I am guessing the students disagree, but I am very grateful for Finals week at Pitt. It’s meant a week with no basketball games. Given the Pitt football saga of the week, that has been a good thing.

So the game is on FoxSports-Pittsburgh, MASN, ESPN3.com and ESPN FullCourt package starting at 7pm.

New Pitt football HC Mike Haywood will be there before the game doing the meet-and-greet. I expect that he will stop by the broadcast booth since that is standard PR.

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It seems that Pitt under HC Mike Haywood will have no hold-overs from the Wannstedt regime. I’m not totally surprised by this. Personally I would have liked to see Greg Gattuso and David Walker have remained on staff. I think Gattuso is an excellent coach and would have been a very vital bridge to the hyper-sensitive, good-old-boys network of Western PA high school coaches. That strikes me as risky. Walker is simply one of the best running backs coaches out there. Period.

Losing Jeff Hafley to Rutgers hurts from a recruiting perspective, but it can only help the secondary. Heck, even Rutgers fans are a little unsure about the cost of bringing Hafley aboard with that risk. Of course, Rutgers HC Greg Schiano hasn’t actually said where Hafley will coach. I would recommend Rutgers make him the Defensive Coordinator. Yeah. That’s what they need. That would be the best place for him.

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