During Tuesday’s morning practice, the Pitt football team used some crowd noise over the speakers to help simulate what the team will be going up against on Saturday. The Panthers' opponent on Saturday is Central Florida. The Knights are riding a 16-game winning streak and are coming off a Peach Bowl victory and a “claimed” national title last season.
The Knights call Spectrum Stadium home, and the 44,000-seat venue can cause problems for opposing teams with the crowd right on top of the action.
“We’re expecting a great crowd - loud - and we just need to be ready for anything that they bring to us,” Pitt junior cornerback Dane Jackson said of the upcoming road game for the Panthers.
While the atmosphere will be one of things Pitt will have to deal with, the team on the field will be the bigger task at hand. The Knights are averaging 50 points per game through three contests this season. The offense runs through 5’11” junior quarterback, McKenzie Milton. He has thrown for 895 yards and nine touchdowns to this point, and has added another 147 yards and three scores on the ground also.
Pitt defenders know it will be key to slow him down. “He’s a great quarterback - he’s mobile,” Jackson said.
“He can make big plays anytime throughout the game. They got good receivers over there - they’re just a good team. They’ll have a challenge for us.”
Pitt has already faced one of the top quarterbacks in the country already when it squared off against Trace McSorely and Penn State. When asked if Milton reminds him of anyone the team has faced before, Jackson couldn’t come up with anyone in particular.
“Not that I can think of, but like I said he’s a great quarterback. He can run, he can make big plays so we’re up for a challenge,” Jackson said.
It’s not just Milton that makes the Knights so dangerous, it’s their entire scheme and some of the weapons they possess on the outside. Central Florida has three receivers that have caught double-digit passes to this point, highlighted by 6’3” sophomore Gabriel Davis.
“I feel like a lot of their receivers have a lot of speed on the outside and in the interior,” said Pitt sophomore corner back Damarri Mathis "Their tempo is high, so they get a lot of plays in and they just have defenses off balance from that standpoint.”
Pitt is coming off a game in which it allowed 38 points to North Carolina, and had plenty of miscues in pass defense throughout the game. The belief in the locker room is that the team just needs to execute better rather than to totally change things up at this point.
“The we way prepare is always the same,” Jackson said. “We’re going to go out and we’re going to take what the coaches give us and try to apply that in every game.”
Added Mathis,“We had a good day in film room in preparation all week, I just feel like we’ve got to execute better on our assignments and stuff, and that’s as a whole as a defense.”
So the word from the team is that they are ready to put last week behind them and focus on Central Florida. Given the Knights’ success and the environment Pitt is walking into, are the players looking at this game any differently going up against a top 15 team on the road?
“It’s just the next game; we try not to worry about what they did last year. It’s a new year, new opportunity,” Jackson said.
