Had a few pile up over the past couple weeks.

While lots of attention was on all the football recruits Pitt had at the VT-Pitt game, let’s not forget Coach Jamie Dixon had a couple 4-star recruits of his own visiting. Center BeeJay Anya from James Robinson’s high school was there. As was point guard Josh Newkirk from North Carolina (Newkirk is 4-star on Scout.com, and a 3-star on Rivals and ESPN). Last week Coach Dixon did an in-home visit with Anya — Anya’s first. This week, Coach Dixon is out to visit Newkirk. Besides Pitt, he holds offers from Arizona, Memphis, GT and Indiana.

Interesting tidbit about early workouts and Coach Dixon leaving the door open for all freshmen to see action.

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said upperclassmen Lamar Patterson and Talib Zanna have proven to be leaders early in the first few weeks of workouts. The freshmen — Steven Adams, James Robinson and Chris Jones — have stood out as being physically and mentally mature to contribute at the beginning of the season. Pitt has had a history of developing its players and not getting the maximum from the freshmen. But this program will need, and now it looks like it will get, immediate production from the freshmen class. This is a must that will likely lead to quite a turnaround from a 22-17 CBI champ (5-13 Big East) season.

While Adams and Robinson are no-brainers for seeing action this season, that Chris Jones is getting considered is surprising. Jones may be benefiting from the change in NCAA rules that actually allows more contact with the coaches in terms of practice for players and the team. Giving him a chance to show the coaches earlier what he can do, and getting the coaches to trust him.

(more…)

Okay, this is my final post on the VT game. A few links. Leftover notes and what not.

If you want a detailed breakdown of everything that was bad for VT from a VT perspective, this piece from the Key Play is amazing.

There was no Hubie Graham in the game because he has a clavicle injury. J.P. Holtz, though,  had the huge recovery when Rushel Shell lost the football at the end of one of his big second-half runs. Pitt did lose freshman D-back Jahmal Pardner to an ACL injury he suffered trying to block a punt. He was playing on special teams and coming on in certain defensive packages — including a key 3d down stop. The only good news is that he is eligible for a medical redshirt, so no lost eligibility.

Since Coach Paul Chryst won’t give injury reports other than if a player is done for a while or the year, we have to assume Tino Sunseri is indeed, “fine.” Other players were banged up to some unknown extent.

“Mike Shanahan was pretty banged up, too. A couple linemen were pretty banged up. I know that Aaron Donald was playing hurt. I know that Bryan Murphy played hurt. That’s part of the game, and that’s what you respect about the guys that play it, because it is a physically tough game and you have to be mentally tough.”

Presumably all will be fine for Gardner-Webb.

(more…)

With the announcement last week of ND coming to the ACC, lead to the discussion of schedules. On the football side, there was the acknowledgment that Pitt-ND games will change from a yearly game to a once-every-three (or two)-years action. That would open the door to putting Penn State on the schedule with more frequency. And indeed, following AD Steve Pederson’s comments suggesting it, the acting PSU AD echoed the growing possibility.

[David] Joyner, Penn State’s acting athletic director, told the Tribune-Review on Friday he hopes to visit Pederson in Pittsburgh during the football season. Any face-to-face discussions wouldn’t be just about resuming the once-great rivalry, but Joyner acknowledged it would be a significant part of his visit.

“There certainly is a philosophical meeting of the minds,” Joyner said. “It would be very interesting to look to see if we can make it happen, to have more games in the future.”

The Big 10 just had their planned annual games with the Pac-12 fall apart because of the Pac-12 playing 9 conference games annually, and teams like Stanford and USC that regularly play ND. The Big 10 still plays 8 conference games, but Big 10 Commissioner Jim Delaney has been publicly saying that the Big 10 schools need to do a better job on non-con scheduling.

Almost certainly Pitt will be playing PSU in basketball soon. If not in the ACC-Big 10 Challenge, then as a scheduled non-con.

So there’s that, but what about WVU?

(more…)

Strictly speaking this wasn’t Pitt’s biggest win since the 2007 Backyard Brawl. In 2008, Pitt upset then #10 USF in Tampa. USF, as per their usual thing, did not finish the year in the top-25 — so it does not have quite the same lasting effect. I feel reasonably comfortable saying that VT will still finish in the top-25 by the end of the year so this one looms larger than other wins since 2007.

Here’s the list of games Pitt has won against top-25 teams in the last few years with the team’s rank at the time in parenthesis:

• 2007 – Cinci (23) – 24-17
• 2007 – at WVU (2) – 13-9
• 2008 – at USF (10) – 26-21
• 2011 – USF (16) – 44-17

And that’s it.

Worth noting, though, that since 2007 Pitt has only had 8 games where the opponent was ranked (and Cinci accounted for 4 of those games). So, I guess 4-4 isn’t that bad.

(more…)

We had you written off. You were done. Surely the time had come to change directions. We knew your story. We knew your strengths. We knew your weaknesses — god did we know your weaknesses. And then this.

(more…)

It sounds like you guys are pretty happy about the game last Saturday. I am also and can’t wait for next Saturday (Gardner-Webb; 3:30 @ Heinz Field) when we can really build on the mechanics of the systems to get ready for Big East football.

I’ve obviously taken a hiatus from The Blather for a bit.  We had all the preparations for my daughter’s wedding week; her wedding on Friday; house guests until Sunday and, with perfectly bad timing, my son was hospitalized on Wednesday and missed all the wedding activities.  He’s home, doing well and dodged emergency surgery but I was running around like a chicken without a head for the last week and couldn’t write anything.  Which also meant I had to be here in Maryland sitting in front of the TV rather than at Heinz Field.

But back to PITT football!

It was obviously a surprise to watch PITT not only get that big lead but to then hold it through four quarters.  As many Blatherites have posted we were sitting and waiting for it to slowly drift away.  That didn’t happen and we can credit the coaching staff for trusting Sunseri and the offense well enough to believe that they were going to string together enough 1^st downs to keep drives alive and the clock running.  That happened and it paid off with a late score to put the game out of reach.

I think the staff is beginning to see exactly what they have to work with and are adapting and substituting well enough to get production on the field.

(more…)

I won’t even pretend to write that I saw that coming.

I made the weak jokes about putting members of the 2001-03 coaching staff and team on the sideline for this game, but to see to this happen is utterly befuddling. (If anyone has pictures of Walt Harris or players from those squads on the sidelines, please share.)

The quandary this puts me in is that I watched the first half of the game on DVR delay because of a surprise project at work. I caught up by halftime. I panicked after halftime when VT returned the punt for TD (by a former Pitt commit no less). I paused the game and found excuses to do some dinner prep that could have waited until after the game. And sure enough, Pitt stayed in control to win this game.

So, now what? Intellectually I say that I have nothing to do with the on the field activity. Emotionally, I just don’t want to eff with this. Okay, it doesn’t hurt that my wife is calling in an overrule to say I have to miss next week to visit inlaws

Heading into this game, I said Tino Sunseri needed to have a USF-in-20111 game. And he did. He was outstanding. Does it erase everything before? Of course not. But the few errors he did make in this game can’t be claimed as damning.

Basically, Sunseri could have gotten a 300 yard game if Paul Chryst wanted him to. Just as he could have had let Ray Graham have a 1oo yard game. Neither did, but that was individual goals. I’m rather certain both are happy to give those numbers up to get the win. Especially against a top #15 team. about the team goals.

The defense, though, finally showed up. Huge game for them. The D-line got some pressure up front without blitzing, and the secondary reallymade strides.

Still digesting. Debating about whether to sober up. More later.

Huge win for Pitt.

Got called in for a Saturday project at the last minute. So, I couldn’t make the trip to Pittsburgh. Not happy about it, I really, really don’t want to have to hear constant references to Beamer Ball on TV.

If you watched ESPN’s pre-game show last night before Washington St-UNLV, as they ran through key games they hit on the VT-Pitt game for all of 7 seconds. Basically, Mark May did not want to talk about this.

Not sure if I’ll be back home for kick-off so the DVR is set, and I may take a while to catch-up.

Time to empty all the links relating to the VT game and all the other stuff of the week.

This is cool.

Helmet stickers as history.

(more…)

It’s a cute story. And really the Con had nothing to lose by submitting a bid.

Consol Energy Center has put in a bid to play host to the Atlantic Coast Conference men’s basketball tournament, a Penguins official confirmed tonight.

…

The ACC accepts bids for a six-year period and decides which cities will play host to the event in each of those years. The ACC rotates the tournament to different cities. Atlanta played host to the event last year. Washington, D.C., Tampa and Charlotte have played host to the event as well.

Consol Energy Center and Visit Pittsburgh worked together on the bid. Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson said the university was not directly involved in the process, but the Panthers encouraged the Penguins to put in the bid.

To clarify, the Con submitted a bid to host at some point between 2016 and 2021. The bid was not just submitted yesterday, but last month.

(more…)

Anyone watch the Rutgers-USF game last night? The chance to watch the USF version of Sunseri in B.J. Daniels? It gave me the chance to feel like others from outside the Pitt fanbase when they watch Sunseri. The befuddlement that he is the starter. The moments where you think you see why he starts, then the sheer boneheadedness of the decisionmaking. The demoralization of the offense. USF, I feel your pain.

On that note, add Bob Smizik to the list wondering aloud if Sunseri might be done after the VT game (added bonus, misspelling Voytik’s name).

Not much to it. It’s one of Smizik’s “…” columns so he devotes very little thought to it. It’s the same chatter we’ve had on this site, and on message boards and the radio. Essentially anywhere there are Pitt fans. That if Chryst wants to make a change for the future — not to mention to try and spark the team — waiting until Gardner-Webb would make more sense. Not throwing out a true freshman in his first start against a top-25 team with a Bud Foster defense.

(more…)

At one point I had some measure of respect for Mike Tranghese. No, not as Big East Commissioner. As a shrewd political manipulator. He held the Big East together in 2003 because he terrified the football schools that if they broke away, he wouldn’t be their commissioner and they would lose his personal relationship with all the other BCS commissioners and thus get frozen out of the BCS. For the basketball side, he kept them in line when they were convinced they could survive without the football side.

Then he retired and as the Big East has been raided and re-tooled and jury-rigged to stay together, Tranghese has to keep talking about how he knew all of this was going to happen. That he could see it all coming a mile away. Now he’s saying the same thing about Notre Dame’s departure.

Tranghese said he wasn’t surprised, saying that he told the rest of the league for quite a while that if the Irish could find a conference home, they would leave. The only schools that might be bothered by Notre Dame’s departure are the Big East’s non-football schools, “who enjoyed that rivalry.”

The man has amazing vision, right? Of course, he did nothing about it. Just like he did nothing about Pitt, Syracuse and WVU. At best it means he set his friend John Marinatto up for complete failure.

The likely reality. Tranghese is completely full of crap. He just keeps trying to keep his own image in shape so he can land that next “consulting” gig. I’m sure ECU is trying to reach him right now.

Another week getting away from me. Back flaring this week, not helping.

Let’s run the links.

A couple pieces on the tailbacks. One on Rushel Shell getting his first action. As the star running back in HS, he was never wasted with blocking, so he’s having to learn the hard way.

No wonder: Shell ran for a state-record 9,078 yards in high school on a team that seldom threw.

“I didn’t know what a protection was coming in here,” Shell said. “It was rough at first, but I’m really getting a grasp of it now.”

Then an article on Ray Graham getting closer to feeling like himself, with a  second half also about Shell learning/getting his first action.

“My explosiveness, I feel like it ain’t there right now. The stick shift, I need to get in four gears. I feel like it’s coming and coming as the games go on.”

After that 50-yard run, Graham came out and freshman Rushel Shell took Pitt’s next two carries. Shell and Isaac Bennett combined for 13 carries for 55 yards Thursday, and that may just be the key to Graham’s recovery — having two capable backups to handle the load when he needs to rest.

“Three is always better than one,” Graham said.

Graham does know to say exactly the right thing about sharing carries.

(more…)

A nooner on ESPNU with once and future conference foe, Virginia Tech. A game that was greeted with great anticipation before the season started is now viewed with dread as to the outcome.

Somehow VT is only favored by 10 points or so. Apparently the oddsmakers are confused that this is a game in 2012, not 2002.

Brian from THE KEY PLAY got in touch with me to do a little Q&A exchange. I sent him my questions on Tuesday night, right before the latest round of expansiopocolypse hit — rendering some of my questions a little dated even before the responses came. My answers to his questions can be found here.

When Pitt joins the Big East in some 290 days, The Key Play will definitely be a part of the ACC link selection. One of the finer blogs out there, and like Pitt Blather not part of the SBN borg collective. You can also find them on Twitter at, well, THE KEY PLAY.

(more…)

Yesterday got totally disrupted with the Notre Dame-ACC news. I just have one (or two) final thoughts for now on the deal. Then, I swear I’ll get back to the stuff regarding the VT game. Really. I mean it.

I’m surprised it took place this quickly. For the ACC there was no real urgency to do this. It seems that the ACC could have waited a year or two to let ND twist in the new Big East. It wouldn’t have resulted in full membership, but they probably could have had ND playing 6 games against the ACC rather than 5.

The exception to that thought would be if getting the ND deal done was the only way to make sure the ACC could pass the new exit fee structure. That was really the bigger deal and puts the ACC on the Big 12 level stability with such painful exit fees that it becomes almost impossible to leave.

(more…)