They are 4-0 in a rain-shortened Fall season, with four lopsided wins against Kent State, IUP and Frostburg State (2).

Unlike Hermanek, who basically destroyed the program Holly had built by ignoring recruiting good pitching, our new coach has tried to address the woeful pitching she inherited. She has added 2 freshmen and one JC transfer to the staff, to go with the 3 seniors left from last year’s team. That probably is 2 or 3 short of the optimum number of pitchers needed (in its first year playing softball, Clemson made the NCAA tournament with 9 pitchers on the team, one of whom was ACC freshman of the year), but it’s an improvement. Of course, with all 3 returning pitchers being seniors, she will have to recruit at least 2 or 3 for next year too.

I know nothing about any of the five transfers (including the P) she has signed or the 5 of the 6 freshmen on the squad. One freshman pitcher was Pitcher of the Year in her conference in Ohio for all 4 years of high school. But — and it’s a big but — her high school plays in the smallest school division in Ohio, so she was unlikely to have played against many good players. Two of the others are from Southern California, which is encouraging because Aprile recruited that area so well. Hopefully, as a former pitcher she recognizes pitching talent and recruited pitchers with real potential.

Besides taking advantage of the portal, did we lose anymore players to the portal? After Lyke finally fired Hermanek, we lost a number of our starters to the portal. Lyke had met with the team after she fired Hermanek, talked with them about her background in softball, and reportedly promised them that she would have a top-notch coach signed by a specified date. She urged them not to enter the portal before that date. When she didn’t have a hire in place, a number entered the portal.

I don’t know anything more about the newcomers or how our new coach is regarded as a recruiter. Anyone have any inside info?

i wasn't able to watch it. i know we won but how did we look?

Pat Narduzzi held his weekly press conference on Monday and talked about Pitt's win over North Carolina, this week's matchup with Cal and a lot more. Here's video and a full rundown of everything he said.

I just took a peek of the show for the first time in a long while and I felt like I was watching an old Community Access show on Cable TV.

Packer is talking to the other guy Loogz, but Packer's mic is not working so it sounds like Loog is talking to himself. Plus they're still broadcasting out of Packer's house.

ACC should be able to find studio time or a more professional setting by now. They should just cancel the show if this the best they can do. This is embarrassing. There so many other shows broadcasting on YouTube that is more professional than this.

OK, I'm done ranting now 😏

I love Mondays because the NCAA updates their stat sheet. Pitt is prominent. Here goes....

Individual Rankings....remember this includes all 346 Division 1 schools....rankings include the top 50 athletes in each category

• Aces/set...Babcock #2 in the country....VVG #44....Pitt is the only team with 2 in the top 50
• Assists/set....Fairbanks 16th in the country
• Blocks/set....Kelley 37th in the country
• Hitting %....Stafford 16th in the country
• Kills/set....Stafford 20th in the country....Babcock 28th....Pitt is the only team with 2 in the top 50
• Pts/set....Babcock 3rd in the country....Stafford 22nd....Pitt is the only team with 2 in the top 50

Pitt's Team Ranking Within the Top 50 Schools

• Hitting %....1st
• Opposition Hitting %....1st
• Aces/set....4th
• Kills/set....10th
• Assists/set....11th
• Blocks/set....21st

12. Pittsburgh (4-0)​

Last week's ranking: 18th

SP+ and FPI rankings: 31st and 39th

SP+ strength of schedule to date: 99th

Odds of reaching 12-0, per SP+: 0.3%

What the Panthers did in Week 5: off

Why they're ranked here: It's difficult to recognize Pitt at the moment, and not only because the school finally went back to its glorious "Pitt Script" helmets. In the past seven seasons, Pat Narduzzi's Panthers have ranked better than 50th in defensive SP+ five times and better than 50th in offensive SP+ just once. But here they are, ranking sixth in both points per drive and yards per play one third of the way through the season. One problem: They're also 86th in points allowed per drive. They've scored at least 38 points in three games and allowed at least 24 in three.

Pitt has risen from 91st in SP+ last season to 31st so far this year despite the iffy defense, but five of its next seven opponents are 41st or better. Quarterback Eli Holstein and running back Desmond Reid are going to give the Panthers a chance in virtually any game they play this season, but fielding maybe their worst defense since 2016 is going to make virtually any game losable too.

Next test: Week 6 at North Carolina.

As I'm sure many others have already said or thought, the last Pitt football team that started 5-0 was the 1991 squad. Their final record of 6-5 (or, let's say 7-5 since we have a 12 game regular season now) is certainly not what the 2024 Panther team wants to achieve.

I wish my memory was better and I could recall each and every game from the 1991 season. I can't. I looked up that team's "history" on Wikipedia and did see one very interesting fact from that team (led by HC Paul Hackett): there were three future NFL head coaches on Pitt's staff that year. Two position coaches and a grad assistant. Anyone care to guess before "cheating" and looking it up?

For whatever reason it’s 11 am tomorrow.So take note of that.

The best freshman in the country

I don’t know if people need to mince words anymore about Eli Holstein. The Pitt quarterback is having the best season of any freshman in the country. I don’t know if he is the best freshman with respect to Alabama’s Ryan Williams, but Holstein is having the best season in terms to a team’s success, the position he plays, and how he is playing it.

Holstein is one of two quarterbacks in the entire country averaging 300 yards passing per game with an undefeated record. The only other being Cam Ward of Miami. That’s the bottom line, though. He is not just playing well for a freshman quarterback, Holstein is up there with the best.

Holstein broke Pitt's single game freshman passing total, with 381 yards and three touchdowns against North Carolina, giving him 1,564 yards, 15 touchdown, and three interceptions on the year.

Dual threat?

Eli Holstein’s passing has obviously been the driving force of his success, but his running has to start getting talked about more and more. He is up to 265 yards on the season, and leads Pitt with three rushing touchdowns. It’s the best rushing total for a Pitt quarterback since Nate Peterman posted 286 yards and three touchdowns in 2016.

At the North Carolina postgame press conference, Holstein sat down, looked at the stats, and immediately did a fist bump. He admitted he was checking on his rushing stats.

“I only lost one yard,” Holstein said. “That’s not too bad. I’ll take that.”

After only gaining one rushing yard in the opener, he has rushed for 59 yards or more over Pitt’s last three games. He was Pitt’s leading rusher against North Carolina with 76 yards on only ten carries.

More....

Has a picture of Eli "ACC Freshman of the Week" as the main picture over the power rankings. Heady times.

5-0.... unreal. I admittedly picked UNC to win the game 34-30 yesterday and truly didn't think Pitt could do enough on Defense to stop UNC. They proved me wrong, and while they didn't play great - they seemingly are doing just enough to mask their weaknesses and make big plays when they need to step up. Here are my Top 5 thoughts from the game:

1.) Offensively Kade Bell 100% was dialing up play after play to get guys open and put his players in position in to succeed. I believe Holstein is obviously doing his part and is playing really well, but at the same time Bell's ability to get the WR's open and putting Reid in position to succeed is highly impressive for a first year OC. It can't be overstated what kind of turnaround this unit has made from the debacle we all had to witness last year...

2.) Des Reid. Absolute stud, who refuses to be tackled and is as explosive as they come in college football. I've seen the Deuce Vaughn comparison from K-State a few years back and his game is spot on to that player comp. He is so good at catching the ball out of the backfield and I love that Bell is always looking for creative ways to get him the football. I'd make a strong argument that to this point in the season Reid is currently Pitt's most irreplaceable player.

3.) I did not love the gameplan from Randy Bates yesterday at all.... Did Pitt's Defense do enough to make big plays when needed? Yes. But IMO it was very clearly evident that Pitt rushing 4 simply was not working and I didn't think he did enough to free up his linebackers to make more plays. I thought he needed to go with much more Cover 0 - Cover 1 type of defense rather than straight zone and Cover 2. Crisswell was never going to do enough to beat them with his arm and the throws he made were because of the time he had in the pocket.

4.) I am starting to come around on the D-Line's ability to constantly get better as the season gets on. It's clear that the young guys are simply not developed enough at this stage to get off of blocks well enough and simply do not provide much of any pass rush. However I love the flashes that the young guys like Fitzsimmons, Brewu and Edwards show throughout the game. They are going to be very, very good in a few years, but unfortunately that isn't helping much now. Nate Matlack, and Elliot Donald have been massive disappointments in my eyes. Two older players that haven't shown me anything.

5.) Narduzzi / Bell's 5 min offense in that 4th quarter was an absolute abomination, and had that ball been Picked off from Holstein in the final 2 min of the game, Narduzzi should've been crucified in the post game press conference. They mismanaged that clock to unbelievable degrees on offense. In NO situation do you need to go for a "kill shot" when you have the kind of kicking game Pitt has with Sauls. As soon as that football was inside the 30 yard line there was ZERO reason to put the ball in the air from that point on. Can't convince me otherwise on that point.... that was not good.


Cal Preview: Pitt is 5-0 and in the Top 25 again and the team needs PGH to show up next Saturday. Cal losing a 25 point lead to Miami and coming across the country to lick their wounds should result in Pitt being prepared to make a statement. I do think Cal is a solid team and of course it's not a team to take lightly, but if Pitt can jump on them early with the crowd at it's back I love the chances for us to go 6-0 and into a primetime showdown with the Cuse on the 24th.

H2P!!

...super happy about the win! What a blessing it is to have a quarterback - and this team should continue to get better. I am looking forward to Fitz hitting his stride and James coming back. Nothing is ever guaranteed, but what fun!

NM

I'm in the South Side for Pat Narduzzi's weekly press conference. I'll post news and notes from what Narduzzi says here in this thread.

There was a lot of discussion about whether Pitt should have taken more time off the clock on its final drive yesterday. I initially said that I thought it was fine, since they marched 73 yards and took more than 7 minutes to do it.

Now...I kind of agree with the criticism.

Pitt ran 18 plays; 7 of those were snapped on stopped clock due to four incomplete passes, a UNC timeout and the first play of the drive. On the other 11 plays, here's the amount of time left on the play clock when Pitt snapped the ball:

:02
:16
:16
:31
:08
:27
:18
:24
:06
:08
:02

(They also had the play clock down to :16 when UNC called its timeout, so they might have been running the clock there.)

Obviously, there were some considerably early snaps in there, like those at :31, :27 and :24. Incidentally, those were all first down plays, so I wonder if some of the "rules" of the offense - going tempo after getting a first down - caused the players to get up and snap it quickly.

But even the snaps at :16 (twice) and :18 were too soon. My only thought on those plays is that Pitt's offense saw UNC's defense aligned a certain way and didn't want to give them time to adjust pre-snap.

I won't haggle too much over the :06 and :08 snaps; that's just a matter of seconds. But if all of the :16+ were run down to :10, you're looking at an additional 1:12, give or take. UNC got the ball back with 1:54 on the clock, so if we allow for the two-minute stoppage to take at least a few seconds off Pitt's possession time, you're probably looking at shaving a minute or so off the time that UNC had the ball. If you really milk it to :02 or :01 every time, perhaps you get the Tar Heels down under :30 or so.

Ultimately, it worked out: a 73-yard drive that took 7+ minutes and resulted in points was exactly what Pitt needed at that stage of the game. And I thought it was encouraging to see that they could build a drive like that. But next time, they could probably be a little more intentional with the clock.

Gasparilla and Fenway. A little disappointing but hey at least they’re slowly starting to buy in

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HAIL TO PITT!

It always seemed like every other damn program had a year they started 5-0 or better….and I vocally crucified Pat for it, especially the WMU year.

Now we are here. A win away from being undefeated in late October and two wins away from making it to November undefeated.

Even if we finish 8-4 this is way better to
Me than the 2022 team that made the season feel pretty irrelevant and lost after early October

Anybody know this guy?

96 year old Pitt fan keeping fit