Another stand-by for any road game. Find the players and coaches from the area. Max Gruder got that treatment when Pitt visited Raleigh earlier in the year. It’s a redux as he actually comes back to the city where he lived.
There will be visits to old stomping grounds, dinner with old friends and one demanding task – finding enough tickets.
“My parents are coming up from Tampa and they needs about 12 tickets,” said Gruder, a 6-foot-2, 230 pounder who was a two-way standout at Country Day and named first team all-N.C. Independent School Athletic Association as a senior.
“And then there are all my friends in Charlotte. Man, I need about a million tickets, I think,” he said. “When we step on the Country Day field to practice, I think that will be the first time since I stepped off my senior year.”
Then there is OC Frank Cignetti, who spent a year as OC at UNC in the final year of the Frank Bunting era. So he knows some of the players.
Starting linebacker Quan Sturdivant is another player whom Cignetti helped bring to North Carolina. In Sturdivant’s case, Cignetti was the assistant coach primarily responsible for recruiting him. That meant Cignetti made home visits with Sturdivant’s family and showed him around campus.
“Coach Frank, I remember him well,” Sturdivant said. “I remember thinking to myself that he was the most organized coach I had ever seen. He was on top of everything, he was really organized and that made a big impression on me.
“Plus, he was good at talking. I was a quarterback and I knew I wasn’t going to be playing quarterback in college, but he kept making me feel like I had a shot. That told me that he really wanted me to come to North Carolina.
“It will be cool to play against him, but it will be a challenge because he has built a very strong offense with a great running game.”
Cignetti’s stay at North Carolina was short and mostly because that one season he was there — 2006 — the Tar Heels finished 3-9 and Bunting, along with his staff, was fired.
But it’s a hook for storylines.
Over on the UNC side of things, the Tarheels have to do damage control after the disappointment of ending up in Charlotte again (Insider subs).
Even with that, UNC still figured to be headed to the Music City Bowl to play Kentucky. But because of the shuffle created by a back-room deal that sent Florida State to the Gator Bowl in honor of coach Bobby Bowden’s retirement, the Tar Heels got relegated to the Meineke Car Care Bowl for the second year in a row and the third time in five seasons. Coach Butch Davis and his players would rather be anywhere else in the world than back in nearby Charlotte on the day after Christmas…
That meme has made the rounds. To the point where Butch Davis had to respond with the appropriate denial.
“Absolutely our team wants to be here,” Davis said in advance of the Saturday game against Pittsburgh. “We’re trying to build a program and make going to bowl games a yearly event.
“Certainly coming to Charlotte, where a lot of people might say they’re disappointed because they were here last year, in some respects that’s good for us because so many of our kids are from North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia. Their families can come and be a part of this. I think it’s very good.”
We’re thrilled, dammit.
Driving to Ohio the next day
Charlotte aint that bad
Pitt 35, NC 17
Waiting for a BCS game. Then, the hell with family. Pitt is my family when they have the chance to be National Champs.
I realize that I am getting way ahead of things since we still have a bowl game in 2 days, but Pitt may have better overall talent but going out to Utah for the opener will certainly be a challenge.
I find it particularly appealing that Pitt FB will have a minimum of successive 9 win years and graduate 32 of 33 seniors.
Best wishes
link to community.post-gazette.com
– Cignetti – in response to a question from Zeise about replacing Dorin Dickerson – has let on that he’s already begun working on developing the offense for next year. May be seeing a lot of 3-WR and 4-WR sets.
– Devin Street and – gasp – Greg Cross have been singled out by Cignetti as up-and-coming impact players. Would be really nice to see Cross have a good year as a wideout. I know his situation has been kind of a target for criticism of Wannstedt and I myself wonder if the kid ever got a fair look at QB. But he always has seemed to be one of the most visible players on the sidelines and seems to be a great “team” guy. If he can get his athleticism to translate over to that WR spot, it’ll be fun to watch him next year operate in an offense that will already force opposing teams to account for Baldwin, Lewis, Graham and Shanahan.
Merry Christmas to you all! Can’t wait for tomorrow’s game.
A couple of years ago, we were in Charlotte staying at the Holiday Inn that’s pretty much walking distance away from the Locker Room restaurant that Zeise mentions here.
If any of you are headed to Charlotte, please do yourselves a favor and stop by the Locker Room. Good food with a decided Pittsburgh flair, and the prices are good.
For what it’s worth, I would strongly advise avoiding that Holiday Inn. I’ve never been one to complain much about service and the quality of rooms, but that place was absolutely deplorable when we were there a couple of years ago. We were there in the middle of July & only the in-room air conditioners worked; the staff we encountered seemed to insinuate that the management was just leaving the air off but were told to tell people it was “just broken”. The rooms were dirty. We were there for four nights and on two of the days, no one from the hotel staff ever showed up to change out the sheets or towels.
The employees at the desk tried their best, but sometimes you can just tell when there’s only so much they can do because their own management is so incompetent, and that seemed to be the case.
Oh, and there was armed security patrolling the parking lot 24-7 because the week before we got there, there were a rash of break-ins in the cars in the parking lot AND there’s a shooting in the parking lot of the strip club across and two people were killed.
But the pool was nice.
If you’re looking for a place to stay close to the stadium, the Embassy Suites, the La Quinta Inn and the Hyatt on South Tyron are much nicer.