Pitt happy with football season, but ponders what might have been
PITTSBURGH (AP) – No Pitt team in the last 20 years won more games. No Pitt team since the Dan Marino days looked as dominating in its bowl game. No Pitt team since the early 1980s will have finished higher in the final polls. Still, for all that Pittsburgh accomplished in coach Walt Harris’ sixth season – and it was far more than any Pitt team has achieved in years – there always will be a lingering question about these 2002 Panthers.
How much better could they have been?
Take away a missed extra point here, a missed opportunity there and a pass that missed by inches of landing in receiver Yogi Roth’s hands in Miami’s end zone, and Pitt would have enjoyed a season for a lifetime.
“This team was as close to being 12-0 as it is to being 8-4,” former Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson said before the Panthers’ 38-13 rout of Oregon State in the Insight Bowl on Dec. 26.
A string of tantalizingly close losses to ranked teams – four by a total of 24 points – prevented Pitt (9-4) from breaking into the final Top 10 rankings for the first time since 1982. The Panthers were No. 24 in the last regular season poll and could reach the Top 15 in the final post-bowls poll.
There was the inexplicable 14-12 loss to Texas A&M decided by not one, but two botched extra points resulting from an illegal formation. The 14-6 loss at Notre Dame in which Pitt outgained the Irish by more than 2-to-1. The 28-21 loss at No. 1 Miami that saw Pitt, playing perhaps its best game since its glory days of the late 1970s and early 1980s, take the Hurricanes to the final play. And the 24-17 loss that followed 10 days later to West Virginia, one that cost Pitt a most-prestigious bowl date.
But while so many recent Pitt seasons are remembered mostly for their losses, this season will be remembered mostly for Pitt laying the groundwork for what appear to be more good seasons to come.
Not only did the Panthers win nine games for the first time since going 9-3 during Marino’s senior season in 1982, they finished off a three-year run that saw them win 23 times. That’s only one fewer victory than they had in the seven seasons immediately before Harris’ arrival. It also marked a significant turnaround for Pitt’s fifth-year seniors, who were around for Pitt’s 2-9 season in 1998.
The Panthers developed certifiable Big East stars in quarterback Rod Rutherford, who became the playmaker Harris long expected him to be and an even better passer. He completed 52 percent of his passes for 2,783 yards, 22 touchdowns and 12 interceptions, many of them early in the season. He also ran for 398 yards and six touchdowns.
Brandon Miree, an Alabama transfer, missed a 1,000-yard season by only eight yards despite being repeatedly banished to the bench early in the season. And Larry Fitzgerald had the most productive season ever by a Pitt freshman receiver, with 69 catches for 1,005 yards and 12 touchdowns.
With 16 starters returning, a good recruiting class on the way and most of Pitt’s key games – Miami, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech – at home next season, the pieces seem to be in place for the Panthers’ most anticipated season since 1982.
That’s why Harris wanted to go out with a bowl win, even if he didn’t expect it to come so easily against what appeared to be a quality opponent.
“There are things that come with winning, in regards to our underclassmen next year and television opportunities and preseason hype,” Harris said. “It’s more exposure for our kids to get chances to be All-Americans and all those other things.”
The Panthers’ had just one such player this season, third-team All-American linebacker Gerald Hayes, a senior. Fitzgerald will go into next season getting the kind of attention Antonio Bryant attracted during his All-American season in 2000.
No wonder Harris didn’t struggle with words to describe the season.
“It’s a milestone for our program and a milestone for our players,” Harris said.