…it was a win.

There were points during the Pitt-Duke game that felt like literal hate-watching. Not simply the offense just making me angry and frustrated. It was the coaching. The decision-making. It really was the first game in Pat Narduzzi’s tenure that really pissed me off from the POV of  “what the hell are they thinking?”

It was a game, that Pitt could have lost (some might argue should have). I’m sure all five Duke football fans feel the same, though, it’s not like Duke did much more to say they “should have” won.

Let’s get the props out first.

Darrin Hall. Three tremendous runs, 2 for touchdowns, and some solid running all day for 336 total yards on the ground.

Hall had 110 yards by the end of the first half. He popped a 79-yard touchdown run at 7:23 in the first quarter to put Pitt up 7-0. He was just getting warmed up.

Hall hadn’t run for more than 52 yards in a game this season and had only 108 before Saturday.

“A lot of the games I was barely in, but I always practiced hard and I knew when my time was up I had to make plays,” Hall said.

No one on the Pitt side was surprised when Hall did just that Saturday.

“He’s the nicest kid in the world,” coach Pat Narduzzi said. “He doesn’t say a word, just every day he goes out and works. He’s not a high-maintenance guy. He’s a low-maintenance (guy), as low as you get.”

This has felt a long time coming for Hall. He was a 4-star running back recruit. He’s never seemed to get a big chance. Constantly rotated in and out. His freshman year, saw James Conner go down. But Quadree Ollison passed him on the depth chart and had a big year. Last year, Conner returned. And this year, he has been used inconsistently to be kind. At the same time, he had done nothing that ever stood out to make fans 0r the coaches say, “he should be the guy.”

Through it all, he has been as Narduzzi says, “low-maintenance.” No complaints. Not transfer threats or rumors. Never seemed to worry about the depth chart even when he was seemingly off of it last year and at points this year. He’s one of those kids you have to be happy for, and glad is on your team. At your school.

Hall also earned one of the plethora of ACC weekly honors as “ACC Back of the Week.”

The defense also showed up. Yes, Duke has been a disappearing offense in ACC play, but they had been able to run the ball effectively. Pitt shut them down. They also had the passing game under control until Avonte Maddox left the game with an arm injury.

A painful reminder both of how thin the secondary still is, and how underrated (and underappreciated) Maddox has been this year and for most of his career at Pitt. Much of it has to do with being put out on the best receiver even as an underclassman, simply because of how thin the secondary is. To say nothing of how the game has changed and DBs are at such a disadvantage. Especially one, like Maddox, who doesn’t have the size to match up with the big receivers.

In fact, the advantage of the big receivers and how the game has changed was a factor in Pitt’s win. Jester Weah’s, well, it was called a catch.

DiNucci’s biggest play, and perhaps the most crucial in the game, was his 49-yard toss to Jester Weah midway through the fourth quarter that set up Hall’s decisive touchdown. It looked like Duke cornerback Mark Gilbert, nephew of former Pitt star Sean Gilbert, had an interception, but the officials ruled Weah also had his hands on it. Weah’s grasp looked tenuous at best, but by rule, possession goes to the offensive player, and the call stood up on review.

“Yeah, that’s why I didn’t want to let go or get up,” Weah said. “I’m a pretty big receiver. Once I caught the ball, everybody knew it was a caught ball.”

As I said after Pitt got the call. It was a call that in a vacuum, seemed to me to be incorrect. It looked like Gilbert had the ball and Weah just put his hand in there. But Pitt’s had plenty of bad calls, and occasionally even Duke doesn’t get a call from ACC refs. At least in football.

Still, there was plenty to agonize over. Especially at QB, where Ben DiNucci — to be kind — struggled. I mean to the point, where after the game, Narduzzi went Wannstedt in trying to praise him.

“You take it off of Ben DiNucci’s shoulders,” Narduzzi said afterward. “Ben had a heck of a good game, did some good things in his decision-making and the run game.”

DiNucci was far from sharp, throwing for just 149 yards on 8-for-18 passing and taking three sacks, but it was a different statistic that seemed to matter most to Narduzzi. Zero, as in zero interceptions and zero lost fumbles for a grand total of zero turnovers, which had been DiNucci’s primary weakness in the eyes of the coaching staff.

…

Of course, as with most any performance, there were negatives. DiNucci admittedly was inaccurate at times, especially in the first half, when he didn’t complete a pass until his fourth snap of the second quarter. A few times, he tucked and ran but slid at the end of the play, avoiding a hit but also a first-down conversion in the process. Narduzzi indicated he had spoken with DiNucci about trying to protect himself, but now he’ll have to tell him to make sure he doesn’t do so at the expense of valuable yardage.

“He won’t be as conservative, I promise you that, the next game,” said Narduzzi, who also thought DiNucci had a chance to throw the ball away and dodge a sack once or twice more than he did.

But other than that, DiNucci managed the game, and he managed a win, one the Panthers sorely needed. Nearly half his passing yards came on two long completions to Jester Weah on the drive that set up Darrin Hall’s winning touchdown, with the second a controversial call that perhaps should’ve been ruled an interception for Duke.

When you are stressing game management, it just makes me twitch.

And here’s where you start to wonder what the plan is at QB. Or, to be more accurate, wondering why the hell they don’t have a plan?

Last week, Pitt put Pickett in in the 3d quarter because they never quite got around to getting him into the game in the first half. After talking about making sure he would get some work and that Pickett’s redshirt wasn’t a hasty waste, he never sees the field in a game where DiNucci struggled far more and looked much worse then he did the previous week.

And after the game when asked about why Pickett wasn’t given any work Narduzzi went on defense.

Narduzzi used freshman quarterback Kenny Pickett briefly in the second half of last week’s home loss to N.C. State. Pickett didn’t play Saturday.

“There was no reason to,” Narduzzi said.

Again, 8-18, 149 yards. Prior to the start of the 4th quarter, his stat line was 6-15, 75 yards.

There was every reason to pull DiNucci. I know Pitt pulled out the win, but DiNucci was not the reason. He looked horrid. He looked afraid to run at times. And basically, Narduzzi decided he wasn’t going to be pulled unless he committed a turnover.

Again, no plan to work Pickett into a series. Only to react afterwards to a mistake.

Ah, well. On to Virginia.