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In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about the Backyard Brawl, the 2022 schedule, the low point for Pitt hoops and a lot more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

What a way to start the season
Boy howdy, am I looking forward to this.

In the summer of 2016, I was pretty excited for the return of Pitt-Penn State. That series had been dormant for too long, and knowing that the second week of the season would put the Panthers and Nittany Lions on the same field, well, that was really something to get pumped up for.

But the return of the Backyard Brawl…I mean, that’s like seven months away and I already can’t wait.

2011 was the last time Pitt and West Virginia met on the football field, and that might as well be a lifetime ago. I don’t honestly remember a whole lot about that game. I don’t honestly remember a whole lot about any of the Todd Graham games, aside from the really notable things like the end of the Iowa loss or Tino Sunseri’s “average” 400-yard performance against UConn.

Apparently Pitt had a 17-7 lead at halftime and a 20-7 lead on WVU in the third quarter back in 2011. But the Mountaineers sacked Sunseri 10 times - 10! - although at least a few of those were of Sunseri’s doing, like throwing the ball into the ground to take an intentional grounding on the final possession (which was extra helpful since it also led to a 10-second runoff).

Anyway, that game was a long time ago, and both programs have gone through a lot of changes in the decade-plus since then.

But the hate…the hate has never died.

There have been a few basketball games over that decade to help fuel the fire, but let’s be honest: Pitt and West Virginia simply don’t like each other. For whatever reason - and I think there are a lot of them - these two programs just don’t get along. The fan bases hate each other and the players are absorbed into it almost immediately and without prompting (I still remember Xavier Johnson having some choice words after facing WVU as a freshman).

Penn State is Pitt’s big rival. Pitt-Penn State has been the premier in-state battle and one of the great rivalries in college football for nearly a century.

But Pitt-West Virginia…that’s something different.

For starters, it’s got a name. And a name that college football fans instantly recognize.

The Backyard Brawl.

That’s a cool starting point.

Then you’ve got West Virginia’s patented anti-Pitt chant. Really, you don’t need a patent for a chant if you’re the only school that uses it, but I kind of think that’s even more appealing:

Nobody else chants that. Only WVU does. Maybe that’s a reflection of class or taste or whatever, but I prefer to think that it’s a reflection of the rivalry, that WVU fans hate Pitt so much that they came up with a chant that is uniquely their own.

There aren’t too many situations like that, where a rivalry features a team-specific chant. (By comparison, “horns down” is pretty lame, if you ask me.)

And that gets to the heart of it: West Virginia genuinely dislikes Pitt and Pitt genuinely dislikes West Virginia. There’s no mutual respect. There’s no friendly competition. It’s straight-up hate from both sides, and it’s beautiful.

That’s what separates the truly great rivalries: hate. Utter dislike and disgust.

I’m not going to sit here and say Pitt-WVU is a bigger and better rivalry than Pitt-Penn State - not because I don’t believe it, but rather because I don’t want to argue about it. Instead, I’ll just say that this is a fantastic rivalry and I can’t wait for it to come back.

Putting it on primetime national TV as the opener of the 2022 college football season…woo doggy. That’s gonna be a good one.

More on the schedule
A few other observations on the 2022 schedule beyond the obvious appeal of the opener:

Closing out September with Rhode Island
Pitt did this last year with New Hampshire in Week Four, and I liked how that game functioned as a clean break between the non-conference schedule and the ACC slate of games. No disrespect to UNH or URI, but having essentially a rest week before diving into ACC play is an ideal setup.

Every day’s a Saturday
After opening the season on a Thursday night against West Virginia, it’s all Saturday, all the time for Pitt. The Panthers only had one Thursday night game last season - North Carolina at Heinz Field - so it’s not like I expected Pitt to double up on weeknight games, but it’s kind of nice to know that, after the opener, the Panthers will have a ‘regular’ schedule every week the rest of the way. No short weeks, no quick turnarounds. Just Saturdays.

A midpoint off week
I’ve heard coaches advocate for having the off week at just about every point of the season, and while I think most would prefer to have it somewhere in the second half of the schedule, I think getting it with six games down and six to go seems pretty good. Swapping the off week with the game at Louisville might be slightly more ideal, since then you could play seven, take a week off and then play the final five - plus, you’d get a break between the only back-to-back road games on the schedule - but having the off week dead in the middle of the season works.

The second-half gauntlet
If Pitt is going to repeat as Coastal champs and have a shot at repeating as ACC champs, the Panthers will have to do it in the second half of the season. After that off week, they go to Louisville and North Carolina in consecutive weeks, host Syracuse, go to Virginia, host Duke and close the regular season at Miami. That’s four tough road games, all in the second half of the season. And for Coastal standings, those three games at UNC, Virginia and Miami - I mean, that’s the Coastal right there.

It all comes down to this
And if Pitt survives the trips to UNC and Virginia, everything should line up for that finale at Miami. The Hurricanes will have to avoid their standard Miami-ing - that doesn’t roll as well as Clemsoning (the original) or Pitting (our local appropriation) - but you know what I’m talking about. The loss at Florida State last season was a perfect example: Miami was in position to control its own destiny, but instead the Hurricanes blew it against a rival. And Miami’s closing duo this season of Clemson (road) and Pitt (home) will guarantee the Hurricanes earn everything they get.

The toughest games
The Miami game will be circled on Pitt’s schedule, but I actually think Pitt’s toughest game will be two weeks earlier when the Panthers go to Charlottesville to face Virginia. The Cavaliers are bringing back Brennan Armstrong, and that roster addition/retention alone is enough to make them formidable. If Pitt - or anybody - wants to win the Coastal, they’re going to have to beat Virginia.

A good haul
Let’s table the schedule talk for a bit - I’ll come back to it in a bit - and talk about the other football topic this week.

On Wednesday, we had a chance to interview Frank Cignetti, Kedon Slovis, Konata Mumpfield and Shayne Simon.

That was the first time I’ve spoken to Simon, the second time I’ve spoken to Mumpfield and Slovis and the first time I’ve spoken to Cignetti since about 2010.

(It was also the first time I’ve spoken to Narduzzi since the Peach Bowl, but that’s a little less interesting.)

The first thing that stood out in the whole affair was Cignetti and his enthusiasm for being at Pitt. The once-and-again offensive coordinator didn’t even make it to the microphone before he was proclaiming how it was “great to be home,” and I think he stood a solid foot back from the podium the whole time, which was fine: he didn’t need to be on the mic. His excitement projected well enough without it.

Beyond the enthusiasm, Cignetti said all the right things on Wednesday. He talked about the program Narduzzi has built. He talked about tailoring his offense to the personnel. He spoke highly of the offensive coaching staff. He hit all the key points, and he did it in a natural way - not all color-by-numbers, and with a homegrown Pittsburgh style that can’t be manufactured.

Slovis, Simon and Mumpfield were all interesting in their own ways. Slovis has the cool demeanor of a veteran quarterback (a southern California Kenny Pickett vibe, if you will). Simon has a million-words-a-minute energy. And Mumpfield has some quiet - and not so quiet - confidence.

They all did well at the podium on Wednesday, and as I was sitting there in the team room at Pitt’s facility in the South Side, pondering the additions of those three players and Cignetti and Tiquan Underwood (Pitt hasn’t announced him as receivers coach, but Cignetti did reference him and the official announcement should come in the next week), it occurred to me that Pitt has had a pretty darn good offseason.

Never mind that Signing Day - that was Wednesday, in case you didn’t know - came and went without any recruits putting pen to paper for the Panthers. We knew that would be the case. But when you consider adding a quarterback and receiver who were among the best in the transfer portal, a Notre Dame linebacker who fills a very specific need, 12 recruits who, on average, look to be just about as good as any recent Pitt class and two assistant coaches who left Power Five jobs to work at Pitt, well, I think that’s an impressive haul.

Oh, and that all goes on top of the returning talent, since the Panthers have basically nine starters back on offense and eight on defense.

Strong returning roster + impressive transfers + quality staff additions = a pretty good offseason, if you ask me.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

What’s the low point?
On the hoops side of things, nothing got better with Pitt’s trip to Wake Forest on Wednesday night.

Not that I necessarily expected anything to get better. At this point, you can’t really expect anything - good or bad - from the Panthers. If you expect something bad, you sometimes get something good. If you expect something good, you sometimes - most of the time, it seems - get something bad.

Pitt beat Syracuse when they were supposed to lose and lost to Boston College when they were supposed to win. And then the Panthers went to Wake Forest and watched as the Deacons dropped 91 on them.

For the historically-minded among us, that was the first time a Pitt opponent has scored 90+ since the 2017-18 season - Kevin Stallings’ ill-fated 0-fer year, when he sealed his fate by losing every game in ACC play.

Stalling’s team actually gave up 90 twice that season. The first came when North Carolina beat Pitt 96-65 at Chapel Hill; two games and eight days later, Louisville thumped the Panthers 94-60 at the Petersen Events Center (it’s up for debate about which Louisville-related incident was more embarrassing for Pitt: getting beat by 30+ at home or having your head coach heckle fans on the road).

Anyway, Wednesday night’s loss was brutal. It started off bad - Wake Forest took a 16-3 lead to open the game - and somehow only got worse after that.

The details of the game are quite inconsequential. What I found myself asking in the wake of the latest loss - there have been 14 of them now - is, how low can things get?

Was the Wake Forest game the low point? What about the 27-point loss at Clemson that came a week and a half earlier? Could it be the 10-point loss to UMBC at home? Or maybe the season-opening loss to The Citadel was truly the grandaddy of them all and everything else is just playing for second place.

I’m choosing, in this instance, to just talk about the low point this season, leaving the discussion of Saint Francis and Nicholls State for another day.

But really, have we seen the lowest point yet for this program in the 2021-22 season? Unless you feel like The Citadel is the undisputed champion, it’s concerning to think of what might be lurking around the corner. The remaining schedule of nine games has every kind of pitfall imaginable: there are games that will be bad losses if Pitt can’t win (Georgia Tech at home on Feb. 19 is one; you could make a case for Virginia Tech and N.C. State at home, too) and there are games where the Panthers could get blown off the court (Duke is the obvious one, and Miami is dangerous, too, even if both games are at home).

The problem is, you just don’t know what you’re going to get from this team. They can’t play defense the way they did at Clemson or Boston College or Wake Forest and expect to win; they’re not good enough offensively to let a team shoot 50% and have a great chance at winning.

Playing defense at the level Pitt needs to play requires a whole lot of effort and intensity and focus and communication and passion. And this team has shown itself to be way too inconsistent in those areas to be predictable in any form or fashion.

It would not surprise me in the least to see a solid effort and performance on Saturday when Pitt hosts Virginia Tech in the opener of a two-games-in-three-days home-and-home series. Nor would it surprise me to see the Panthers let the Hokies go above their ACC-leading 41% shooting from beyond the arc in another brutal loss.

You never know what you’re going to get from this Pitt team, and the prospects are worrisome.

Is there a February collapse coming?
For the past few years, we’ve seen talk of Jeff Capel’s teams experiencing late-season struggles, and the numbers certainly bear that out.

Since Capel’s first season in 2018-19, Pitt has a record of 3-20 in games in February. The Panthers were 0-7 in February 2019, 2-7 the next season and 1-5 last year. So far this year, they are 0-1 with seven more to play.

That’s pretty bad.

Trivia time: Can you name the three teams Pitt has beaten in February under Capel? We’ll have the answer at the end of this section.

So yeah, Pitt’s performance in February since Capel arrived hasn’t been good. But that’s not necessarily unique to the Capel era. They obviously got shut out in February the year before Capel arrived; we don’t need to look that one up since we know without research that Kevin Stallings got blanked that year.

In Stallings’ first year, Pitt won three games in February (and lost five). In Jamie Dixon’s last season, the Panthers were 3-4 in February. You have to go back to the 2014-15 season, the year Pitt got bounced in the first round of the NIT, to find the last time the Panthers won more than three games in February. They were 5-2 that season, with the only losses coming against top-10 teams in Louisville and Virginia.

But that five-win performance has a caveat, since Pitt hosted Bryant in a weird Groundhog Day non-conference game. And that actually kind of points to one of my two thoughts on the late-season collapse narrative:

The 23 games Pitt has played in February under Capel have all been against ACC opponents. That’s obvious, right? Of course it is. And it should be a pretty strong indicator of why the Panthers have a worse record in February than any other month:

They’re playing better teams. It only makes sense that the record in February would be worse than the record in December.

Now, Capel’s teams are also 11-19 in January, which is better than the February record, but not exactly great - again, for the same reason, since the ACC schedule is in full swing by that point.

11-19 is better than 3-20, to be sure, but it’s still not very good, and that brings me to my second point:

Is it really a collapse if you weren’t playing all that well to begin with?

When Pitt went 0-7 in February 2019, that followed the Panthers winning just two games in January. In 2020, they went from 3-5 in January to 2-7 in February. Last season Pitt was 3-3 in January and 1-5 in February.

The records are worse in February than January, but not by much, and it’s not like the starting point was some great achievement.

There’s no special mediocre; it’s just mediocre - and sometimes bad - regardless of month. Pitt went 3-5 in January this year and is 0-1 so far in February. A 3-5 record this month would probably be termed a “collapse” - even if it’s the same record the Panthers had in the previous month.

I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t get as caught up in the talk of late-season collapses, if only because Pitt wasn’t that good at midseason either. We’ll see what February 2022 brings.

Trivia answer: Pitt’s three February wins under Capel have been Virginia Tech last year and Miami and Georgia Tech in 2020. The Panthers face all three of those teams in February this season, starting with two against the Hokies and ending the month with the Hurricanes and Yellow Jackets at home.

ONE PREDICTION

Ranking the games
This isn’t exactly a prediction of an individual event or occurrence. Rather, I’m predicting which games will be Pitt’s most challenging in 2022. As such, here’s how I rank the 12 games in order of easiest to toughest.

12. Rhode Island - That’s obvious, right?

11. Duke - Good luck to Mike Elko. He’s a really respected coach who will try to get Duke to seven or eight wins every season. Duke’s actually a pretty good job: make a bowl game two out of every four or five years and they’ll be happy.

10. Virginia Tech - Every offseason, Virginia Tech appears to be a mess, and last season, it really did come home to roost. Gone is Justin Fuente and in comes former Penn State defensive coordinator Brent Pry. Also gone is quarterback Braxton Burmeister, and Pry has brought in a pair of transfers to replace him. We’ll see how that works out.

9. Western Michigan - The good news is that Kaleb Eleby and Skyy Moore are gone to try their fortunes in the NFL. That should make all of those RPO’s at least a little less effective. The bad news is that this game is on the road, and road games against MAC teams always make me nervous. If this game was at Heinz Field, I wouldn’t put it ahead of Virginia Tech. But it’s in Kalamazoo, where a slow start can snowball pretty quickly. This should be a win for Pitt, but it’s in the danger zone.

8. Syracuse - I guess Syracuse can go here. It’s not that I think Syracuse will be any good; it’s more a matter of not really wanting to put the Orange ahead of any of the seven remaining teams. Plus, Pitt-Syracuse games have been, almost without exception, pretty close for the last decade or so.

7. Georgia Tech - I keep waiting for it to work out for Geoff Collins at Georgia Tech. So far, it hasn’t. But Collins has recruited well, and even though the Jackets have taken some blows from the transfer portal, they could (finally) take a step forward, or else it might be time to see if someone else can turn the program around.

6. West Virginia - I haven’t the foggiest idea what WVU is going to look like, because the Mountaineers will have a new quarterback this year. But whether it’s Garret Greene (the veteran with some mobility), Will Crowder (the second-year player with no experience) or incoming four-star prospect Nicco Marchiol, I know that the return of the Backyard Brawl will have everyone fired up, and we all know that anything can happen in a rivalry game.

5. North Carolina - I don’t know what to expect out of UNC this season, either. The Tar Heels’ success will depend on their quarterback; they signed four-star recruits in the classes of 2020 and 2021, so there is some talent on the roster. That uncertainty might mean that UNC won’t get the preseason love it got last year (I mean, of course they will get the preseason love, but not quite as much as in 2021). Still, a couple Pitt wins in the last two meetings hasn’t totally shaken the cold shudder that a game against UNC produces, and this one is on the road. That’s tough.

4. Louisville - These top four teams are all about the quarterbacks. Louisville’s Malik Cunningham might have been overshadowed by last year’s gauntlet of QB’s in the ACC, but he threw for 2,941 yards and rushed for more than 1,000 (plus 20 touchdowns on the ground), and he will get his respect this season.

3. Virginia - It’s all about the quarterback. Give a team a great quarterback, and they’ll give you a fight. Virginia has a great quarterback, and Pitt is going to need its quarterback to be ready for heroics in Charlottesville.

2. Tennessee - I don’t know if Hendon Hooker is a great quarterback, but I can’t deny how well he played against Pitt, as well as the rest of the Volunteers’ schedule in 2021. He’s going to test Pitt’s secondary, and Week Two might be a shootout at Heinz Field.

1. Miami - The Hurricanes are reliable to blow it at any point in any season, but on paper, they look like a big challenge. Say it with me again: it’s all about the quarterback.

That’s really the key: whether it’s Malik Cunningham or Brennan Armstrong or Hendon Hooker or Tyler Van Dyke, there are some really good quarterbacks on Pitt’s 2022 schedule (and I have a feeling at least one of the other eight teams will have somebody emerge). The Panthers are going to have to do what they did last year and win some real quarterback duels.