Did you realize that if you lived outside of the Pittsburgh area and your internet provider does not give you ESPN3.com, there was a very real chance of not seeing a Pitt basketball game until the the beginning of December? Terrifying.
Well, the cancelled games from the NBA lockout offer Pitt fans the first tangible benefit. The November 16 game against Long Beach State has been bumped from ESPN3.com to ESPNU. It has also been bumped from a 7pm start time to 9pm.
Bit of a lost weekend. No snow or anything like that, but just a bunch of things that had to be done outside and inside the house all weekend. As much as I try to get everything done by football season, there are always at least a few things that I have to wait to do — raking leaves, clearing out the garden, pretending I want to spend time with my kids. That’s why the open weekend is good. It also meant staying off the computer for most of the weekend. Kind of needed after the constant monitoring of expansiopocolypse news and Pitt’s midweek game. A bit of a recharge.
But there are comings and goings.
Any offensive lineman commit is good news at this point. Pitt is hurting for competent bodies — well just hurting in general. As it stands, Pitt will lose three offensive linemen to graduation — Jordan Gibbs, Greg Gaskins and Lucas Nix — and Chris Jacoobson would have been done after this year. His season ending injury early in the season, however, appears to have him poised for the rare 6th year. Still, it is without question that Pitt needs offensvie linemen committing.
Over the weekend, Pitt added the third offensive lineman to the 2012 class in Adam Pankey.
Pitt received a verbal commitment from offensive lineman Adam Pankey, a 6-foot-5, 320-pound three-year starter at Hamilton (Ohio) High School.
Pankey was selected to the Greater Miami all-conference team three times while playing in Ohio’s largest classification.
My, he’s a big one.
Yes, I know what the press release from the Big 12 says.
The Big 12 Conference Board of Directors have voted unanimously to accept West Virginia University as a full conference member effective July 1, 2012. The Mountaineers will begin competing in the Big 12 beginning with the 2012-13 athletic season.
And yes, I know what the Big East press release says:
West Virginia is fully aware that the Big East Conference is committed to enforcing the 27-month notification period for members who choose to leave the conference.
I’m also aware of a rumor that the Big East would let the schools out early for a $21 million check.
Simply put, the Big East isn’t going to release WVU, Pitt or Syracuse early at this point.
Not out of spite. Not for negotiation of money. Not to see if the will change their mind. They are not releasing these schools because the Big East needs to survive.
Was in the middle of working on this post. It was going fine. Nearly finished. Exploring the idea of the rumors that both Louisville and WVU were going to announce a move to the Big 12 by next week. What it would mean to Big East survival (or not), that the departures could accelerate chance of Pitt getting to the ACC sooner — or have to wait longer b/c they need the bodies, and whether the possibility of 11 teams in the Big 12 suggested that maybe Notre Dame to the Big 12 in all but football could be a reality.
Then… KABOOM!
West Virginia has been invited to join the Big 12 Conference, college football industry sources told CBSSports.com Friday.
The Mountaineers will accept the invitation, sources said. The Big 12 is expected to officially announce the invitation later today.
The Big 12’s board of directors voted Friday morning and chose West Virginia over Louisville. They will stay at 10 schools, a source said.
So now we are back to where things were on Tuesday.
That’s a shame for Louisville (and for Pitt and Syracuse).
I’ve been in a lot of discussions on here and on the message boards regarding whether or not Tino Sunseri is an effective ‘running quarterback’ in Todd Graham’s offense.
I posted on this blog more than once that when I watched PITT’s pre-season practices I was impressed with the way Sunseri took to the required role of a mobile QB who can get yards with his legs in this offense. He really did well at that during the training camps. Then, we get into a disappointing season and fans insist that he’s slow, immobile and can’t run.
But when I looked at our game by game team results and stacked them up against how Sunseri did running with the ball the correlation between his rushing and his passing success, and his rushing and our strong offensive play in those games was pretty evident. Here’s what I saw and commented on earlier:
In three games, Iowa, USF and UCONN, where Sunseri actually has used his run option aggressively, he’s rushed 25 times for 169 yards for a 6.8 ypc average (minus sack yardage) and 2 TDs. Place that up against Ray Graham’s 5.7 ypc this season and you can see how much of a positive it would be to have that on a consistent basis and how it helped in those games.
Also, in those games we scored 27, 44 and 35 points respectively – the highest totals against BCS opponents this year. He also threw for 225 (70% completion rate) , 216 (67%) and 419 yards (69%) in those three games – with 4 TD and 0 INTs.
So, I did a bit of number crunching after my post on the night of the UCONN win, but wanted to get my numbers straight. I’ll put out what I think the reality is and you can look it over and weigh in.
Note that I’m looking at Sunseri’s results through this filter… because Graham requires his running to be a component of this offense there have been a lot of plays where Sunseri has a run play called by staff, runs off his option or – as wbb points out – runs off scrambles when the passing play isn’t there. I want to know what happens when he does that whether it be an ‘official’ statistic or not..
I am subtracting the sack yardage also as I’m trying to get a feel for how he’s done when he has purposefully made the decision to run with the football. From what I can tell by going over the game stats and the play-by-play listings, plays where he’s taken off and run but has gotten stopped for no gain or minus yardage has been listed as a rushing play and not as a sack.
Here goes: (more…)
Ryan Turnley has been outstanding at center for Pitt. When you consider how quickly he had to learn the position just this summer, he has been tremendous. Well, guess who else has been battling an injury?
Ryan Turnley – and this is something we obviously couldn’t report – didn’t practice much at all last week with that foot injury but he really sucked it up and played and I’d expect him to do the same this week. But say he re-injures that or something — what in the heck is this unit going to look like? You really have to give Spencer Leftwich a lot of credit for putting together a rag-tag bunch with a lot of injuries and youth and getting it to be somewhat cohesive and coherent.
Turnley was limping around out there and Coach Graham singled out Turnley for battling through last night.
I honestly don’t think the O-line can take one more injury. Behind Turnley at center are Greg Gaskins or Ryan Schlieper. Schlieper is probably going to start in place of Rotheram unless Nix is back soon. So, be afraid. Very afraid.
It’s not pretty. Not pretty.
Junior running back Ray Graham suffered a right knee injury that will require surgery. He entered the Connecticut game as the nation’s second-leading rusher (134.1 yards/game). Graham finishes the year with 958 rushing yards on 164 carries (5.8 avg.) and nine touchdowns.
Redshirt freshman offensive lineman Matt Rotheram sustained a fractured left ankle and will undergo surgery. One of Pitt’s most versatile linemen, Rotheram played in all eight games this season and started the last two contests at tackle and guard, respectively.
Additionally, junior receiver Cameron Saddler will be out for the rest of the season with a fractured sternum. Saddler played in all eight games, starting seven, and had 19 catches for 207 yards (10.9 avg.) and a TD. He was injured following a 40-yard catch-and-run that set up Pitt’s third touchdown for a 21-3 lead over UConn late in the first half.
…
Pitt has lost six prominent contributors to season-ending injuries this year. Previously injured players include sophomore safety Jason Hendricks (shoulder), senior offensive guard Chris Jacobson (knee) and redshirt freshman Salath Williams (shoulder).
All three are being declared out for the rest of the season. Still waiting to find out exactly what kind of knee injury, but obviously it isn’t a minor one.
Five players on offense. Add in Lucas Nix missing half the games to date, and over 25% of the original 2-deep to start the season on offense has or will miss at least 1/3 of the season.
Get well, guys.
Can you believe that there is no Pitt football this Saturday, but basketball instead? It’s true. The first of a couple exhibition games tip-off this Saturday at 4pm.
The fighting LaRoche Redhawks will make the arduous 12.5 mile trip to the Pete. The defending Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference (AMCC) champs will look to show everyone that just because they are D-III, they are more than exhibition patsies.
Anyone buying it? No. Good. I’ll just shift to some general basketball stuff for Pitt.
In his first season at Pitt there was a vocal minority declaring Dante Taylor a bust. Why? I counted three basic reasons. The first was that he wasn’t DeJuan Blair. An outlying freak who was able to be a big impact player as a freshman. The second, he was a McDonald’s All-American. Pitt hadn’t had one of those in a couple decades. Any McDonald’s All-American is immediately assumed to be a potential NBA star, and headed there early. Third, his recruiting class included two one-and-done big men in DeMarcus Cousins and Derrick Favors. Sure they were the top-top five players nationally and Taylor was somewhere in the teens. When you just ranked big men, they weren’t that far apart.
Luke Winn at SI.com helped debunk some of the hyperbole with some useful data, and an actual comparison of other top-ranked big men of the 2009 class in their freshman year also debunked some of the idiocy. I listed 14 top big men (PFs and Cs). All but four of them (Cousins, Favors, Daniel Orton and Tiny Gallon) are still playing college ball in their junior year.
Lots of things to like about that win. But a lot more that can really bring you down fast.
The obvious is that Ray Graham is injured. Still no official word, but seeing his knee buckle when he planted on it, and the way he went down does not make me optimistic. The pain he was in made me wince. The MRI is scheduled for today. I expect we will hear something around noon.
Unfortunately he was not the only loss. Cam Saddler was finally having a great game. There is no question the knee injuries in the past have completely sapped any burst or explosiveness, that he had coming out of high school. He still can be productive. Last night was the first time where he was catching passes in stride, allowing him to get yards after the catch. And then to suffer an apparent injury to his wrist. a fractured sternum.
Then there was redshirt freshman Matt Rotheram. Getting his first start, playing at Right Guard for this game. Rotheram had passed others on the depth chart in the previous weeks and was now starting. He went down with a leg injury, that would appear to be a season-ender. [UPDATE: fractured left ankle.]
If you are keeping track at home, that is 3 OL, 2 WR, 1 S, and 1 RB down for significant games.
You can say UCONN sucks, you can say it was an aberration and you can say it won’t last. But what you can’t say is that Tino Sunseri failed to give Todd Graham everything the HC wished for in a QB last night. In doing so it allowed Graham to justify, in his own mind I’m sure, his decision to keep Mark Myers at third string QB so far this season.
After going out on (another) limb this week and stating that Sunseri was going to be the “Starter for Life”, Graham for once didn’t have to turn around and saw off the limb he was sitting on. What he got from his QB was Sunseri’s best game in his three year career and a effort that overcame what every PITT fan said would be unachievable, a win where our star RB Ray Graham couldn’t influence the outcome.
When all else failed, with Ray Graham going down, another OL out with an injury, Cam Saddler having his best game as a Panther then being injured, Sunseri stood tall and delivered.
I know! What the hell was that!
But Sunseri put on a passing clinic last night. His actions were decisive, he looked off defenders, he hit the receivers quickly and his throws were strong and accurate. Few passes went over 15 yards in the air but that is the design of this offense, to get the ball into the receivers hands quickly and allow them to get YAC. Which we did by having over 325 yards picked up by the receiver’s after the catch.
Okay, it’s a likely damp, cool October night. Both teams below .500. Everyone is distracted by conference realignment. Or is it perhaps that we’d rather watch that spectacle than look too closely at the struggles of our own team?
UConn has a mess of an O-line. They have trouble protecting the QB. It all seems very familiar.
We will see how much UConn can or will blitz Pitt’s O-line. Haven’t heard anything in the hours leading to game time regarding Lucas Nix’s status. I’m assuming he will miss his third straight game. Hopefully here will be some better protection, and maybe even some average QB play. That or just give the ball to Ray Graham — a lot.
Hopefully Todd Thomas can return to the linebacker rotation.
In absurdity news, the Student Affairs Council (or something not affiliated with the athletic department) is distributing towels to wave during the game. Not blue. Not yellow. Lime Green. Yes, lime green. Apparently this is about depression awareness, and they are characterizing the green as a combination of Pitt colors. Yes, jokes about depression and Pitt football kind of write themselves. And I get a bit depressed just writing about this.
I’m never going to actually talk about the football game tonight until the liveblog, am I?
In case you hadn’t heard, the move of WVU to the Big 12 — is no longer necessarily a question of when, but maybe not.
Not long after West Virginia University began to slowly spread word of its agreement to join the Big 12 Conference on Tuesday, people began to make calls to say the deal was on hold.
And now, as one WVU official said Wednesday morning, “Who knows?”
WVU learned Tuesday evening the expected announcement to join the Big 12 was being delayed and that Louisville, which would be one of five football schools the Mountaineers would leave behind in the depleted Big East Conference, began to exert pressure on the Big 12 to consider the Cardinals instead of WVU.
The Mountaineers may now have to wait until the Big 12 board meets again Monday to perhaps decide whether the conference will accept WVU or Louisville.
This is absolutely, bat shit crazy. And we also have our first sighting of possible political interference.
There was a report — quickly debunked — over the weekend of a possible tri-merger of the Big East, Mountain West and Conference USA. Turned out the report was based on a possible plan that Mountain West and C-USA that never really had any juice.
Well, it looks like they are still trying to pitch it.
Commissioners from the Mountain West Conference and Conference USA are scheduled to meet with the head of the Big East Conference on Wednesday to discuss the formation of one 28- to 32-football team super conference to try to gain automatic Bowl Championship Series status.
The Mountain West and Conference USA already have agreed to merge by either next year or in 2013. The Big East has automatic BCS status, but is in danger of losing it after 2013 and has been exploring adding teams from the Mountain West and Conference USA in an attempt to salvage it. But the two Mountain West members face hefty exit fees should they leave — Boise State up to $21 million and Air Force up to $9.6 million — that could dissuade them from jumping to the Big East.
Seeing an opportunity, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson and Conference USA’s Britton Banowsky will make the proposal to the Big East’s John Marinatto in New York to create a mega conference.
And this was scheduled before the West Virginia news broke.
Salath Williams, a redshirt freshman WR is done for the year. Like Jason Hendricks, he sustained a season ending right shoulder injury during the Utah game. Unlike Hendricks, I didn’t even know Williams had gotten into the game (special teams?).
Well, so much for that basketball post I was hoping to do. Or something on the football game that is tomorrow night.
It looks like the Big 12 isn’t waiting for Mizzou the make up their mind. Everything but a formal announcement at this point has West Virginia heading to the Big 12.
The person said Tuesday that the Mountaineers had “applied and are accepted,” leaving only legal entanglements from making the move official. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal had not been formally announced.
The same thing is being reported locally in West Virginia.
WVU would be subjected to the Big East Conference’s exit fee and 27-month wait before it could leave. WVU was part of the unanimous vote last week to increase the exit fee from $5 million to $10 million. However, since no one has joined the Big East since that decision, WVU would only have to pay $5 million.
The details of WVU’s move are still being finalized — specifically when WVU could leave the Big East and join the Big 12, but the sources told the Daily Mail the decision has been approved on both sides.
WVU personnel are to meet Tuesday to discuss the resolution and an announcement could be made soon, likely as soon as Missouri says it is leaving the Big 12.
Man, are Hoopie fans going to be pissed when someone does the math for them, and they have it explained to them how long they may have to wait in the Big East. If they don’t storm the Providence offices and burn it to the ground.
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