'92 All Over Again?

In 1992, Pittsburgh fans could make a very legitimate argument that they had the three best players in each of their three pro sports.

Barry Bonds was MVP of the NL for the division winning Pirates.
Mario Lemieux was the best hockey player in the world for the Stanley Cup winning Penguins.
Barry Foster was a 1,700 yard workhorse and most dominant running back in the NFL for the playoff bound Steelers in Bill Cowher's first yer as coach.

In all objectivity, only Foster's status was debatable.

It's a trifecta that is rare and almost impossible to match, even for cities with 4 major pro sports teams.

So, we are now 17 years later in 2009. And from Pittsburgh's point of view, the Pirates are minor league while Pitt basketball has ascended to major and certainly championship caliber level.

And here we are again, does Pittsburgh have the three best players in its sports? Or is this a biased argument that only a homer would make?

In the NHL, while the Penguins are middling, Sidney Crosby is widely regarded as the league's best, yet Geno Malkin leads the league in scoring. You could pick either of those two and make a very compelling argument he is the best.

That a Super Bowl Champion Steeler is the league's best may be the toughest argument to convince outsiders. Yet, James Harrison was the Defensive Player of the Year,Troy Polamalu may be the most disruptive defensive player and young Ben has won his second Super Bowl and is the clutchest player in the league. I'll take Harrison for this year, the defensive player of the year on the league's best defense that led the team to their Super Bowl win.

Then we come to Pitt basketball, replacing the Buccos in this list. Over the last week, DeJuan Blair is making a statement that is impossible to ignore that he is the best player in college basketball. At the very least, he is the favorite to be the Player of the Year in the Big East on a team that has as good a shot to win the national title as any.

Bonds, Lemieux and Foster in 1992.
Crosby, Harrison and Blair in 2009.

Pretty fair players and all the best in their sports that year.

Bad News for Pitt

I can't blame him,, I'd do the same thing. Word is Pitt has a couple good young RBs who could step in next year, but with a shaky QB situation, they'll have to be very very good to make this a decent offense.

Pitt just went from Big East favorite and possible top 10 team to mid Big East and not in the top 25.

McCoy to declare for NFL - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

University of Pittsburgh star tailback LeSean McCoy is expected to announce Friday he will turn professional.

Two family sources confirmed that McCoy is scheduled to meet with Pitt head coach Dave Wannstedt tomorrow and, barring a last-minute change of heart, plans to declare hardship to enter the April 25-26 draft. The application deadline for underclassmen is Jan. 15.

The news may stun the Pitt campus.

As recently as Monday, Wannstedt said he expected McCoy to return for his junior season.

The 6-foot, 205-pound McCoy, a two-time first-team All-Big East selection, is eligible because he is three years removed from the graduation of his high school class. McCoy left Harrisburg's Bishop McDevitt High midway through his senior year and spent three semesters at Milford Academy, a prep school in New Berlin, N.Y., before enrolling at Pitt.

McCoy evaded questions about entering the NFL Draft all season. He declined comment for this story.

In November before Pitt played West Virginia in the 101st Backyard Brawl, McCoy said he was "definitely" returning.

"There's a lot of stuff I've got to prove," McCoy said. "I don't think I did enough here at this university. There's a lot left to achieve here."

Wannstedt told reporters in a teleconference Monday that, after discussions with McCoy and his parents both before and after the Brut Sun Bowl, the tailback was "excited to come back for another year."

Daphne McCoy, the running back's mother, said Monday the family was awaiting a report from the NFL Draft advisory board, which graded McCoy a first-round pick. Fear of injury appears to be a key factor in the decision. A fractured leg ended McCoy's high school senior season early.

McCoy rushed for 1,488 yards and 21 touchdowns on 308 carries this past season, ranking 10th in the NCAA in rushing and tied for second in scoring. He became Pitt's first back-to-back 1,000-yard rusher since Curtis Martin in 1988-89.

McCoy's 2,816 rushing yards topped the 2,690 yards gained by Pitt legend Tony Dorsett in 1973-74. Twenty-one underclassmen have already declared for the NFL Draft, including three running backs: Iowa junior Shonn Green, Connecticut junior Donald Brown and Georgia redshirt sophomore Knowshon Moreno.

Pitt is #1

Pittsburgh Panthers ranked No. 1 in men's basketball - ESPN

Pittsburgh has the Steelers pursuing a Super Bowl XLIII berth, one of the brightest young stars in the NHL in Sidney Crosby, and, well, we'll just skip the Pirates.

Now, the city also claims the top-ranked men's college basketball team in the country as its own.

For the first time in the 101 seasons of Pitt basketball, the Panthers are No. 1, making the jump from third in the ESPN/USA Today coaches' rankings on Monday after previously unbeatens North Carolina (to heavy underdog Boston College) and Connecticut (to Georgetown) lost in the last week.

Pitt received 30 of 31 first-place votes, the other going to the third-ranked, 13-1 Tar Heels, as the coaches' top 10 endured a top-to-bottom shakeup.

Pitt improved to 14-0 after winning its first two Big East games (against Rutgers and Georgetown). Its win over the Hoyas was a smackdown -- a 70-54 victory for Pitt after Georgetown had just taken out UConn on the road earlier in the week.

"I don't think it will change anything for us," Pitt coach Jamie Dixon told ESPN.com's Andy Katz on Sunday night. "We've become rivals of schools over the years, rivals of schools that weren't rivals before."

Besides Pitt, the other undefeated Division I men's teams are Wake Forest (13-0), Clemson (14-0) and Illinois State (14-0). Wake, off to its best start since the 1996-97 season, plays host to North Carolina on Sunday.

The Panthers collected 774 total points in the voting, 60 more than No. 2 Duke (12-1), which was bumped three spots in the poll. Wake Forest was fourth, followed by UConn, with the rest of the top 10 looking like Oklahoma (13-1), Texas (11-2) and UCLA (12-2) tied for seventh, Syracuse (14-1) and Georgetown (10-2).

Eleventh-ranked Clemson kicked off the second 10 after a five-spot jump, followed by Michigan State (11-2), Notre Dame (10-3), Purdue (11-3), Marquette (13-2), Arizona State (12-2), Villanova (12-2), Xavier (11-2), Minnesota (13-1) and Top 25 newcomer Butler (12-1).

No. 21 Louisville (9-3), West Virginia (11-2), Baylor (12-2), Boston College (13-2) and Tennessee (9-3) rounded out the Top 25. Gonzaga, Ohio State and Michigan dropped out of the poll.

With the Steelers playing host to San Diego in the NFL's AFC divisional playoffs on Sunday, it could take some heat off Pitt this week. The Panthers' next game is Sunday against St. John's.

"[A No. 1 ranking] doesn't mean much to me, but it will mean something to other people," Dixon said Sunday night. "It won't mean much to our players. We've been consistently good, but at the same time we haven't won a national championship, so nothing changes."

Heat Is On Wannstedt

Pitt lost to Bowling Green this afternoon, 27-17. So much for that West Virginia game. But maybe the loss is not as surprising as it seems.

After coming out of the gates impressively, gaining a 14-0 lead, Pitt regressed and looked a lot like the middling 2007 team. Turnovers, penalties and limp defense led to a Bowling Green romp.

A season that had so much promise before it began is suddenly in serious jeopardy. And once again, a Dave Wannstedt team fails to show up and beat a team it should.

Who to blame? Mainly the players, from Shady McCoy fumbling to receivers dropping balls all over the place and an offensive line that allowed a sack and fumble by Billy Stull, who for some reason threw 51 passes!!

But this is the first game and for players to not be ready to play is an indictment of the head coach. Wannstedt can recruit with the best of them (or so we read every offseason), yet it has yet to translate to the field. Maybe these players aren't as good as we hear? Or maybe something happens to the coach on Satrudays.

The season isn't over, the Big East has yet ot begin, but this is no more than a 7 win team. At best. And that's a shame.

Big East Champs TipOff Thursday at 3:00pm EDT

The first round schedule for the NCAA's is out and Pitt will be the second game schedule in Denver Thursday afternoon. Michigan St and Oregon will start at 12:30 EDT and Pitt/Oral Roberts will start 30 minutes after the end of that game. Barring OT, the Pitt game will begin around 3:00 EDT.

Pitt/WVU: It Actually Happened

Pitt Blather covered it well with several posts:

• Screenshots right as the game ended.
• The scene inside the Stadium in Morgantown
  
• Summarizing the national take on the officiating

What can I add?

• This game is the biggest upset for Pitt football in my lifetime and will surely stick in my mind for the complete opposite reason that the 48-14 game in 1982 does, a game I attended and left early because it was so miserable a game (a surprisingly cold too). It's nice to have a game to balance out that game from 25 years ago.
• How can a defense play so well after it played so poorly vs Navy and Virginia? Or, if Pitt's defense is closer to what we saw on Saturday, and I think they are, how could they have played so poorly vs those two?
• Pitt played two of the top 4 rushing teams in the country (Navy is #1, WVU is now #4 but was #2 coming into the Pitt game). Against one, they allowed 331 yards rushing. Against the better team that was playing for everything, the allowed 104 (net) rushing yards. Who can explain that?
• How long is Shady McCoy destined to remain a Panther? Sorry to rain on the joy but we might have only one more year to enjoy this guy.
• Interesting that there is thought going around that Pitt needs to recruit a JC QB to fill in next year, I suppose to give Bostick a full year to improve his footwork, arm strength, delivery and defensive recognition - ok, to improve just about everything. Question: how was he the PA Player of the Year? If he's such a blue chipper, he gained enough experience this year, that when bolstered by an offseason of work and without personal issues, he should be the starter in the fall.
• Oderick Turner: how cursed was he? Two phantom holding calls vs WVU that followed the phantom offensive pass interference call against him in the end zone at the end of the Rutgers game. They lost to Rutgers because of the call, at least they held on vs the 'Eers.
• I couldn't exhale until Brytus walked out of the end zone on the final play. Too many last second failures this year made me think that somehow they would punt and give up a TD.
• Great day for Wannstedt - an extension and that signature win he was looking for. The pressure to win will be high in '08, and he's adding fuel to the fire already:
  

  "We're going to win and we're going to a bowl game. ... A couple more recruiting classes and this thing will really roll. We can get this program back to where it was in the early '80s. I truly believe that."

• For at least a year, Pitt can claim supremacy over both WVU 13-9 and PSU 12-0. How Sweet it is!
  

Good thing Pitt doesn't have QB issues

Ok, we all loved Tyler Palko's enthusiasm and sometimes his play bailed Pitt out of big jams. But he just didn't progress enough from his sophomore year when I was saying that he was a sure fire first round NFL pick. And now that he's gone, the Stull/Smith/Bostick era has gotten off to a rousing start.

But going back to 2005-2006: There was something else going on: nobody wanted to stick it out and be Tyler's backup.

First it was Luke Getsy who transferred from Pitt to Akron after losing the competition and proceeded to put up numbers that outdid Palko's.

Now, out the the Blue (Hens) comes the name of Joe Flacco, who just may be a first round pick in next year's NFL draft after putting some spectacular numbers at Delaware. He has has thrown for 3,040 yards, 16 touchdowns and only four interceptions this season to go with a 70.3 completion percentage.

I mean Joe Flacco? If Getsy and Flacco could do these things, why couldn't Palko, who beat out these two, do the same with a supposedly better team around him? Or was going with Palko really the right choice? Walt Harris and Davey Wannstedt will have to answer to that.

Palko was a Pittsburgh high school star and maybe love of our own was the clincher. But Getsy is also a Burgher and he bolted town as soon as he didn't win the job. Whatever the reason, it would have been nice to have Getsy and/or Flacco available over the last couple of years.