This is how you know expectations for USF have risen. The performance against Pitt was not viewed as a positive event.
All week the Pittsburgh Panthers repeatedly said they were worried about the University of South Florida’s speed. They couldn’t stop talking about the Bulls’ overall quickness.
They meant it as a compliment.
On Saturday afternoon in their first Big East road game, the Bulls showed speed in an unwanted area. After controlling the opening quarter, USF collapsed in a rapid-fire meltdown of turnovers and missed tackles, handing Pitt a 31-17 victory.
“I thought we played horrible,” USF coach Jim Leavitt said. “I didn’t think we battled adversity very well.”
USF Coach Leavitt was apparently really pissed about the way his team played.
Rarely, if ever, has Leavitt been so angry after a game. He let his team know how he felt, and he is likely to reinforce that when it is time to review the tape of this debacle.
“You can’t win with turnovers and missed assignments,” running back Andre Hall said.
And then he shook his head.
“We had a 10-0 lead on those guys — we slowed down, rolled over,” he said.
The Bulls faced neither a hostile atmosphere nor a daunting opponent in this one, but they weren’t up to the job. These are the kind of losses you look back upon with pain when the season is done. The Bulls should have won here, no question.
Horrible. Just horrible.
Anyone care to argue?
Sadly, it’s true with respect to the environment. Pitt fans just did not show up for this game. We got to the lot a little later than anticipated — it was around 11:20am as we came in sight of the stadium and the lots surrounding Heinz Field. They were disturbingly thin. It was an absolutely perfect fall day. In the mid-60s, sunny, a bit windy — but not biting. No excuses, and no people. More students than last weekend with Cinci, but the overall turnout was very disappointing.
To some degree I understand bad fan support the last couple of games. Pitt didn’t just get off to a bad start, it got off to a pathetic, humiliating beginning resulting in national humiliation. Really there is no other way to put it. All 4 of Pitt’s losses came on national TV exposure. The three Pitt wins have come with no TV broadcasts at all. This has hurt.
Still it is disappointing and frustrating for Pitt fans who support the team. I know I was a little pissed that I make the 150 mile trek and see that people within 5-30 miles can’t be bothered.
Sorry about the digression. Back to the Tampa area meida pissing on their team.
South Florida had a 10-point lead on the road against a team that isn’t very good. The Bulls had blocked a punt, forced a fumble, and were basically kicking Pitt’s butt. They had only to put the Panthers away and stay undefeated in the Big East.
That’s what championship teams do.
Alas, instead of putting their foot on Pitt’s throat, the Bulls grasped their own windpipe and didn’t let go until a marvelous opportunity was squandered — oddly fitting, since it’s about the only thing they held onto with regularity all day.
Yeesh. The media really hammered the QBs.
We tend to focus on the quarterbacks, and, lordy, they were bad. …
Look, Pat Julmiste is a great young man and a standup guy, and we don’t mean to be overly harsh. But there was an opportunity here that doesn’t come along that often, and the Bulls — particularly their quarterback — let it vanish in a wave of mistakes that, frankly, shouldn’t be happening this late in the season.
“We’re halfway through the year. We should be sound on our assignments,” Julmiste said.
No argument there, either.
What is strange, is I didn’t think Julmiste was that bad. He wasn’t great, but his receivers were really bad. Yet no one down there is talking about the dropped passes, the alligator arms and the lack of effort from the WRs to help. Instead, the blame is just getting heaped on the QBs.
Julmiste, by the way, seems to be a little sick of being the whipping boy by the coaches and the media for the teams mistakes on offense.
“After a few turnovers and dropping the ball, what would anybody do?” Leavitt said about replacing Julmiste. “That wasn’t a hard decision and then Courtney can’t come in there and do what he did.”
What Denson did was throw an interception on third-and-8 from USF’s 10. Pitt’s Bernard Lay returned the interception 11 yards to USF’s 8.
Pittsburgh scored on the next play to make it 31-17.
Julmiste said he wasn’t surprised he was replaced for the second time in as many games.
“I don’t go against Coach’s judgment to put Courtney to in,” Julmiste said. “Obviously he [saw] when I was in, we didn’t get anything going so he tried to get a spark with Courtney.
“I don’t want to accept [getting pulled], but at the same token that’s the way it is around here. Coach expects perfect play out of his quarterbacks and they were looking for somebody else to find it.”
After Denson’s interception, Julmiste returned and finished the game. Julmiste completed 18 of 35 for 222 yards and one touchdown. He also had 20 rushes — several were avoiding sacks — for 58 yards.
There were some attempts at finding positives — like the fact that Greg Lee was from Tampa.
“It’s exciting to play against guys that I played with or against in high school and this is the only time this year I get to do that,” said Lee, who registered his fourth 100-yard game of the season and the 10th of his career, which leads all active receivers in the Big East. “I wouldn’t mind playing these guys every week.”
Even as he likes to further twist the knife on the Bulls.
“Of course it’s satisfying doing it against a team that didn’t recruit you out of high school,” Lee said.
While on the subject of poor fan support, USF only had 500 or so fans attend the Sun Dome where they were showing the ESPN360 broadcast on screens there. With the Sun Dolls providing additional entertainment.
Fans that attended blamed it on insufficient advertising.
Finally, USF shares Raymond James Stadium with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers like Pitt shares Heinz Field with the Steelers. Well, apparently not nearly so nice a relationship.
Like USF, Pittsburgh shares its stadium with an NFL team, but Heinz Field is much kinder to its college tenants than Raymond James Stadium. Even with the Steelers playing a home game today, Pittsburgh had its name in the north end zone, and the Panthers have their name prominently displayed around the stadium.
It’s an understated, sometimes underappreciated thing, but it is where Pitt plays and there are full-time representations and signage for Pitt all around and in the stadium.
