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In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about Pitt's ACC projections, the 2019 non-conference schedule and more.
THREE THINGS WE KNOW
The expectations aren’t high So, we’ll say it right off the bat: preseason projections do not, in any way, shape or form, affect the actual results of the season. Let’s get that on the record now so we can avoid any such responses. We all know and recognize preseason projections for what they are:
Educated (or not) guesses based on past results and returning components, as well as the past results and returning components of the other teams on the schedule.
We need only to look back one year at the 2018 ACC preseason poll to prove this theory: last year, Pitt and Virginia were the only Coastal Division teams to not receive a first-place vote, with the Panthers picked to finish fifth and the Cavaliers picked seventh. Set aside the lunacy of someone giving North Carolina a first-place vote a year after the Tar Heels went 3-9 and 1-7 in the conference; that’s the kind of chicanery that comes with these polls - and further weakens whatever legitimacy they might have had - but I’m more interested in Pitt and Virginia.
Because, as we all know, the Panthers won the division outright and the Cavaliers were the Coastal leaders at one point before finishing 4-4 in the conference.
So yeah: preseason polls aren’t necessarily harbingers of things to come. But the media votes on them every year and the conferences release them, so we’ll talk about them.
This year, Pitt was installed at No. 4 in the Coastal Division in the preseason poll, which was released on Monday. I can’t say I’m entirely surprised about that selection: it’s easy to look at the Panthers’ 7-7 record last year, the quartet of blowout losses, the miserable passing game and the loss of the two most productive weapons on offense and conclude that 2019 could be a struggle for the team.
As such, it’s not much of a surprise when the ACC media or USA Today or any other outlet releases its projections for the ACC and seems to not think too highly of Pitt’s chances. The best projection I’ve seen came from The Sporting News, who put out a list of every bowl game and guessed on its participants; in that list, Pitt was placed in the Camping World Bowl in Orlando.
That’s a pretty good destination for Pitt, since going there would likely mean the Panthers did, in fact, repeat as Coastal Division champions.
The reality is, as we stated at the start of this section, that the Sporting News projection is no more or less reliably predictive than anything from USA Today or the ACC media or anybody else. Aside from the occasional inaccuracy - Barrett Sallee of CBSSports.com saying the Panthers “backed into their way into the ACC Championship Game with seven wins” when they actually won their way in with six conference victories - there’s nothing to make one projection or prediction better or worse than another.
Part of that is the simple unreliability of sports: anything can, and often does, happen. But even more of it is the nature of the Coastal Division: nobody really has any idea what the hell is going to happen among these seven teams. The only consensus is that Georgia Tech is going to be bad, but even the Yellow Jackets got a first-place vote from the conference media (which probably says more about the media than it does about GT).
Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine - or anyone else’s - when it comes to the Coastal in 2019.
There is something to fix
In the file of oft-discussed topics, there’s also this:
The non-conference schedule. Or, more relevantly, Pitt’s performance in games outside the regular-season ACC schedule. Because, as we’ve said many times over the last seven months, that was the big difference in Pitt’s 2018 season.
Inside the conference, the Panthers were solid. You could even say they were money. Their 6-2 record tied for second-best in the league, and it tied with Syracuse, who Pitt beat head-to-head. So as far as league games go, the Panthers were the No. 2 team in the ACC.
The problem was those other six games Pitt played. Between the four regular-season non-conference contests, the ACC Championship Game and the Sun Bowl, the Panthers ran a gauntlet of tough opponents. To put a number on it, the combined 2018 records of those opponents - Albany, Penn State, Central Florida, Notre Dame, Clemson and Stanford - was 60-18. And that’s including Albany’s 3-8 mark; take that out, and the Panthers’ games outside the regular-season ACC schedule featured five teams with a combined record of 57-10.
And just to put a slightly finer point on it, the losses end of that 57-10 record was largely propped up by Penn State and Stanford, who lost four games each. UCF, Notre Dame and Clemson were 39-2.
Those are gaudy win totals, and they stand out even more compared to the records of those eight teams Pitt faced in the ACC regular season:
Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Syracuse, Duke, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest and Miami combined to go 55-47.
Is it any wonder, then, that Pitt went 6-2 against that group and 1-5 against the other group?
That’s all in the past, though. What’s truly relevant for Pitt moving forward is that 1-5 record: can the Panthers turn 1-5 into 5-1? I’m not assuming anything about the eight-game ACC schedule; there will be plenty of challenges there and I’m not going to pencil another 6-2 record in. But the team simply has to find a way to do better than 1-5 outside of the regular-season conference games.
I realize that a 1-5 record assumes a six-game schedule outside of the ACC regular season, which then assumes that Pitt repeats at Coastal champ. I don’t know if I’m ready to go that far with this team, but you get the point:
Winning just one game outside the eight ACC games on the regular-season schedule won’t cut it. Some of that is inevitably going to be tied to scheduling, but a whole lot of it is connected to opportunities seized and opportunities missed. Pitt was doomed virtually from the start against Penn State, UCF and Clemson. But the Notre Dame and Stanford games were there for the taking. With challenging schedules, it’s going to be tough to win them all, but if you have a chance, well…you know.
Win those two and 1-5 turns into 3-3, 7-7 turns into 9-5 and all of those outlooks and projections might have a different view on Pitt’s 2019 prospects.
This year’s non-conference
Okay then, so what needs to happen for Pitt to turn that 1-5 around?
For starters, the 2019 non-conference schedule is not as challenging as it was in 2018, at least from the way things look right now. Delaware replaced Albany as the FCS opponent; that shouldn’t matter. Ohio replaced Notre Dame; while the Bobcats look like they could be pretty good, playing Ohio at home is a step down from facing Notre Dame in South Bend.
Penn State and UCF are back from last season, but both should be at least a little less good than they were when they beat Pitt by a combined score of 96-20. I don’t know if the Panthers will win those two games, but they should have a better chance of pulling it off than they did a year ago.
The ideal scenario, of course, is to go undefeated in the nonconference; that’s obvious and goes without saying, but I’m really only mentioning it as a way to segue into this stat:
In the 26 seasons since Pitt joined the Big East, the Panthers have never - never - gone undefeated in nonconference play.
I wonder if I should repeat that for emphasis. Probably don’t need to. Gonna do it anyway.
26 seasons. Not one time getting through the nonconference schedule unscathed.
They’ve come close. Eight times Pitt has finished a season with just one nonconference loss, including such powerhouse squads as the teams from 1993 (3-8 overall record) and 2006 (6-6 overall record).
In two of those eight seasons with just one nonconference loss, that lone defeat was a befuddling one. Like the 2008 team that went 4-1 against teams outside the Big East in the regular season and suffered its lone loss to Bowling Green. Or the 2013 team, with all its flaws, which would have been perfect in nonconference play if not for a pesky trip to Annapolis in late October.
Coincidentally, each of those teams offset a loss to a non-power conference teams with a win over Notre Dame.
Most recently, the 2016 team went 3-1 in the regular season against nonconference opponents, with the lone loss coming at Oklahoma State. Pitt also posted one-loss nonconference records in 1999 (3-1, lost to Penn State), 2000 (3-1, lost to North Carolina), 2004 (4-1, lost to Nebraska) and 2009 (4-1, lost to N.C. State).
So is 2019 the year Pitt breaks that streak? I mean, the odds are that it won’t be. The schedule is lighter than last year, but Penn State on the road and UCF at home look like a tough bet for a sweep. There could be a shot in 2020: the Panthers have Miami (Oh.), Richmond and Notre Dame at home and Marshall on the road. Obviously the Irish are a challenge, but not an insurmountable one, and Pitt has played the Irish tough more often than not in this century.
Tennessee comes onto the schedule in 2021 and West Virginia returns in 2022, so there’s a steady diet of quality competition lined up for the near future. Somewhere in there, you’d think Pitt would be able to break though just once and sweep the nonconference schedule.
We’ll see if it’s this year.
TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE
Where are the stars?
Going back to the matter of offseason predictions…
In addition to releasing its poll of ACC media members on the finishing order, the conference also released the media’s preseason all-ACC team. The usual suspects - Trevor Lawrence, Travis Etienne, Tee Higgins, Justyn Ross, John Simpson, Gage Cervenka, Tremayne Anchrum, Sean Pollard, Xavier Thomas, Nyles Pinckney, Isaiah Simmons, AJ Terrell and Tanner Muse, to name Clemson’s 13 representatives - were all in there, as was a smattering of players from other teams in the league.
Pitt had one selection: Maurice Ffrench made it as a specialist with 48 votes. Considering 173 media members voted, that’s not a great percentage. But no other Panther made the list, and I’m not terribly surprised. Just like Pitt appears to be pretty unremarkable to outside observers, so too does the roster not seem to be getting much notice.
That’s something of a continuation from last season, when Pat Narduzzi christened his team the “no-name Pittsburgh Panthers,” a moniker that seems even more generic by including “Pittsburgh Panthers.” Narduzzi said that prior to the ACC Championship Game when asked about the fact that no Pitt player was named to the all-conference first team.
That identity seems to have carried over to this year, where a return specialist is the only Panther - or Pittsburgh Panther, as it were - to get any preseason love from the ACC media.
We’ve talked before about guys like Ffrench and Taysir Mack needing to get more opportunities to turn their explosive abilities into production, but there’s certainly a need on the other side of the ball. Pitt needs some stars to show up there, because right now, there are a bunch of very solid players, which is nice; but the Panthers need something more than solid or very solid.
They need playmakers.
I know we’ve talked about this before, but I’m going to keep saying it until it gets proven out - for better or worse - during the season: Pitt needs more than a few guys to emerge as impact players on defense this year.
Damar Hamlin is considered one of the top five safeties in the ACC, but he needs to play like one of the top two. Same for Dane Jackson and Rashad Weaver at their respective positions. Jason Pinnock, too.
They’re all nice players. And that’s good. They can be nice - until it’s time to not be nice.
And I would say the time to go from being nice into something more is right about now. Pitt may have been left off the preseason All-ACC team, but the Panthers need to produce the kind of performances that end up on the postseason all-conference list.
How short is the leash?
Last week, I asked Twitter for questions to discuss on the podcast, and there were a ton of responses - so many that I didn’t get to them all in one episode. That worked out well, though, because now I have more content for upcoming episodes and, in case I need it, inspiration for a section in this column.
To that end, I was asked a question that is on-topic with a lot of Pitt fan discussions right now:
“If we start off 1&3 does Kenny Pickett lose his job?”
I got a couple variations of that question, and it has certainly been talked about quite a bit this offseason. The first answer to the question is, I don’t know. And to be quite honest, I don’t think Pat Narduzzi could give a genuine and sincere answer to it.
He obviously won’t answer that question because he has no inclination to do so, but I don’t think he could answer that question, even if he wanted to. That’s because things like changing quarterbacks are largely about feel. Pickett could have a nice start to the season and Pitt could still be 1-3. Three years ago, the Panthers were 2-2 but Nate Peterman was in no danger of getting benched, so I don’t think the record is the automatic decider.
It’s more about how the player himself is performing. I think the record could protect a poorly-performing quarterback; say Pitt opens 3-1 or 4-0 but Pickett isn’t playing very well - I’m guessing Narduzzi would not make a change. But even if the record is lousy, I could see Pickett staying in place if he’s not the source of the issues.
There’s often a subtext to this question, though, and that’s the matter of whether or not Narduzzi would pull the trigger on a quarterback change if one was merited. To that, I don’t think there’s any uncertainty:
He absolutely would, and history proves that out.
Consider that Narduzzi has changed starting quarterbacks midseason in two out of his four years at Pitt. He swapped out Chad Voytik, a returning starter, for Nate Peterman three games into the 2015 season. He benched Max Browne for Ben DiNucci three games into the 2017 season and then flipped them back a week later.
And we don’t even have to count Browne’s injury as another quarterback swap just to boost the numbers, since Narduzzi made a third voluntary change in 2017 when Pickett replaced DiNucci for the 2017 season finale, a game that placed him firmly at the top of the depth chart for 2018.
So that’s four voluntary quarterback changes in four seasons. Admittedly, they all happened in two of the four seasons, but I think it’s clear:
Narduzzi is not completely opposed to making a change. If he perceives a better option, he’ll go with it. Last year, I don’t think he really saw a better option than Pickett, despite Pickett’s considerable struggles (Narduzzi has also been more than willing to place a lot of the blame for that performance on Shawn Watson). It remains to be seen if the options look any better this season, but in redshirt senior Jeff George Jr., redshirt freshman Nick Patti and freshman Davis Beville, the options do, at the very least, exist.
And if Pickett isn’t on point, if he’s struggling and it’s costing Pitt games, then I could see Narduzzi going with a viable alternative - as long as one is ready.
JUST ONE MORE THING
On the hoops front, I had a chance to talk to Pitt freshman Karim Coulibaly this week after what he and his countrymen from Mali accomplished earlier this month, and the thing I just couldn’t get over was the scale of the thing.
Look: There’s Mali, a big country geographically with a population of less than two million winning the U18 African Championships a year ago. That win put Mali in the field for the FIBA U19 World Cup this year.
Look: There’s Mali knocking off Latvia in the tournament opener, registering the country’s first World Cup win in four years and just the second victory the team had ever achieved.
Look: There’s Mali following the Latvia win with a shocking upset over Canada and nearly upending Australia, who needed last-second heroics to hold off the upstart Malians.
Look: There’s Mali beating New Zealand by 15 in the round of 16 to advance to the quarterfinals and -
Stop right there. Because that’s where the scale really gets outsized. Prior to Coulibaly and company’s run, no team from Africa had ever reached the quarterfinals.
An entire continent. 1.2 billion people, at least a hundred million or so have to qualify as being “under-19” and they never reached the quarterfinals of the FIBA World Cup.
Imagine being part of the first group on a continent to do something. An entire continent. That blows my mind.
I don’t know what Coulibaly is going to do at Pitt. He’s got nice size for a power forward - listed at 6’8” - and could help Pitt at that spot probably more than anybody else they have on the roster, depending on how the coaches use Eric Hamilton. The Panthers clearly need rebounding help and that’s one of the things Coulibaly can do.
He also prides himself on playing strong defense, and with the way he focuses on those two areas - defense and rebounding - he’s got the kind of mentality that would have fit well on Pitt teams from the first decade of this century. Coulibaly will have to find his place offensively, but to be honest, if Jeff Capel builds Pitt as a guard-centric team going forward, then there won’t be as much need for offense out of players in Coulibaly’s positon.
I suspect he’ll play this year, simply for his rebounding and defense, and then we’ll see how he develops going forward. But for now, I’m content to reflect on what he accomplished in Greece. Nobody expected Mali to do any better than its last-place finish in 2017 or the next-to-last finish in 2015 (the World Cup is held every two years).
But instead of living down to expectations, Coulibaly and his countrymen went out and took the world by storm. They were the talk of the tournament, and as he joins a team that will likely be an underdog more often than not this season, Coulibaly at least has the experience of popping an upset or two.
