There is absolutely no reason to fear YSU. There is every reason, though, to worry.

To say the last two meetings have had an impact on the team and season is being polite.

2012: The debut of Paul Chryst as head coach. Suspensions galore announced just ahead of the game and on a sweltering night with periods of rain, Pitt came out flat and stayed flat. Losing 31-17. Setting things in motion early for that third straight trip to the BBVA Compass Bowl in Birmingham.

2015: Another season, another coach debuts. This time Pat Narduzzi starts with a win, but at one hell of a price. James Conner goes down for the season.

Now it is 2017 and suspensions were long announced. Fingers crossed that Pitt can get through the season opener without losing two starters on defense to injury like last year against Villanova.

Vanilla is expected from Pitt. As are mistakes.

Narduzzi expects a flawed performance from his inexperienced roster.

“We’re not going to play like you want to,” Narduzzi said. “We’re going to make our biggest improvement from game 1 to game 2. That’s just a natural.”

It might just be coach speak, but the Panther playcaller says that, even with the rust, the week one effort has to be there.

Narduzzi called YSU “a great football team, and it’ll be a challenge. Our guys better come ready to play.”

But everyone is hoping. Everyone wants to see Pitt take another step forward.

Young Thug’s “Tomorrow ’Til Infinity” blasts from the loudspeakers while players line up for flexibility and agility drills — the first official segment of practice open to the media. A few players are trying to work out cramps in what head coach Pat Narduzzi calls “camp legs” in the mini-PT/triage unit adjacent to the field. Appropriately enough, Narduzzi had addressed this in his morning briefing, citing the need to push through mentally and physically: “This is the time teams would become great. Or, level off and just become an average football team.”

Does this 2017 Pitt team have what it takes to be great? Or will it once again land in the dreaded “average” zone that Narduzzi dismissed?

The non-con (and suspensions) may not make it appear that way at first, but conference play will determine where Pitt is headed this season.

Just a few days until we start to find out.