SYRACUSE - Pitt improved to 5-2 Friday night with a 27-20 win over Syracuse, and you can’t say the Panthers didn’t have to work for 60 minutes to get the victory.

After jumping out to a 24-6 lead at halftime, Pitt watched as the Orange battled back and cut the score to just one touchdown in the final three minutes. The Panthers picked up two first downs to ice the game, but seeing a considerable lead whittle down to one score made things interesting.

“We don’t do it the easy way,” Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi said after the game.

It might not have been the easy way, but it seems to be the Panthers’ way, as Friday night’s game at the Carrier Dome repeated what has become a familiar pattern. Pitt’s 35-34 win over UCF was a comeback victory after a 21-0 lead turned into a 31-21 deficit at Heinz Field. The Panthers did something similar two weeks ago at Duke, jumping out to a 26-3 lead and then falling behind 30-26.

So the Syracuse game was more of the same - both in the drama of the game and its result.

“I’m feeling like we’re still in a battle,” Narduzzi said of his feeling at halftime Friday night. “There’s nobody in that locker room or coaches that sit there and take it easy. Kenny Pickett did a nice job at halftime, too, just talking to our team, showing a lot of leadership with our quarterbacks.

“Obviously, you feel like you played a good first half, but I told them at halftime, we want to play 60 minutes. We just did some little things that we can’t do, whether it’s PI’s or dropped passes; we had a few of those on third down that we’ve got to make a play.”

Pickett said that he walked into the locker room at halftime and thought his teammates were “too happy” with the 24-6 lead, which prompted him to speak on the matter.

“The game was far from over; we learned that from last week,” Pickett said. “So when I came in and I saw guys smiling, I really didn’t like it, so I wanted to make sure that we all came back down to earth and got the job done right.”

Pickett’s hunch was right; the game was far from over. The Orange scored on their second drive of the third quarter, hitting a 94-yard pass on third-and-9. Then Syracuse scored again on its only drive in the fourth quarter, marching 75 yards on 15 plays - aided by a defensive holding call that turned fourth-and-25 into a first down - to draw the score to within a touchdown.

But the offense came up with two key drives to seal the game.

First, Pickett led the team on a 12-play, 53-yard drive that ran 7:10 off the clock at the start of the fourth quarter. That possession saw the Panthers run the ball nine times for 36 yards - a solid showing from a rushing attack that hasn’t been consistently effective. And Pickett threw three passes on the drive - two that gained first downs and a third that would have been a first down but was dropped.

The possession resulted in a field goal, but by taking so much time off the clock, Pitt ensured that Syracuse only got one possession of its own in the fourth quarter.

Then, after the Orange scored, Pitt took the ball with 2:44 remaining. A.J. Davis started things with a 10-yard run and then put the final touches on the win with a three-yard run to convert third-and-2.

As they had done against UCF and Duke, the Panthers pulled out a win in the fourth quarter against Syracuse Friday night (albeit one where they had to protect a lead, not re-take it). For Pickett and company, avoiding those fourth-quarter situations altogether is the next goal.

“We have to learn how to win,” Pickett said. “There’s a difference between learning how to win when it’s a tight game and learning how to win and putting people away and just finishing the game the right way. I think we’re still trying to figure out how to do that.”