The bye week came at a bad time for the Pitt Panthers, as Paul Chryst’s team had the makings of beginning to look like a good football team for a couple of weeks before having to wait 13 days in between games.
That had an effect Friday night against Big East Conference rival Syracuse, as Pitt shot themselves in the foot all night long, eventually falling to the Orange 14-13, as Syracuse won its first game against an FBS team in their past eight tries.
Coming off two of the best back-to-back weeks of any quarterback in Pitt history, Tino Sunseri put up solid numbers, completing 25-of-33 pass attempts for 319 yards, but his recent string of success proved too good to be true for Pitt fans as when the pressure mounted, Sunseri reverted back to the old Tino and ultimately cost the Panthers a game.
Trailing 14-13 in the fourth quarter, Sunseri took three sacks and a costly intentional grounding penalty that knocked Pitt out of field goal range. With the Panthers in field goal range on the Syracuse 17, Sunseri took a 15-yard sack and got called for grounding. On the very next play from scrimmage, Sunseri was dropped again, this time for a loss of nine, moving the Panthers all the way back to the Syracuse 41.
Sunseri’s a senior leader and should know better by now or be able to handle the pressure. But he keeps making the same mistakes to cost the Panthers games that he has done for the past three years.
While Sunseri should take a good bit of the blame, he wasn’t the only one at fault.
Kevin Harper missed another field goal which proved costly, but not as costly as Drew Carswell putting the ball on the Carrier Dome carpet.
With Syracuse already leading 7-0 in the first quarter, Sunseri completed a pass to Carswell, but the sophomore tight end coughed it up and Dyshawn Davis picked it up and rumbled 5 yards for a score to put the Orange up 14-0.
But there were bright spots as well, most notably the Panthers’ defense.
They allowed only a first quarter touchdown on an Adonis Ameen-Moore one-yard run and played well enough to keep the Panthers in the ballgame.
K’Waun Williams picked off Syracuse quarterback Ryan Nassib and the duo of Aaron Donald and Tyrone Ezell applied constant pressure to Nassib. But as good as the Pitt defense ended up playing; the Panthers’ offense just couldn’t do enough to take the game away.
Ray Graham added a one-yard touchdown run in the second quarter to pull the Panthers within 14-7, but that was the highlight of the night for the usually strong Pitt ground game, who on the night rushed for a total of 27 yards on 37 carries with freshman Rushel Shell receiving only one carry on the night.
Because the Panthers had problems running the ball, the often weren’t in favorable third down situations and converted on only five of 14 third down attempts.
But thanks to a pair of Harper field goals in the second and third quarters, Pitt was right where they wanted to be, trailing by one with a chance to win on the road.
But with the game on the line they got the old Sunseri and with that comes another tough loss.
The Panthers will try and rebound next Saturday as they look for their first Big East Conference win against Big East favorite Louisville.
Scoring Summmary
1st Quarter:
SYR: Ameen-Moore 1 yard run [Krautman kick good] 7-0 9:54
SYR: Davis 52 yard fumble recovery [Krautman kick good] 14-0 1:06
2nd Quarter:
Pitt: Graham 1 yard run [Harper kick good] 14-7 10:41
Pitt: Harper 40 yard field goal 14-10 0:22
3rd Quarter
Pitt- Harper 27 yard field goal 14-13 1:57
4th quarter
None
Photo Credit: Post-Gazette
