The 21st Century Pitt Bracket: Deciding a champion

After three days of grueling battles and impressive upsets, the Final Four is set in the 21st Century Pitt Bracket. 20 teams entered and just four teams remain; now they will face off for the crown of the best team of the century (so far).

We started with the 20 Pitt teams from 2000 to 2019, seeded them and placed them in a bracket. Then, we simulated the games on WhatIfSports.com. After three rounds, the results look like this (click on the bracket for a larger view):

The four remaining teams are:

No. 1 2009
No. 10 2001
No. 11 2018
No. 12 2000

Let's see how they match up.

Game Seventeen: No. 1 vs. No. 12
The first game of the semifinals featured the No. 1 overall seed against a No. 12 seed that rattled off two upsets to get into the Final Four. The No. 1 seed is the 10-win team from 2009; the No. 12 seed is the Pitt team from 2000 that went 7-5 but counted Penn State and West Virginia among its two victories.

To get to the Final Four, the 2009 team had little trouble with No. 17 seed 2006 and No. 9 seed 2010. Meanwhile, the team from 2000 had to win the 5/12 matchup against the team from 2016 and then upset Larry Fitzgerald and the No. 4 seed 2003 team. It’s safe to say the 2000 squad earned its place in the semifinals, but could Walt Harris lead his team to another upset victory?

Things didn’t start well for the 2000 team, as Ray Graham had the game’s first touchdown and Dan Hutchins added a field goal to give the 2009 roster a 10-0 lead in the second quarter. Kevan Barlow got the 2000 team on the board with a touchdown of his own, but Dion Lewis scored on a short pass from Bill Stull to put the 2009 team ahead 17-7 at halftime.

Five minutes into the second half, Biletnikoff Award winner Antonio Bryant cut the lead to three on a 21-yard touchdown pass from John Turman, but on the next possession, the 2009 team struck the death blow. Facing a third down from their own 25, Stull threw a screen pass to Lewis who made a defender miss and then raced down the sideline for a 75-yard touchdown.

Later in the third quarter, Stull and Jon Baldwin hooked up on a 38-yard scoring play to put the game out of reach. Barlow scored a 66-yard rushing touchdown in the final two minutes, but it was too little and too late at that point, as the 2009 team won 37-21.

Lewis had a huge game for the 2009 Panthers, rushing for 104 yards and catching four passes for 95 yards and two scores, but the 2000 team’s defense put up a fight. Lewis needed 30 attempts to get to 104 yards, and the 2000 Panthers sacked Stull six times, including four from Bryan Knight. Stull also threw one interception but finished with 396 passing yards in the win.

Lewis was the star of the game, but Bryant was outstanding as well, catching six passes for 147 yards and a score.

Final: 2009 Pitt 37, 2000 Pitt 21

Game Eighteen: No. 10 vs. No. 11
The semifinals were made up of the No. 1 overall seed and three double-digit seeds. On the right side of the bracket, the No. 10 seed 2001 team knocked off No. 7 2019 and then No. 2 2002 to get to the semis, while the No. 11 seed 2018 team upset No. 6 2004 before beating No. 14 2012 to advance.

The teams from 2001 and 2018 both won seven games, but they did it in very different ways. The 2001 team started 1-5 before Walt Harris scrapped the spread offense, went back to what worked best and won six in a row to end the season - one of only two times this century that Pitt has won six consecutive games in a season (the 2009 team had the other six-game winning streak).

The 2018 team, on the other hand, was a tough one to read. It won the Coastal Division, giving Pitt football its first piece of ACC hardware. But it also lost to North Carolina, got blown out by UCF and dropped three in a row to end the season with the ignominious record of 7-7.

In the semifinal matchup, the 2018 team got on the board first with a Darrin Hall touchdown run, and the two teams traded field goals to end the first half with 2018 leading 10-3. The 2001 squad had some answers in the second quarter, though: Nick Lotz hit his second field goal of the game and then Ray Kirkley scored a four-yard touchdown run to give 2001 a 13-10 lead at halftime.

Things didn’t get much more exciting in the second half, though, as that Kirkley touchdown was the last time anyone was get into the end zone. Instead, the 2018 team managed to tie the game, take the lead and then build on it all with Alex Kessman field goals, and the Coastal Division champs won 19-13 to advance to the finals.

Kessman connected from 45 and 42 yards in the third quarter and added a 37-yarder in the fourth to go with his 36-yard kick in the first to finish 4-of-5 on field goals in a game that just didn’t have much offense. The vaunted 2018 rushing attack produced 125 yards on 46 attempts - 2.7 yards per carry - and Kenny Pickett and Ricky Town combined to throw for 171 yards on 25 passes. David Priestley wasn’t much better for the 2000 team, completing 22-of-36 for 200 yards but getting intercepted by Damarri Mathis and Dennis Briggs.

The results weren’t pretty, but the 2018 team was more than happen to take them and advance to the finals to face the No. 1 overall seed.

Final: 2018 Pitt 19, 2000 Pitt 13

Game Nineteen: No. 1 seed vs. No. 11
For the championship game, Pitt’s most successful team of the last 20 years, No. 1 seed 2009, hosted the only Pitt football team to win ACC hardware, the No. 11 2018.

The matchup looked to be a mismatch, with the 2009 team’s potent, balanced offense and strong defense favored by more than a touchdown over the run-heavy, good-but-inconsistent defense of 2018.

But if the 2018 team was intimidated by the squad from 2009, it didn’t show, as Darrin Hall took a handoff from the 29 on the opening drive of the game and ran 71 yards for a touchdown. Bill Stull and Oderick Turner answered the touchdown with a four-yard pass later in the first quarter and Dan Hutchins added a pair of field goals to give the 2009 team a 13-7 lead at halftime.

In the third quarter, Dave Wannstedt’s best team broke the game open. After Hutchins hit another field goal to put the lead at nine points, Dion Lewis ran into the end zone from 38 yards. Qadree Ollison scored on a 25-yard pass from Kenny Pickett to cut the lead, but Stull threw to Jon Baldwin from 32 yards out to put the 2009 team ahead 30-14 at the end of the third.

The 2018 team got on the board one more time when Pickett threw a 44-yard catch-and-run touchdown pass to Maurice Ffrench, but the two-point conversion failed and the 2009 team won the championship game by a score of 30-20.

To get the win, the 2009 team leaned on Lewis, who had a monster performance with 244 yards and a score on 35 carries. The 2009 team also came up with five sacks on Pickett and Ricky Town, who managed to throw for 195 yards - which was actually a high total of passing yards that season. The 2018 team tried to lean on its running game and got 203 rushing yards from Hall, Ollison and V’Lique Carter. But those Panthers were just 5-of-16 on third down and failed twice on fourth down.

In the end, chalk held, as the No. 1 overall seed 2009 team had little trouble moving through the bracket and winning the championship.

Final: 2009 Pitt 30, 2018 Pitt 20