No, not thirsty for alcohol but some football. I amaze myself sometimes — the only thing left for this Pitt football team to do is show up and go through the motions and somehow I manage to still get excited for game days. The layoff between last Wednesday’s game brutal loss and Saturday’s probable loss has been a long one. That final play still lingers in my head.
This weeks Big East picks:
(2) South Florida over Rutgers — Huge game going on right now. I’ll admit my huge man-crush on Matt Grothe.
Louisville over UConn — I hate UConn football. They stink, but we made them look so good.
(19) Cincinnati over Pitt — Yes.
(11) West Virginia over Mississippi State — WVU had a week off to get Pat White back to full health…watch out.
Buffalo over Syracuse — I don’t know if this is an upset or not.
This week’s Blog Poll Top 10 looks like this:
| Rank | Team | PPB | StdDev | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ohio State (35) | 23.9 | 2.0 |  2 |
| 2 | South Florida (26) | 23.2 | 2.5 | 3 |
| 3 | LSU (5) | 22.0 | 2.2 |  2 |
| 4 | Boston College | 21.5 | 2.4 | — |
| 5 | Oklahoma | 20.9 | 2.1 | 1 |
| 6 | South Carolina | 19.2 | 2.1 | 1 |
| 7 | Oregon | 18.2 | 2.6 | 2 |
| 8 | Kentucky | 17.8 | 2.9 | 9 |
| 9 | Arizona State (1) | 17.0 | 4.2 | 2 |
| 10 | California | 16.6 | 2.9 | 8 |
USF is closing the first-place gap, but they need to beat Rutgers to keep their amazing season alive. Right now they’re tied at 10 with 9:00 left in the 2nd half.
You probably heard about Wannstedt’s injury. He’ll coach (or whatever he considers “coaching”) from the press box ala Joe Paterno after he took this shot.
P.S. — At least when Steve Pederson left Pitt, our football players didn’t do this.
So, OSU and BC in the title game? I have about zero interest in watching that – in fact, there is no way anyone could force me to see that garbage.
Now we get to hear about how the big “least” is overrated…
Look, BC is losing to VaTech next week, and OSU will lose to someone because they’re the shittiest #1 in recent memory.
The two best teams in the country have one loss right now, and they’re LSU and Oklahoma. That’s your championship game right there.
And while the USF cinderella story was great, I was getting a little tired of their overratedness (as well as the shameless bandwagon that started here in Tampa).
They have a fast yet undersized defense, and like I’ve said here many times, power running WILL beat them. (Ray Rice anyone ran for like a zillion yards tonight).
And on offense, they’re overly dependant on Grothe (who is still a VERY good player). Tonight they finally played a defense that was able to stop Matt’s “scramble around and pull something out of my ass” plays.
…. They’re still winning the Big East though, and they should. They’re a pretty damn good team, that also holds a win over WVU. They’re just too deeply flawed to be a national title contender.
USF v. VaTech in the Orange Bowl though.
Yes, that’s my second bowl prediction this week.
Hmm, how innovative. Maybe there’s something to this blitzing thing.
I’d have to place SU ahead of Pitt. At least they have a quality win.
Rutgers, UConn and USF are like crisp new twenty bills-straight from the mint. Pitt is like and old penny stuck in the corner behind the toilet in an abandoned Brooklyn chinese restaurant. You guys might be even less appealing than that actually.
Enjoy your mediocrity Connecticut. You get bad recruits and people laugh when they hear Connecticut football. Pitt atleast has a history, and they get good recruits.. Only a matter of time
UConn Slammer, you realize that UConn fans giving Pitt fans shit for our season is kind of like a Washington Nationals fan telling a Pirates fan how bad the Pirates suck, right?
cinci 35, pitt 17
shady: 100+ yds
actual attendance: 10,000
i’m not an sfu fan, but would have liked to have seen a big east team win the BCS…
don’t worry about uconn trash talkers since they’re going to be exposed as fraudulent the rest of the year…
Connecticut rolls in and gets Pitt at perhaps the lowest point in its football history and thinks they have something. You know what you have? Connecticut football. Sorry.
Of course, it’s not the recruiting, but [slamming my fists against the desk]: IT’S THE COACHING, STUPID!!!!! This season will turn a lot of recruits off to Pitt, so it won’t matter whether Wanny is coach next year or not, because if he is, recruits won’t buy his snake-oil-salesman shtick. Either way, recruiting will fall off a cliff. I have a feeling all the AD candidates will say the same thing, which is why we’ll end up with Rick F’N Spielman, the only guy outside Pittsburgh who loves Wanny like a butt-buddy, as AD.
I’m not going to argue much with what you said other than the notion that recruiting is going to fall off.
To this point, that hasn’t been the case.
Scout.com currently has Pitt ranked 32nd overall as a class. They’re second in the Big East behind WVU (#30 in Scout’s rankings). They’re the only BE team to recruit more than one Top 100 player. And that’s on the strength of only seven commitments to this point.
Nix has not wavered to this point. In fact, according to both Gorman and Zeise, none of the verbals have wavered.
They’re still very much in the running for Jonathan Baldwin, Hubie Graham, Leon Mackey, Cameron Saddler, Jarred Holley…these are all four-star rated players from Scout right now. Saddler – a shiftier, quicker version of LSH – just told KDKA last week that he was back on Pitt’s radar and that he would prefer to play here if they gave him an offer.
All these rankings are still very subjective (Scout had Revis rated as a 3-star corner) and things can certainly change quickly as we learned with Morelli and Andrew Johnson, etc. But as Saddler said in his KDKA interview, the bottom line for a lot of these kids currently being recruited is that this 2007 season will be a distant memory by the time many of them are contributing here. These coaches aren’t selling these kids on what Pitt is now…they’re selling them on what Pitt is going to be three years from now.
Does Saddler putting PITT on his final four mean that hale is doing the same? Hey did you read that NIX destroyed both Yancich and Sweat in their game. He is not wavering either. The word is that Sweat got too big but Yancich is the real deal (put may not play PSU because of depth at LB).
Everyone, let stop bickering about coaches, play calling, or scheme and support our Panthers. This is the time they need our support. It doesnt matter the record or who is coaching let cheer for the players and our university.
Hail to Pitt Beat Cincy
Shayne Hale will not come to Pitt….. He is sold on Ohio State
Those players will be gone and all DW players will have expereince and ready to compete week in and week out.
We need to stay postive and give DW his chance to build pitt.
Pitt fans are starting to act like PSU and ND fans. We havent won in a long time so give him time to build a winner.
It is going to happen if we give him the chance. The changes will be made in the offseason but Pitt needs support from student, alumni, and the city.
Bring the script back to give us our IDENTITY
HALE TO PITT…I MEAN HAIL….
PS-WANNY is goign to shock alot of people this year and with the recruits coming in for 2008. Please note that there is too much talent in this area that DO NOT WANT TO ATTEND PSU or LEAVE THE STATE. Show support and guess what they will come (no inside information)
Holy Hell have you ever been on an athletic team or anything whatsoever???
My dad played football with wanny at pitt and my dad has said since the beginning that he never could see him as a coach, and that he just doesnt seem very smart tactically.
You’re probably one of those people afraid to go to the American Idol concert at Harbor Yard because you’re afraid to drive through Bridgeport in broad daylight.
Stop the bleeding by firing the genius in charge of that horrible defense. Sit down with your wife and have her beat you, beat you until you beat a legit division I program(not a t-shirt club). These problems are so correctable but he has to kill his pride right now before this program is fighting to the death with Temple for recruits.
I think I was being too polite describing your joke of a program as a penny. You’re more like a shitty scratched up token valid only in the crappiest car wash in the tri-state area.
Have a shitty one Pitt. I know you won’t fail in that endeavor.
Talk to me when your team is respectable dude. You have to be in highschool or something getting on another teams blog. Or else you seriously need to think about how lame your life is.
your opponents record is combined 16-26
your team plays in the one of the poorest fields ever. you guys will never be anything better than a tire bowl team. (thats when you get lucky) We have ummmmmm 9 nat’l champs!?!?!
I cheer for Pitt no matter who is coaching or playing. How about you?
Lets GO PITT.. Beat CINCY
PS- I sit in a sea of ugly arse blue or white out (psu)at the bar and cheer for my panthers.
BTW-
Adam- this is not NCAA college football on xbox 360. You are talking about real people with emotions and you have to take that into account.
DW is doing a nice job with the underclassman.
Now I am going to the bar which will be either a white out ot sea of blue and cheer for my panthers.
I hope you do the same. Better yet, i hope you are at the game cheering loud
“Wannstedt said he isn’t surprised that Cincinnati has risen so fast because he believed the Bearcats were laying a strong foundation in 2005. He is hoping to replicate their model of building a successful program. He said Cincinnati played a lot of talented but young players during the 2005 season and is now reaping the benefits”.
Let’s take a real close look at this one!
Take a look at scout.com:
2002 UC recruiting rank #95; Pitt #25;
2003 UC recruiting rank #84; Pitt #39;
2004 UC recruiting rank #75; Pitt #47;
2005 UC recruiting rank #70; Pitt #42;
2006 UC recruiting rank #70; Pitt #11;
2007 UC recruiting rank #80; Pitt #8;
Sounds like either the recruiting experts are idiots or our coaching staff are idiots.
What do you think about that strong foundation UC is laying?
