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V’lique Carter could sense something was up before Pitt’s game even kicked off against Duke.

There was an omen that stuck out to him - he was getting hit up for autographs during pregame. As a true freshman without playing one snap this season, he found that to be a little curious.

“It’s crazy because it started when little kids were asking me for autographs, and I was like, ‘they don’t even know me,’” Carter joked.

There will be no mistaking who Carter is now. The true freshman rushed the ball seven times for 137 yards and two touchdowns in the Panthers’ wild 54-45 win over the Blue Devils at Heinz Field on Saturday. The win improves the Panthers ACC record to 3-1 on the season and 4-4 overall.

Pitt recruited Carter to play defensive back, as did the 11 other schools that offered him, and he rarely played offense in high school with just 84 rushing yards during his senior season.

So his breakout game on offense came out of nowhere to everyone outside the program, but within the locker room, nobody seemed that surprised by Carter’s debut.

“I ain’t going to lie to you, he has (been making plays in practice)," redshirt senior linebacker Seun Idowu said after the game. "He’s kind of a nuisance.”

Carter has been making a name for himself all season long on the scout team, and on Saturday the coaches finally decided to turn him loose on the opposition.

“We’re been thinking about it for a while now,” stated Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi. "Kind of saved it a little bit for ACC play. But he’s explosive. He’s fast. Obviously he’ll get a few carries next week.”

Added Pitt senior running back Qadree Ollison, “I knew V’lique was going to go out there and make plays man, that boy is fast,” he said.

Ollison himself rushed for a team-high 149 yards and a touchdown. As a team the Panthers netted 484 yards on the ground, the second-highest total in Pitt history.

“That’s Pittsburgh football; just playing Pittsburgh football, being blue-collar, just being tough,” Ollison said of the team’s rushing performance on Saturday. “We pride ourselves on that, it’s just big, it’s just huge.”

Carter made numerous big plays throughout the game on Saturday. He ripped off a big 62-yard rush down the Duke sideline in the second quarter to help set up an Alex Kessman field goal. He was apparently tripped up along the sideline before he could score, or was he?

“Well what happened was I actually didn’t get tripped up, I was just looking at myself running (on the scoreboard) and it slowed me down,” Carter admitted.

The true freshman wasn’t done, though. He scored his first of two touchdowns on a 31-yard rush in the back-and-forth third quarter. His second touchdown came on a 16-yard scamper that saw him fly over the pylon into the end zone.

For a freshman in his first game, Carter let on he was thinking about the play pre-snap.

“When they called the play I was like, ‘Don’t think about it, don’t think about it’ because every time I think about it, I mess up,” said Carter. "So I just ran They already knew I was different - they didn’t know me, because I was never on film.”

So now there’s a few questions with Carter moving forward: Is he a running back full-time and will he be used in the Panthers’ final four games to remove his redshirt?

Narduzzi quickly put to rest to both.

“It goes into those four games. If he keeps doing that for the next three, he’ll be playing a fifth, maybe a sixth.”

“I’m a team player, that’s it - I’m a team player,” Carter said of a potential position change to offense. “Whatever I can to help the team, I’m just going to play my role.”

Added Narduzzi, “We’ll go recruit another DB. You got to score points to win nowadays. That’s the name of the game.

"He’s a player on offense right now. That’s where he’ll stay right now.”