Well, yesterday was the last practice for training camp. It’s FanFest tonight. Then all practices are geared towards getting ready for games.

The big news is that right after reports surfaced that Ray Graham would be “unlikely” for the season opener, it was learned that he actually practiced for a series without the “do not touch” jersey.

He ran one series in the blue jersey, taking four carries. He then put his green, no-contact jersey back on, but said it felt good to take live hits.

“Just really fly around and actually be live, it kind of felt good to see where I was at,” he said. “I put a couple of moves on people. Even getting hit, just to see what was going on, it kind of felt good.”

Graham came to Chryst with the idea of going live, and Chryst was receptive to it. With just over a week to go until Pitt’s opener, Graham remained optimistic that he would be ready to go Sept. 1.

“It’s looking good,” he said. “We’ve got a week and some change before the game, and it’s feeling good. I’ve been taking it one day at a time and, as the days go on, I feel much better and that much more confident.”

Kind of hard to see that as a sign he will play against YSU. It’s another step, but it doesn’t seem like something that should be treated as meaning he is back. It is more like clearing another hurdle.

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Some scholarships were given to walk-ons yesterday, though, Pitt has not officially announced it yet, there are other sources to reveal three players who received them.

Congrats to @giubilato_43 @myoklic92 @kbart58 for earning scholarships! Cant be more happy for them.

— Andrew Taglianetti (@Andrew_Tags) August 22, 2012

That’s Fullback Mark Giubilato, Punter Matt Yoklic and Long Snapper Kevin Barthelemy.

Congratulations, guys.

UPDATE: Per PantherDigest, WR Chris Wuestner was also given a scholarship.

Here we go. Camp is wrapping up with some light work today and we pretty much know what the status of the two deep, injuries, attitudes (I just threw that one in) etc. are going into the season.

We have nine days until showtime so lets get our thoughts on record.  I’ll throw some questions out and you share your thoughts and why you feel that way.

1.  What will be PITT’s regular season record, what bowl game if any and why will it be this way?

2. What will be Tino Sunseri’s and Ray Graham’s final stats?

3.  Which new “star”, either a new or returning player, will burst onto the scene in a way we didn’t expect?

4.  What will be the most disappointing aspect of the season?

5.  How will PITT fans feel in January of 2013 about the Paul Chryst hiring?

Obviously you guys do what you want to do but feel free to be as detailed as possible.  I’ll throw mine out after the ball starts rolling.

OK.  Camp is just over and we are getting ready for normal game prep practices starting tomorrow.  It has been a very interesting camp with some pretty big stories coming out of it.

On August 6th we posted an article asking the following five questions about this season’s training camp.  Well, let’s look at the answered and at some other eventful things that transpired over the last 16 days.

1.  What will be the overall tenor of the practices and of the post-practice interviews?

Alright.  We pretty much knew what kind of personality Paul Chryst was going into this thing.  He isn’t your verbose, eternally optimistic guy.  His post-practice interviews are, to put it mildly, boring.  He said nothing about any players, even the injured ones, and plays his job close to the vest.  He is what he is, as they say.

The tenor of the practices was a different matter.  In the scrimmages I saw and in reading the numerous practice reports by the local beat writers the overall theme with this camp was teaching the players the staff’s way of preparing for and conducting a football game.  There was a real sense of ‘get down to it and work‘ as evidenced by how many plays were run during the scrimmages – 183 and 129 respectively.  That’s a lot of football in three hours.  Here is a quote that sums up the physicality of the camp:

Pitt coach Paul Chryst knew only one way to conclude the most physically demanding training camp since before the Dave Wannstedt era. He put the team through its fourth live scrimmage Wednesday on the next-to-last day. “What better way than to play some ball?” he asked. Several players have said this is the toughest camp in their time at Pitt, and Chryst makes no apologies. “You try to just make some informed decisions and try to do what’s best for the group,” he said. “I think we have gotten better through the course of it. I wish we had two more months of it, really.”

Another indication of how physical it was is the number of injuries, mostly minor, that were sustained by the hard hitting and long hours.  Chryst said he wanted to see tough kids in the lineup this season and this was how he started down that path.

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