Pitt women lost big to Duke today. No surprise but here’s Pitt’s scoring line by quarter: 9-6-6-10. That’s kind of embarrassing.
Faye scored 17 of Pitt’s 31 points. Johnson shot 1 for 14.
Pitt is 0-3 in the ACC. The bad news is there are 15 games remaining. Can they win one?

With FSU, Clemson, and Syracuse all of a sudden become very very important after losing to Louisville yesterday. This Pitt team has to be careful right now these next few weeks or they are gonna slowly find themselves near the bubble. They have dropped 22 spots in the NET over the last 4-5 weeks going from 5 to now at 27. I don’t wanna sit here and say these next 3 games at FSU, home to Clemson and at Syracuse are all Must win games. But you better at least go 2-1 in this stretch at the absolute worst. Anything less then that is gonna put Pitt probably in the mid 30’s in the NET and drop them down to probably around the 8-10 seeding line with a downward trajectory.

So at this point I still think they are okay as far as being safely in the tournament. However, anything less then 2-1 in these next 3 games and we are gonna be having a different conversation as far as being safely in the field is concerned come 2 weeks from now going into the last week of January.

Lowe is going to have a much more difficult decision than Bub. Bub was guaranteed 1st Round. This draft report looks good but I am not all that confident that Lowe will be a 1st Rounder. I think its possible but its a heck of a risk to come out early, go 2nd Round and then not make a roster or get a 2 way when he'd be giving up around $1 million or so either at Pitt or in the portal.

Borzello and Medcalf ranked 76 tournament hopefuls by tiers.

PITT falls in Tier IV: Can win a tournament game.

12 teams are rated in this category including Louisville, Clemson, WVU, Wisconsin and Arkansas.

I'm not 100% convinced Pitt makes the tournament yet but seeing them ranked in this tier is encouraging. Winning Saturday would be an important step towards that goal.

Many PSU fans are hating on their HC and QB. They know they're stuck. Their QB plays well in lesser games, but can't perform in the big game. He's coming back next year.
Regarding, Franklin, there is zero chance he gets fired, but at this point, they have no hope that he will ever win the big game.

Imagine if you were a HC who hated PSU fans and wanted to inflict pain on them. You would do exactly what Franklin has been doing. Get the HC job, win enough to keep getting more years and more money added to your contract, making you unfireable. And yet you lose every big game, teasing them by keeping the games close but losing in excruciating style. Over and over again. You couldn't script what he has been doing any better.

Read an article earlier that talked about how things are likely to get worse there. They are losing a lot of high end talent this year, and recruiting has weakened the past few years, and their transfer acquisitions are poor. Despite their huge fan base, they are behind with NIL funding. This year may have been their best shot at winning a natty for a long time to come.

Just putting this here for general discussion.

First game might be our first upset. BYU currently down 2-0 to Loyola Chicago.

Watched the end of their game at Syracuse. Not sure how good/bad Syracuse is but L'ville is playing some really good ball right now. It made me feel better about Saturday's results. Didn't realize they had reeled off that many ACC wins in a row.

As expected aCarson Beck has signed with Miami and several sources stated that he got a 4 million dollar contract. The Canes will play Pitt this year. This is getting to be absurd. Its more than he would have made inthe NFL,

I've seen that tossed around after some of the early blowouts. But...

#5 is meeting #6 for the championship.

Thoughts on how he will play? He actually played quite well last week, likely without a ton of prep. Pocket presence looked really solid…no more spinning out. His receivers lost him a good 60 yards on drops, and he added another 70 or so yards on pi’s on good throws.

He is playing a pretty crap team today, so potential is there for a very solid game. I’ll go 20-28 for 225 yards and two tds, maybe about 25 yards rushing. I’ll say there is a pick as well.

Just seems like he gets an audience that others don’t.
Always sporting a NC logo or colors.
Not sure if it’s a level playing field.
Not all conversations are about college, but this has to help his scope and reach in recruiting.

Pitt will open the 2025 season on August 30 against Duquesne at Acrisure Stadium, the school just announced.

Lots of thoughts all over the board, so I thought I would mention a few things that stood out to me from last night's game:

- Pitt scored consecutive points on just three occasions: a 7-0 run in the first half that gave the Panthers their only lead; a Lowe three and a Corhen put-back in the second half; and Cummings' back-to-back transition layups. That's it. Duke scored consecutive points six times - and that's before the final 8 minutes, when the Blue Devils scored all of the points.

- Pitt only attempted 6 three-pointers in the first half. Attempted - not made. That's not this team's game. It's not how they typically play, and it's certainly not how they win. I think the shooters were open, but they were getting passes. Duke collapsed on the guards driving, but Pitt was never able to make the Blue Devils pay for it.

- That said, I was kind of surprised to see that Lowe and Leggett had three assists each in the first half.

- I was less surprised to see that those two combined for one assist in the second half.

- The final 8 minutes were a blowout that kind of rendered a lot of earlier events moot, but there were several segments where Pitt missed some big opportunities. In the first half, Duke was up 30-21 when Corhen got a steal and threw ahead to Austin. But Austin traveled on the fast break. Then, over the next 90 seconds, Corhen and Leggett both missed the front end of one-and-one's; that's six wasted points in a nine-point game on the road against a top-five opponent.

- Lowe and Leggett are Pitt's best players because they're able to put the team on their backs, and that's what they tried to do last night. Oftentimes, it works. Last night, it didn't. But they never seemed to adjust to Duke collapsing in the paint.

That said, I think it's pretty remarkable that those two combined to shoot just one free throw in the entire game. One. And that wasn't even a shooting foul. Lowe and Leggett combined to attempt 11 layups officially (they made 3) and while seemingly every one of those layup attempts involved them driving into a wall of Duke players, they didn't get a single call.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter when you give up an 18-0 run and lose by 29. But it's still pretty remarkable that they didn't get one shooting foul.

- Really, though, layups weren't the best approach against Duke's defense anyway. As a team, Pitt was 7-of-19 on layups (and two of those makes were in transition, although the fact that Pitt only got two transition layups is notable, too). It's just tough to attack like that against the size and length that Duke has. The ball needed to be kicked out, but for whatever reason, that wasn't the game plan.

- We also saw the rotation shorten considerably last night. No Papa Amadou Kante or Amsal Delalic at all, and Jorge Diaz Graham played 7 minutes - 5 in the first half and 2 in the second half when Zack Austin got hurt.

- Of course, none of this changes what happened last night, what happened in the previous 14 games or what needs to happen on Saturday and beyond. Pitt is still a really good team. Lowe and Leggett will be better. The shooters are still dangerous. Dunn's return is a big boost. And Corhen keeps improving (he might have been the only thing approaching a bright spot last night).