Out rebounded by 8 (by 12 on offensive boards). Committed 15 turnovers to Vandy's 11. If Pitt hadn't shot a lot better % than Vandy it would have been a blowout given Vandy had 70 FG attempts to Pitt's 50 FG attempts.

FWIW--Sagarin's computer was on the money with Vandy by 1 point.

The current James Madison offensive coordinator finished the regular season with the following rankings:

- 15th highest scoring offense
- 33rd best passing offense
- 39th best rushing offense
- 28th most yards per game

His name has garnered interest in the Oregon and Texas A&M offensive coordinator searches, at least from what I’ve seen on Twitter. I think there’s a good chance that he could get a head coaching job in the near future.

Pitt will now open next year with Wofford on Sept 2, 2023. Clemson apparently dropped Wofford, as the game was to be played Sept 2, 2023. My guess is that Clemson possibly has a big time neutral site game for Sept2. This is total speculation on my part. If so, Clemson and Pitt worked together, and it puts a 1-AA game to open the season, which makes sense to me if you are going to play them. Discuss....

Does anyone know what channel that game will be on dec.30th?? Thanks in advance!!!

Gotta be Croatia, right?

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Brazil stunned. Yay!

They really blew this one against the Rams. Mayfield defeats them on 2 days notice. LOL

Good to see Cignetti tag Wayne here. Now get more WRs to complement him.

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3 year starter at LG for UCF, played HS at Seneca Valley.

I have no idea what his grades are like or if he would consider transferring or being a graduate transfer candidate (true junior), but I always like checking rosters of teams that are going through coaching changes to see if there are kids to poach. If he is in line to graduate in 3 years, very possible, he'd be a great addition to the OL next year.

Just another name to throw out there.

What do you think of this lineup?

#10 - Pulisic - needs to be in the center of the park creating

#6 - Adams - obvious

7 and 11 - Musah/McKennie

8 and 9 - Weah/Reyna

Aaronson as the 1st sub at any midfield/forward position besides the 6.

I think Pulisic needs to play the Donovan, center attacking midfield role. I never liked limiting him to one side of the field. He needs to draw attention out to him, opening up other spots.

Reyna/Weah have should play the Dempsey/Altidore but should be better.

Maybe we can re-hire Jurgen.

He has played well enough for the team to have been 7-2 during his stint as QB

Was talking to a friend earlier tonight who lives Georgia. He was telling me about a young man who plays football for one of the local high schools near his home. Evidently, he is friends with the parents of one of the players on that team, a Rivals 4 Star Recruit, named Debron Gatling. The young man in a Junior right now and measures 6' 1" and weighs 185 pounds. Has good grades and ran a 4.45 40 yard dash. He is a WR/CB.
Earlier in the year, a family friend reached out to the University of Pittsburgh about the young man having interest in coming to Pitt because of what the program did for Jordan Addison. The family was told by a Pitt football representative that Pitt was not interested in the kid because they did not have a scholarship available at the time for him. Now remember, this kid is currently a Junior in high school so we are talking about his graduating in 2024. How in the world can Pitt say they did not have a scholarship available for him in the Class of 2024? This is the stuff that frustrates me about Pitt's recruiting. At the time, the kid had offers from only two schools. Us this the reason why Pitt didn't have a scholarship available? Currently. he now has 39 offers (as of last week) and all of the usual blue bloods are there. Alabama, Georgia, Oregon, LSU, Michigan, penn state among those who have offered and Pitt didn't have a scholarship available to offer at the time? Since then, Pitt has now joined those other schools and has offered a scholarship to the kid. Why not offer the kid when he was interested on coming to Pitt?
Just frustrates me as a fan of the school because they always seem to show little to no real interest in trying to land those 4 and 6 star recruits. Here was a kid who had interest in coming here and they kind of just blew him off.
From what I've been told, he is going to announce this weekend where he is planning on going to school.
Hopefully Pitt has stepped up their interest and have reached out to the kid and his family. A couple of phone calls from the right people can go along way in making a young man and his family feel like a school really wants the kid to play there.
Now I understand that wherever the kid says he going to go to school is not binding and I am sure that he will change his mind a couple of times, but Pitt needs to show the kid some attention.

That is about 36 complete D1 teams worth of scholarship players.....or 1/3 of all teams in the FBS. I am certain there are more to come in the next month. This is a complete disaster

Partridge might want to get an offer out there..

Shades of Malecki..

Just posterizing the Quips..

Of course in year 5 with very little joy to date, every game is a referendum on Capel. As someone who has been critical of the Capel era, I didn’t think this one was on him last night. But I’ll give 3 good things and 3 bad things I think I see from the actual on court coaching aspect of this game and how it could translate beyond.

Good:
1. Everyone knows Capel let’s his players play free. Until this year, it didn’t work all that well because they hadn’t had shooters. Now that guys are sprinting to spots in transition and taking and making wide open 3’s, the offense and its flow are translating at a higher rate. This should be something good to continue.

2. The 1-2-2 3/4 court zone. It disrupted their flow and got some turnovers and when it didn’t took about 12-13 seconds for Vandy to get into into any sort of offense. With FF at the back end, you can gamble a bit more and stay in it a bit longer. If Hugley were ever to get in shape, he could be a gambler for steals in the back. I’d like to see it stay as a staple off FT regardless of make or miss. Miss is even better because they will have to hand it to a guard then set up their press break and it will take 2-3 seconds longer to break.

3. The end of game coaching was good. They played loose, they played aggressive, drew up a nice set in a timeout and took a late lead. You can’t really blame the foul on the end on Capel. Just a flukey, unlucky mistake from a guy who played a terrific game otherwise.

Bad:
1. The obvious. Playing the ineffective Hugley way too much. The key stretch that he was in when FF should’ve been in was after the under 8 in the second half. Inexcusable. FF was + 13 and Hugley was -12. Or +12 and -13. Either way, the point is you simply cannot play Hugley more at this juncture. And the time has come and passed for him to figure it out in game. He needs to play less, plain and simple.

2. The offensive sets aren’t conducive to get Hugley going either. Forcing him into decisions at the 3 point line leads him to believe he’s a 3 point shooter, getting bad fouls with his body, or pick and rolling which is not his strong suit. And the other main set where he gets it and dribble hands off isn’t much better as he just does not look comfortable at this juncture. FF has to be the pick and roll guy. Catching lobs and O boards should be his only shot to score. I guess this could’ve been 1B

3. This really could be labeled 1C. I absolutely cannot stand switching DHO and screens with Hugley. He cannot guard bigs, let alone guards. And the same can be said for FF. I loved the way Vandy played our ball screens. The effort really threw us off.
The other thing about the switching onto guards with our bigs and Vice versa is it puts Hugley and FF in bad rebounding position. We saw how that worked out.

Really minor tweaks could be made to have a mildly successful season and a possible NIT berth. It will be almost impossible for NCAA with the OOC record.

Getting ready to start on ESPN news until the Louisville match is over on espnu
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Tipoff is set for 9:00 on the SEC Network. It does not appear the Tennessee game will be over by 9:00, so we'll see what happens.

We already knew this, but what a piece of garbage. Washington fans can't get rid of him fast enough.

Hopefully some of you non-soccer fans will tune into ESPNU tonight to check out Pitt's national semifinal. Figured I'd give a little run down.

Despite being unseeded and Indiana being #12, I would say Pitt is a slight favorite. They play in the best league whereas Indiana plays in the college soccer version of Atlantic 10 basketball. However, IU is a strong, historic program. Their old coach is like the John Wooden of college soccer, winning a bunch of NC's before anyone was really playing college soccer. His son is now the coach and has done a good job. He basically gets the best Midwestern kids. Whereas Vidovich recruits primarily in Europe and in the transfer market.

Here's a little about the Pitt starters. I will list the number of seasons they have remaining in parentheses as best I can tell.

RB - Lucas Rosa (0)
- from Brazil
- NEC Player of the Year at St. Francis (PA) after scoring 11 goals. 1st year playing since 2019 after his Covid season was canceles and was hurt last year
- has done a good job providing service offensively in the Jasper Loefflesend role (who plays in MLS now and is a part time starter). Definitely an offensive-minded RB.

LB - Mateo Maillefeaud (2)
- from France
- also likes to get forward, scored one of the prettiest goals you'll ever see on any level at UNC

Center Backs
Jackson Gilman (3)
- from Philly
- equivalent of being a 4 or 5 star recruit
- has played every minute this season
- has already played pro soccer with Philadelphia Union 2 in MLS Next Pro, teammates with Paxten Aaronson and Quinn Sullivan, both of whom will be on the USMNT U23 team at the 2024 Olympics and Aaronson will probably join his brother at the 2026 World Cup

Yannis Leerman (0)
- from France
- transfer from UCF
- drafted in the 3rd Round last year by Chicago Fire

Or

Henrique Gallina (0)
- from Brazil
- transfer from USF
- not sure who will start but this is their weakest spot on the field IMO

Midfielders
Jackson Walti (0)
- from Switzerland but was offered a walk-on role while recruiting former star Edward Kizza from Montverde in Florida
- started every game in his career and tonight will he his 100th
- heart and soul of the team
- plays the "Tyler Adams" defensive midfield role

Filip Mirkovic (2)
- from Serbia, moved to NYC around middle schoolish and played for NYCFC's youth teams
- more of an offensive-minded midfielder
- been known to score from outside the box which is something to look for as IU probably parks the bus and plays for penalties

Michael Sullivan (2)
- from Deer Lakes
- local kid who some may have thought was just a token offer as this area doesn't produce a lot of high level players but he's shown he belongs. Not as productive as you'd like but he's only a sophomore and you cant have stats everywhere

Forwards
Valentin Noel (1)
- from France
- leading goal scorer with 11
- finalist for Soccer version of Heisman 2 years ago
- scored game winner in OT in Elite 8

Bertin Jacquesson (2)
- from France
- 2nd leading scorer with 8
- one of the best, if not THE best right sided wingers in the NCAA

Josh Luchini (0)
- from NA
- 4 year starter at Lehigh
- nice to see this local kid getting playing time but this is a spot the team needs more out of

Goalkeeper
Joe Van der Sar
- from Netherlands
- son of arguably the greatest GK ever, Edwin Van der Sar
- is on FIFA 18 when he was on the roster of a team in the Eredivisie

I expect the game to look a lot like the game 2 years ago. This Pitt team isnt as good as they were 2 years ago but neither is Indiana. I expect Indiana to sit back and defend the whole game and try to catch us on a counter like 2 years ago.

My pick
1-1
Pitt advancing in PKs

Supposed to be a future star. He has American citizenship through his mom, Ukrainian citizenship through his dad, and was born in England. Does the UK not have birthright citizenship because this article says he qualifiers for England as a passport holder.

I guess the hope is that Ukraine dont qualify for 2026. He wont make England at 19. Maybe then he would consider playing for the USMNT.

Supposedly, there are "foreign" kids who qualify for the US at Liverpool and Bayern also.

Beat Florida 3-1.

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Time heals all wounds. Retweeted by DiBiaso.

3-1 vs Florida.

Hail 2 PITT