Same Old Pitt

Pitt had a chance to put a stranglehold on the Big East last night and let it slip away. This is the all too familiar story for this Pitt program under Dave Wannstedt. Just when fans begin to get their hopes up the Panthers find a way to bring them back to reality. In what should have been a fourth consecutive Big East win and another notch closer to the Top 25 and a BCS Bowl bid, Pitt was outplayed and pushed around in the fourth quarter on their way to losing to an inferior Connecticut team 30-28. The loss should make Pitt fans angry and disappointed all at the same time.

That paragraph sounds like a bleak analysis of last night’s loss to the Connecticut Huskies, but I am pretty sure that it sums up many of the Panthers fans’ feelings today. After a disappointing non-conference schedule that left the Panthers 2-3 and looking like anything but a BCS Bowl team, the Panthers started to look like the team many, including myself, thought they could be at the beginning of the year. Maybe we had underestimated the integration of a new quarterback and a new interior offensive line that led to the Panthers struggles in the early going but now they were starting to find their stride on the offensive line and quarterback Tino Sunseri’s play had improved dramatically over the past few weeks. The Panthers were not only winning their Big East games, they were winning them convincingly. There was a chance Pitt could run the table in the conference and restore some respect for both the program and the Big East Conference as a whole.

That momentum came to a crashing halt last night. Even if Pitt wins out and manages to win the Big East, something that looks a whole lot more unlikely today, the Panthers will garner no national respect and at 8-4 or 7-5, the Big East BCS representative will spend a month getting ridiculed instead of hyped.

There is no need to go over the details of the game. Everyone saw Ray Graham cough up a costly fumble on the return after Connecticut took the lead midway through the fourth quarter. Everyone saw how the defense failed to make a stand, not only on the pivotal fourth down play (give UConn coach Randy Edsall a ton of credit for making that call, can you imagine Wannstedt ever doing that?!), but all game long everytime the Panthers had a chance to put the hammer down the defense failed to respond. Everyone saw Sunseri make two terrible passes that led to interceptions, the one probably costing Pitt points in the first half. Everyone saw the same old Pitt. The Panthers had a chance to once again establish itself as the premier team in the Big East conference and failed to do so, just as they have the past two years.