I'm in the camp of a win being a win. I'll likely write up a post mortem after the bowl season is over but here are my quick (lane - see what i did there?!) thoughts:
- Pickett was mostly good. He did bail on a few clean pockets and had the fumble on what was looking like a scoring play on the opening drive but take a look at the stats: 361 yards passing, almost 70% passing (funny what a few less drops will do there), 3 TDs and no picks. I know he threw it 159 more times this year, but he had a better year, even if 13-9 (yes!) TD-INT ration leaves a lot to be desired. Chris already touched on this but he's going to go down as (statistically) one of the top Pitt QBs we've seen. I really like how tough he is and how he doesn't get rattled. He seems to have the intangibles but lets see what he looks like after another offseason.
- The running game wasn't good again. We got no push against this D line as we haven't all year. Davis had a nice rushing line because he ran well on the delays but this was another poor rushing attack game.
- Oh - look what happens when you throw down the field to speedy receivers! SIX players caught a pass and had over a 10 yard average, none bigger than the game winner for Mack who was mostly quiet all night. I can only assume he's still a bit hurt.
- 3 more fumbles - WTF.
- If you want proof that this team did NOT care about this game, take a look at how the defense played on the last drive. They glass escape at least 4 times when they had a sack. However, when they needed to put the game away, they were fired up. To be honest, I expected this when the team talked about how they were dissapointed after the BC game.
- Kessman needs to be better next year. I know his slow start hurt his final stats but he regressed from 76.5% to 71 this year. He needs to be closer to 78 or better next year as a senior.
- We can argue whether this was a good win, a bad win, a bad showing, whatever. But here are the facts: they won 8 games three times over a 5 year period for only the second time since the early 80s. Narduzzi won his first bowl game. Pitt's record under PN is only 36-29 which is mostly scheduling since they went 24-16 in conference. If we play a pancake instead of PSU, we have 9 wins and really should have had 10 given the how bad BC and Miami were.
- This win didn't buy any additional time for Narduzzi. He will be expected to win 9 games next year or he will firmly be on the hot seat. Lyke seems to aggressive when she thinks a change needs to be made.
