff for next season. Better to lay more of the problems at the feet of the players who are nearly out the door.

Honestly, I’m uncomfortable saying that because Zeise has been so good in his communications and talking about the team, but this piece was just that bad.

Last week, I broke down how to win the Big East for 4 teams. I excluded USF because they had only played 2 BE games. Mistake. They actually are the only team aside from WVU that can win the BE without help.

WVU and USF presently hold tie-breakers if finishing with the same record over Louisville and Rutgers.
Rutgers and Louisville hold a tie-breaker over Pitt.
Pitt holds a tie-breaker over USF.

I’m not going to bother with potential 3-way (or more) ties because that would then fall to BCS rankings to decide who goes to the BCS game

Big East Standings and Games Remaining
WVU 4-0 (Cinci, Pitt, @USF)
USF 2-1 (@ Syr, Cinci, @ UConn, ,WVU)
RU 3-2 (@ L-ville, Cinci)
Pitt 3-2 (UConn, @ WVU)
L-ville 2-2 (RU, Syr, @ UConn)

What Each Team Needs To Do And Have Happen

WVU: They have the easiest path. Control of their own destiny and crap.
Win out
Win 2 of 3, including USF
Win 2 of 3, losing to USF but USF loses at least one more game
Lose 2 of 3, but beating USF and Pitt loses to UConn
(It can get more absurd, but I think the point is made.)

USF: They do control their own destiny, but with less room for error than WVU.
Win out
Win 3 of 4 including WVU and WVU loses one additional game as does Pitt

Pitt: Lots of help needed, as everyone must lose.
Win last 2 and have WVU, RU, L-ville and USF all lose at least one additional game

RU and L-ville: The exact same path, so the match-up this Friday pretty much ends one team’s very outside hope.
Win out, while WVU goes on an 0-3 skid and USF goes 2-2.

Bottome line, the WVU-USF game in December could be winner takes all.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps it is a continual drumbeat on sportstalk radio in Pittsburgh, that I don’t hear. I am just astounded with Bob Smizik’s ongoing need to bring up former coach Walt Harris at every turn — and to usually revise history. There was his column on Friday that nearly floored me.

There was a great deal of satisfaction on the part of Pitt partisans when the Walt Harris era ended last season with the coach forced out by upper administration. And there was a great deal of rejoicing when Harris was replaced by Dave Wannstedt, a Pitt man with an outstanding resume who came to town and wowed the alumni and the recruits.

Pitt might be heading in the right direction with Wannstedt, but, on the field of play, the Harris era is looking pretty good.

In a must-win game for the Panthers last night, they came up short in almost every phase and were dominated by Louisville, 42-20.

The Panthers fell to 4-5, which means they are guaranteed to have their worst season since 1999, Harris’ third year, when they were 5-6. It’s entirely possible the Panthers will do no better than 5-6, with conference leader West Virginia still on the schedule.

The 25 wins Harris’ teams achieved over the previous three seasons look awfully good today.

Smizik writes as if he wasn’t part of the crowd itching to toss Harris. He conveniently seems to forget he was happily there knifing Harris from the first day of the 2004 training camp.

On the first day of practice in the eighth season of his coaching reign, Walt Harris came clean on a subject that has clouded his reputation for much of his time at Pitt.

He is not, he insisted, a serial quarterback manipulator.

During a 34-minute interview session, for which he was 12 minutes late, Harris steadfastly maintained he does not stay awake at night plotting ways to jerk around quarterbacks.

His life’s mission, he said, is not to make miserable the players at the very position he most cherishes.

Could have fooled a lot of people.

I know I’ve pointed this out before, but this was the classic in petty, vindictive column writing. That Harris was a little late to a press conference was worth mentioning? It was part of what he did all season, up until the Fiesta Bowl when he suddenly writes an homage piece to Harris — complete with this half-truth admission of his own.

Whatever the reason for Harris’ fall from favor, and it might be none of the above, it most certainly was not an issue that usually costs a coach his job. Under Harris, Pitt was winning, its players were graduating and its players were staying out of trouble.

This column was a frequent and harsh critic of Harris long before such a stance became popular. We’ll stand by those criticisms of his game-day blunders, of his record of beating cupcakes and losing to mostly everyone else and of his penchant for placing blame on his players instead of himself and his assistant coaches.

“Frequent and harsh” only went together against Harris in the final season — when he was well behind the curve. Of course, right after the Pitt loss to Utah, Smizik reverted to type with shots at Harris.

Stanford folk probably were taking a close look at the Fiesta Bowl last night, where Harris coached his final Pitt game against Utah. They probably wanted to see this offensive brilliance for themselves.

They had to be mightily disappointed if they watched. But no less so than Pitt people.
…
If there was a offensive genius on the sideline last night, it was Utah coach Urban Meyer, who, like Harris, was in his last game. They’re going to love Meyer at Florida, where he is headed. He will put points on the board just like Steve Spurrier did.

So, now in the first season for Coach Wannstedt, Smizik just can’t help bringing up Harris everytime he writes about Pitt football.

Apologists insist the problem is with that most convenient of scapegoats: Harris. They insist Harris left the cupboard bare. These people will tell you Harris never recruited good linemen or either side of the ball and that’s the reason Pitt is in trouble this year.

By most accounts, Harris did not recruit great linemen or even good linemen. But he won with who he recruited — 25 times in his final three seasons, eight times in his last season.

Three starters on the offensive line returned from last year’s team. That’s three starters from a team that won eight games. That is, at worse, a decent foundation.

Harris is not to blame for the 4-5 record, as much as some people would love to believe that.

It seems pretty obvious now that there have been problems in transition from Harris to Wannstedt. That’s frequently the case. A coach comes in with an idea of what he wants and what he expects from his players and it’s often difficult to mesh the two. Rich Rodriguez, for example, had a difficult first season at West Virginia when he succeeded Don Nehlen, but quickly righted the situation.

You know, at 9 games into the season, there are very few still trotting out anything about Harris and what he left behind. Maybe the readers who comment here are different from the majority, but there is barely any talk of Harris.

At this point, the excuses seem ridiculous and only being brought up by Smizik. The only one who can’t seem to let go of Walt Harris. Come on Bob. Time to let it go. He’s gone. He can’t hurt you any longer.

It’s been a month since there has been anything to report on former Pitt standout Bob Buczkowski, but, and this may not be a shock, he was not the brains behind the operation.

According to an affidavit, informants told police that Buczkowski was the muscle behind the illegal sex and drugs, while Schifano is described as the owner of Buckwild.

Schifano is charged with keeping apartments where she arranged for prostitutes and clients to have sex and buy drugs.

Former employees say Buczkowski drove the women to their appointments, stayed nearby to protect them and sold drugs, according to the affidavit.

It isn’t the pimping, it’s the drug dealing that will land him the long prison sentence. If he’d have stuck to just the sex part, he would have been fine.

As for his girlfriend, well, it’s obvious where she stores her brains.