As I indicated earlier. I’m in limbo. No chance to get to the game. Not able to watch tonight because of shuffling my work around for Rosh Hashana.

Hopefully Pitt pulls of the stunner on the Bulls.

Thanks Big East and ESPN. Bad enough that you have Pitt’s Thursday night game on Rosh Hashana. Not at all inconvenient, but I am not surprised. I don’t think there has been a season go past in the last ten years where at a Pitt game didn’t land on a High Holy Day. This year, though, they upped it with the Rutgers Game on Yom Kippur. I am trying to picture making it through the Rutgers game in the final hours of fasting. No booze. Not a happy place.

That was a roundabout way of getting to part of why I won’t be at the game tonight. Shifting work things around for today, cost me the night as well. I won’t even be able to watch the game, except on DVR delay.

Well, something has to give tonight. USF is 0-6 on Thursday nights and has lost three straight to Pitt. But, USF has also won 5 straight road games.

Pitt has lost three straight Thursday night games dating back to 2008 when Pitt beat — the Bulls. There’s also the fact that the last time a Florida team came to Pitt on a Thursday night game, the results were… unpleasant.

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Big, big and needed commit. Adam Bisnowaty out of Fox Chapel. A 3- to 4-star offensive tackle has given his verbal to Pitt.

“I thought this was the best thing for me,” said Bisnowaty, who said he chose Pitt over Florida.  He paid official visits to both schools in the last two weeks.

He had 14 Division I offers, including Penn State, West Virginia, Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue and Virginia.

“This is great, going to your to hometown team. Being around good people is really what I was looking for.”

Bisnowaty, 6-foot-6, 275 pounds, is a four-star prospect, according to rivals.com. He said he plans to add weight to his long frame, and he already has discussed a training program with Pitt coaches.

“I’m excited to get going,” Bisnowaty said.

Now Scout.com pegged him as a 3-star recruit and the 46th best OT nationally. All other recruiting sites had him a bit higher. Rivals.com, 24/7 Sports and ESPN.com (insider subs) all pegged him at the 4-star level and a top-30 OT.

Regardless of the star issues, the fact that Bisnowaty held offers from Florida, Michigan, Michigan St and a bunch of others should make it clear that he is an upper-level recruit, and a very important commit for Pitt. To say nothing of the obvious need for help on the O-line.

   Here comes our third game in 12 days.  Not a great schedule when you are struggling and coming off close back to back losses.  In both games against Iowa and ND only three points and one or two missed opportunities kept us from a win.  The two games were almost polar opposites in how we played our opponents,  against Iowa our offense was clicking for three quarters until the bearings seized up in the fourth quarter and our defense forgot that the game really is 60 minutes long.  A 21 point deficit was not insurmountable for the Hawkeyes as they came back to swing the momentum and take the win.

In contrast, the ND game was a close, defensive game on both sides, full of penalties by both teams and missed chances to extend a small lead by PITT to secure the win.  We had a last quarter drive when down by three points but ended up going backwards at an alarming rate when close to FG range that would have tied the game.

In both cases it was apparent that this PITT team just doesn’t know how to close out games and can’t understand what it actually takes to win against a good opponent.  We’ll find out if we learned anything by midnight tonight when our game against the University of South Florida has finished.

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