| Todd Graham | Pitt Faithful Show Optimism | ||||
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“We’re close and this is just one game, but we're close because all of us have really come together,” Coach Graham noted after the Panthers beat up on USF 44-17. It was Pitt’s fourth straight win against the Bulls and gave the Panthers a 1-0 start in Big East Conference play.
Coming together can’t be downplayed since this Pitt team surrendered 21 points in the fourth quarter at Iowa and failed to hold off Notre Dame late in that game. Pitt backers could hardly be blamed for holding their collective breath when the fourth quarter started against South Florida; their team had been outscored 49-24 in the fourth quarter this season. However, this time they held their own. “We got it done this time,” said junior running back Graham, who notched his sixth 100-yard rushing game and his first against a Big East opponent. “We know we could be 5-0 right now, but we know we are 3-2 and those losses, we can’t get them back.”
When it was all said and done Pitt stepped on the accelerator, enforcing their will on USF by scoring 10 points and not allowing any points to be scored in the fourth quarter for the first time in 2011. They shut down one college football’s highest scoring teams, one which had scored 122 points in the last two games before coming to Heinz Field. Pitt senior defensive tackle Chas Alecxih said, “We just came together. There was nobody doing their own thing and I just felt, for the first time all season, we clicked as a defense.”
Former Pitt Head Coach Dave Wannstadt spent five years molding this team into the image he thought would make Pitt best, so it’s only logical that Coach Graham is still adjusting to the players as they adjust to him.
“A lot of people have been talking about how it's coming and how we've been getting closer and closer. We finally did it and we know what it feels like now,” was the response from quarterback Tino Sunseri when talking with media following the big win. Graham noted when he first stepped to the podium as head coach for the Pitt Panthers he wanted an “explosive offense.” That message is reaching the recruits as well. Players like Austintown Fitch receiver Demitrious Davis, who will be attending Pitt next fall. “Coach Graham has had three 1,000-yard receivers at Tulsa” explained Davis. That record of offensive success is one reason why Davis and his twin brother Chris, who also plays offense, elected to attend Pitt. Wannstadt was about the defense and Graham is going to be about the offense, so scoring and scoring big are going to be the trademarks of this Pitt team.
"We are winning every day with these players. We are developing something really special, but we have a long way to go,” Graham noted. With the players believing and his philosophy sinking into the minds of the young men he directs, no one can count Pitt out as a team that could make serious noise in the Big East and vie for the Big East title, a title which has seen its fair share of co-champions and champions over the years. In fact, since 2000 eight different schools have had at least a share of the Big East crown.
Ray Graham was right, this team could be 5-0 but they aren’t. However, the direction they are headed in under Graham has injected excitement into the program…and a beat down of the highest ranked Big East team (# 14 USF) has many convinced they’re already on the right path. With a new coach, new ideas and heck, even a new conference (ACC) in the not to distant future, Pitt has every right to be very optimistic. -- Photo Courtesy of Frank Hyatt, www.frankhyatt.com Follow Bo Marchionte on Twitter @BoMarchionte 
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