So much for my belief that the entire Pitt performance would hinge on the O-line. Instead, a defense that has played very well the last three games — at least after spotting a team the easy opening march down the field before figuring out what they were doing — never got it together.

Part of it was simply a hobbled K’Wuan Williams being abused because the Pitt defense never tried to give him any help. Why? Because dammit the scheme is fine. All is well. If he was well enough to play, he could cover in the man-to-man secondary.

Williams left the Syracuse game early with a knee injury and was questionable to play this past week as recently as Thursday. Chryst, though, said he wouldn’t have put Williams out there if he wasn’t ready to play.

“You can do a lot of things call-wise, but in the end there are going to be some times when they’re one-on-one and I’d take [K’Waun] again,” Chryst said. “They made some plays and I give them credit for that.”

Teddy Bridgewater was 7-10, 172 yards in the second half.

But it was more than a well-executed passing attack. The run offense of Louisville kept Pitt’s defense honest. It wasn’t amazing — nearly 45% of their rushing yardage game on just two runs — but it was effective and they got into the endzone on the ground.

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The kids and I drove down to Zanesville, Ohio to rejoin the wife last night. And so the kids can see grandpa. This morning — really, really early — I headed to the ‘Burgh. That stretch on I-70 from Cambridge, OH into West Virginia remains one of the more desolate, dreary stretches to drive. Even in the spring and summer large patches are nothing but brown lands and burned out husks of ramshackle houses and barns. Fall and winter, you just hit the gas a little more frequently and try to get through the area quickly.

So, it’s an 11 am Homecoming game on ESPNU.

Louisivlle is ranked. Favored in the game. Has a quality coach and a potentially dynamic, young QB. But for the whole, stuck-in-the-Big-East-until-the-Big-12-decides-to-go-to-12-teams thing, things are going well for the Cards. Fully recovered from their exposure to the Krags N1N virus they contracted from Tulsa.

Pitt is…

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Here’s an ESPN piece on Beano Cook talking about football.

Ivan Maisel who did a weekly podcast with Beano, has his own thoughts. There are plenty of other ones out there. Lots of good ones. Touching ones. If you watch the tribute video above, the change in his body is startling. He looks so much older and smaller. Not at all the image from my memories.

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Holy crap, today is Pitt’s local media day. Tomorrow night is the midnight madness event. The season is looming, and for some, possibly taking on greater importance with the continuing struggles of the football team (and for those who are total Pittsburgh sports loyalists, the NHL lockout, the Pirates, and maybe even the Steelers). Guess it’s time for some links.

Big East schedules — for one final season — evaluated. Pitt, unsurprisingly, gets a low score from ESPN. That’s okay. Pitt fans also gave it a low score.

Toughest: NIT Season Tip-Off (Nov. 12-23)
Next-toughest: Detroit (Dec. 1)
The rest: Mount St. Mary’s (Nov. 9), Fordham (Nov. 12), Oakland (Nov. 17), Howard (Nov. 27), vs. Duquesne (Dec. 5 at Consol Energy Center), North Florida (Dec. 8), Bethune Cookman (Dec. 15), Delaware State (Dec. 19), Kennesaw State (Dec. 23)
Toughness scale: 3 — Yikes. This is a whole lotta meh for the Panthers. The NIT will help. Assuming they beat Fordham and/or Robert Morris or Lehigh (the latter of which won’t be easy), a trip to MSG will likely produce a matchup with Michigan and either Virginia or Kansas State. The rest is pretty grim, but then again so was Pitt last season. It might be not be a bad way to go about the season.

The Lehigh game will be the obstacle. Then it is Michigan under John Beilein. The idea of facing a Beilein team always terrifies me. Simply because you never know if their 3-point shooting will be hot or not. You know they will bomb away. You just don’t know what kind of shooting night it will be.

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No, losing to Syracuse did not break my spirit and send me into a week-long bender.

My father-in-law was hospitalized over the weekend. He’s still there, while more tests and observations are made. He’s at that age, where any trip to the hospital holds that dire potential that they find something really bad. Or worse, simply that he never leaves under his own power. My wife has been with him all week. While I handle work, the kids and everything else.

Needless to say, I have not been on the computer very frequently this week.  I’ll try to post soon.

Note: I didn’t write something right away because when you are getting 370+ comments on an open game thread pretty much everything has already been talked about.  Anyway, here are some of my observations…

Again, and with firm success, PITT snatched defeat from the jaws of victory last week.  Travelling to the Carrier Dome in Syracuse our Panthers dropped a close, low scoring game to the Orange, 14-13, in a match that may portend the way the rest of the schedule plays out in that we certainly played well enough to win but obviously didn’t.

The sad thing is I couldn’t even get too angry about that final ‘nail in the coffin’ intentional grounding penalty by Sunseri that deprived us of a game winning field goal opportunity because we have seen it, or something just like it, happen to PITT so many times over the years.  We just can’t find ways to win close football games coming from behind because we aren’t built for it, starting with our QB.  It isn’t only Sunseri that has been this way for PITT, Bill Stull before him had the same problem.

If I’m assigning blame – which is totally Tuesday morning QB’ing – then I’m pointing at the OL for most of the ills of the evening.  They didn’t open many holes for Graham or Bennett and they were just flat out terrible in pass protection.

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I meant it when I said I was scrambling to get things done before the game. Sick kids and wife only makes it more difficult. But, mostly there.

I just don’t trust that I’ll be able to go the entire game without having to pause along the way for some family issue. So, it’s an open thread. I’ll check in, and will be on Twitter tonight, at @chasrich27.

Let’s go Pitt!

Because this has been a bye week we’ve had 13 days to reflect on the 2-2 start PITT has had so far and have looked both at the wins and losses from many different angles.  However, we are still collectively scratching our heads as to just what sort of football team we actually have in Paul Chryst’s first season as our head coach.

To recap: we shat the bed in a 31-17 loss against YSU; play pretty poorly again in a 34-10 drubbing by Cincinnati; played to a convincing win against a 13^th ranked Virginia Tech which was even more lopsided save a VT punt return and a 85 yard passing TD then soundly beat a lesser opponent in Gardner Web in a 55-10 rout.

Huh?  So which of those games is the real indication of what this 2012 team is made of?  Well, that isn’t easy to answer.  Sometimes if you peel back the scores and look at how a team actually played football in their games, regardless of wins or losses, you can get to the tenor of how the team produced on the field.

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Okay, busy day ahead. Have to clear out work. Get other crap out of the way. Then have to do enough that the family will leave me alone by 7pm.

Someone fire the guy (or gal) who does the headlines at the P-G. There is no Pitt-Syracuse rivalry. Both fanbases know it, and accept it. Heck, read the article. The only mention of “rivalry” is in the context of both teams moving to the ACC. You don’t hear fans, players or coaches refer to it as anything but a conference game.

QB Tino Sunseri plays up the noise factor of the Carrier Dome.

“They’re making sure they’re loud,” Sunseri said. “They definitely use that to their advantage. I think their players feed off of it, definitely. We have to be able to handle ourselves, we have to be able to handle the snap count.”

That may not be as big a factor as the Syracuse brass try to pump up the size of the crowd for TV by making it part of a “family” weekend. Spreading out the students rather than concentrating them in a section.

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A follow-up on the new/old ACC scheduling plan for football. Pitt now finds itself a game short for 2013. And having, once more, to start scrambling to find another game for next year.

When Pitt first put its 2013 schedule together, it was with the expectation of being in the Big East with 8 teams. It featured Villanova, ND, at Navy, at VT and NC State. Obviously, once Pitt got its invite to the ACC last year things changed. The NC St. was tossed and VT became a conference game. Not to worry. The ACC was going to a 9-game schedule so Pitt was set. Three non-cons, two at home. That’s a 6-game slate — perhaps 7 if Pitt got 5 home conference games — and all was well.

Now it’s trickier.

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The bye week has given plenty of time for injured players to recover. Todd Thomas will finally get a chance to see some action.

Coach Paul Chryst said linebacker Todd Thomas, who has missed the entire season after January knee surgery but has been practicing for several weeks, might play Friday at Syracuse. Thomas started six games last season. “I am certainly looking forward to watching him play,” Chryst said.

Tight end Hubie Graham, defensive tackle Aaron Donald, and fullback Mark Giubilato are also recovered from various injuries. The only player on the two-deep that is out is defensive end, Jack Lippert.

Rushel Shell still appears to be dealing with some back issues that have been on-and-off since training camp, but is also likely to be ready.

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The ACC is having some meetings up in Boston. Interesting tidbits:

Because of scheduling agreement w/Notre Dame, ACC will only play 8-game conference schedule, sources told @espn

— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyESPN) October 3, 2012

Cue outrage from Clemson and FSU fans over this decision, because, well at this point it seems that whatever the ACC does they feel they are being screwed by it. They complained about the ACC schedule and the non-con scheduling headaches. Then when they went to 9, it was about how they were losing money from not having the extra home game. So, I’m sure they will still find reason to complain.

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The good thoughts for Syracuse, they have played well in their small sample size of Friday night home games. That sample size is primarily last year’s beatdown on West Virginia. Getting them out to a 5-2 start before losing five straight, including the season finale versus Pitt. The bad news, they haven’t beaten Pitt since Paul Pasqualoni was still in charge.

The Orange will receive a boost with the return of 2011 All-Big East left tackle Justin Pugh, who’s been out with a Calf injury. Pugh says he has his own motivation heading into Friday’s game.

“It’s my first game back,” says an excited Pugh, “I‘ve never beaten Pitt so I’m a little amped for that, I’m just ready to get out there and play and beat these guys.”

Seven straight years of losses to Pitt. The only team in the Big East, against whom Wannstedt was perfect. Let that sink in for a bit.

Pugh was also coming back from off-season shoulder surgery. Something that had more to do with his absence in the first four games than the calf injury.

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Pitt got a verbal yesterday, Reginald (or Reggie) Green out of New Jersey. He plays quarterback and safety, but is considered to be an “athlete.”

“The area is beautiful,” Green said. “The school, the campus, the city. The coaching staff was really great. The players I talked to were really nice, good people. It just felt like I place I felt at home at.”

Green picked Pitt over Temple. He had also received offers from Boston College, UMass, Michigan State, N.C. State, Rutgers and Central Florida.

“They project me as an athlete on the offensive side of the ball,” Green said.

Scout.com and 24/7 both consider him a 3-star recruit. Rivals.com puts him down for 2-stars.

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Over the many years of blogging, both sides of this Pitt-Syracuse game have noted the complete lack of vitriol and hatred. Despite Syracuse being Pitt’s (tied for) 3d most played opponent in football. And the fact that they will have the #3 spot all alone in a few years when ND starts rotating on and off the schedule, there isn’t much of a burning desire to burn their city and make them cry when it comes to football. Everyone wants the win, but no one circles this game on the calendar when the schedule is announced.

In about five years, Pitt will be Syracuse’s #1 most played opponent. Yet, they too can’t muster the hatred.

My longstanding theory is that, despite the closeness of the historical series — Pitt holds a 34-30-3 edge — the fact that neither team has been good at the same time has muted it. Pitt dominated them in the 70s. Syracuse ruled in the 80s and 90s. Now Pitt has been the force for the past 10 years, winning 9 of 10. How do you build up hate if only one side is ever playing for anything? If the other is stuck in their latest down-cycle or rebuilding?

So, instead, what has the team been up to with a bye week?

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