Friday, November 7, 2008

DPJ's thoughts pre-Louisville

Well with Jason Jones, Studzy, and myself here discussing some Louisville items I thought I would try to summarize them before the game for you Cat Basket faithful.

Has there ever been a team more surprising than Pitt? Maybe surprising isn't the best word, but I like it because this season every game we have been surprised in the team we saw. We were surprised against BG and Rutgers. We were surprised with USF and with ND. Personally I was surprised with the Navy performance as I did not seeing it play out the way it did.

So what does this all mean for the Ville? Well I think it means that we can see what we aren't expecting to see. My predictions will be based on this.

I think that you will see Louisville, despite a bad passing attack, go after our secondary all game long. I do believe that we will see a better performance though. With Ricky Gary and Buddy Jackson ready to step in at any moment, the pressure is on Jovanni and Aaron Berry to play better. Also with Fields seeing more time, we can do more and give some different looks to Louisville.

Shady is starting to come into his own. I do believe that he will have a great game tomorrow, but it won't be the way you expect it to be. He will get his yards and perhaps a few td's on the ground, but I believe he will have a greater impact catching the ball. Louisville is suspect against the pass and even though they will be keying on Shady, rb screens and play action will be the remedy for that situation. Shady will break the century mark rushing, but he may get close to that through the air as well.

Keeping with the passing game, I think we may see the "use your best wr as a decoy" plan put back into action. We saw this against Miami with Larry back under WaHa, and we may see this again tomorrow. That is why it will be our possession guys (Kinder and Porter) being the ones that have to keep the passing game effective. Since Stull will be back, he will have the opportunity to win the game with his arm.

Don't take this game lightly. We are coming off an emotional win against the hated Fighting Irish and Louisville is coming off a 2nd consecutive loss to Syracuse. They will have something to prove and we may be facing an emotional let down.

Despite my negativity, we still win this game. They don't have the personnel on offense to beat us through the air and our run defense is too good to let any type of Michael Bush type big run games happen again.

I'm not sure if we will see the original Cat Basket (Pat Bostick) in the game, but I wouldn't be shocked if he took a few meaningful snaps. I would like to see Nate and Dorin get a few more passes their way, but that probably won't happen either.

DPJ's prediction for tomorrows nooner: Pitt 24 - Louisville 18.

3 comments:

johnny said...

Personally, I'd use the term 'manic depressive' over surprising. A win over these jokes would be a nice way to start exorcising some demons against teams that have somehow owned us the last few years. (I'm looking at you UConn). I think Pitt wins by 10 and sets the tone for a nice stretch run over this final third of the season. Also, don't discount Hot Rod gaining some yards on screen passes. HTP!

johnny said...

Tremendous effort by the d-line all game. If you would have told me that Shady would have less than 40 yards I would have guaranteed a loss, but he found other ways to contribute and Stull did a solid job of spreading the ball around.

Joshua, I want to hear more about how much the team and coaching staff sucks and how we will never win another game with Wannstedt as head coach.

Studzy said...

wannstadt is still a bad coach. don't forget about rutgers and bowling green, people. and last year navy. we have talent to challenge for a bcs bowl, easily. if we had a good coach, we could challenge on the national level. always be hopeful and skeptical.