In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about Pitt's missed opportunity at Duke and how the Panthers can bounce back. Plus, we're looking at the football seniors who have decided to come back for one more year - and the seniors who are still on the fence.

Moore will be on campus this month.

Ranked Penn State the lowest out of any other coach. I probably would have ranked them even lower. Their best win was the same as ours, over a 3 loss Pac 12 team. Beat only 4 other teams with winning records

I have no idea who she is. But she is definitely pleasant to look at. But watching KDKA news they just showed her as she is coming to town and I realized just how much I truly hate country music.

So much so, I had to share it for the 1000th time.

R.I.P.

13 games away from an incredible feat

here's the article. https://theathletic.com/4086860/2023/01/12/ncaa-convention-congress-federal-nil-law/

i'll give a sample b/c it's really just a quote that is out there anyway. maybe this thread gets political. i don't know. my personal opinion is: 1 - we already saw how the SCOTUS ruled for the players (9-0, i believe). so there's a bit of a precedent. 2 - i really can't see this current congress taking on this task. maybe i'm wrong but even if they take it on, would they agree on anything?

i don't know where this all ends but it doesn't seem to me that it will be a good situation any time soon.

No one ever said it’d be easy to work with Congress. But it may be the only way forward, according to Baylor president Linda Livingstone, who chairs the NCAA Board of Governors, the organization’s highest governing body. Livingstone spent a great deal of time at the NCAA’s annual convention on Thursday detailing the need for Congressional help as the association faces myriad attacks from outside entities. Multiple lawsuits aimed at the economic structure of college athletics are working their way through the courts in a legal environment that appears more supportive of athletes’ rights than ever before. The National Labor Relations Board is proceeding with an unfair labor practice charge filed against USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA in a push to categorize athletes as employees.

Livingstone repeatedly said that the NCAA needs Congress to protect the categorization of athletes so that they cannot be classified as employees.

“We feel like there’s a great sense of urgency,” Livingstone said. “It’s related in some ways to some of the potential state laws that are out there that the state legislators are looking at. It’s related to some things that could be coming out of some of the federal agencies. So, we absolutely believe that it’s urgent, it’s essential and it’s something that we really need to lean into and make progress on in this legislative session.”

About our season
Login to view embedded media

Login to view embedded media
Login to view embedded media

So now that Jason Zucker's healthy and playing well, the blogosphere is suggesting he be re-signed after this year. Is that a good idea? He seems to get injured quite a lot and they certainly didn't get their money's worth over his entire tenure here. And he's over 30.

What do you think we should do?
Re-sign him knowing he'll want a long-term deal with lots of $$$. Wouldn't that be another albatross we seem to keep tying ourselves to every year?
Let him play out the year and lose him in free agency for nothing?
Trade him now to recoup some ROI and yet younger/faster/cheaper
OR Trade for the 3rd center now that Carter has expired like milk left in the sun.

What do you think?

Pitt last team in
Penn State first team out.

He makes a comment that he “goofed” earlier in the week not having Pitt in the field.

247 did their regular rankings update. Carrington gets a small bump from #101 to #96, and Lowe drops a little bit from #72 to #76. No meaningful change for Barnes.

All told, 247 continues to have Pitt as the #24 class in the country, and the #2 class in the ACC behind Duke. Other schools will pick up some kids before the early signing window, but the biggest prospects that would shake up the rankings the most are pretty much all committed at this point. Less than 10 kids in the top 150 are uncommitted.

Seems like it will be harder for players to play immediately after a 2nd transfer. Or will they just let a kid from North Carolina say his mental health is suffering so he needs to transfer to Colorado because the skiing will be better for his mental health?

4 good wins (UVA/UNC traditional powers at home - NC St/Syr middle of the pack teams away)

No bad losses (Undefeated Clemson by 1 at home - Traditional power Duke away)

We have to avoid bad losses (Might only be able to afford 1 or 2)

Big game Saturday - We need it

If we are nor going to play John or Dior, we definitely need to play Jorge more. Need to keep Fede and particularly Hinson out of foul trouble. We need Hinson on the floor and scoring.

i still think we get 10-11 league wins, but offense needs to stay out of foul trouble and resume moving the ball to do that.

H2P

To crap or get off the crapper . Wecould have used him . Every win is important here on out . He needs to play or go home . Sorry!

Carter the transfer flipped his commitment from PSU to WVU. Obviously could have some impact with Cephas which is why I’m posting it

Login to view embedded media

I'm transcribing Jeff Capel's press conference from yesterday, and this answer about his decision to come to Pitt and what the last four years have been like really stood out to me. It's a long answer but pretty interesting.

"Well, I know I made the right move. Look, I knew when I took this, it was going to be a difficult task. I understood where the program was and there were a lot of factors with that. It wasn’t one thing. I know there was one thing that was blamed or one person that was blamed, and that’s not it. There were a lot of things. One person doesn’t make a program; one person doesn’t break a program. And so I understood it. I understood it even more when I got here. It’s like, you don’t know a place or you don’t know a person until you’re with them all the time, and when I got here, you start to understand, you start to see.

"I think one of the biggest factors is that it’s a new neighborhood. It was in a new neighborhood. It wasn’t the Big East. It was the ACC. When I took the job here, I was shocked, I mean absolutely shocked, that first month, first few months, when I would talk to kids, talk to AAU coaches, talk to the kids’ parents, recruits, I mean, and they had no idea Pitt was in the ACC. This is not, like, national. This is, you know, Ohio kids or neighboring states. So I knew it was going to be difficult. When I got here, it was almost the end of the school year and the recruiting cycle, as far as available guys - so I understood that.

"The job, when you look at it, in the four years prior to me coming, of Pitt being in the ACC, I’m the third coach and Heather’s the third AD, so there wasn’t a lot of stability. After Year Two, the world changed with Covid. You play a season the next year where you have no fans. You go from March of 2020 to July of 2021 where we can do no off-campus recruiting and we can’t have people here. One of the first things I learned when I took this job, after being here for a little bit, is we have to get kids on campus. Most people have never been to Pittsburgh, so most people have an opinion of what they think Pittsburgh is. I know I did before I moved here, and it’s nothing like I imagined it or thought it would be. So we had that period where we couldn’t have anyone here.

"Once that was over with, the landscape of college athletics changed with one-time transfers. And then you introduce NIL. So it’s just all these things in a four-year period that happened, two of which - three of which, you didn’t anticipate that made the job even more difficult.

"But I never questioned whether I made the right decision. I never did that. I felt like I made the right decision. I never had a dream job when I got into coaching. My dream was to coach in the ACC. I believed in this program. I knew the history of it. I believed in Heather and Chancellor Gallagher. But most importantly, or just as important, I should say, I believed in me and what we could do. It’s been hard. It’s been difficult. It’s been a lot of setbacks. It’s been a lot of that. But we’re still here, we’re still swinging and we’re trying to get better each day and we’re fighting. I really like the group of guys that we have. I really like the three young men that we’ve signed and I really look forward to our future."