University of Pittsburgh

Column: Pitt’s problems don’t run too deep

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James Conner bursts away from the Iowa defense for some of his 157 yards Saturday. — PETE MADIA / PITT ATHLETICS

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

Anytime a Pitt team loses, pretty much any sport — football, basketball, intramural frisbee golf on Flagstaff Hill — there’s this public rush to pull down the bright red lever and let the sirens wail.

Sorry, not feeling it.

Not on this sunny Saturday afternoon at Heinz Field, anyway.

“This hurts,” James Conner was speaking in the softest of tones shortly after the Panthers flopped in the second half, fell hard to Iowa, 24-20, and failed to open the season 4-0. “And now we know this feeling. We don’t want to feel it anymore. We want to change this program.”

I think they will. Call me crazy or burn a couch in my front lawn — oh, wait, that’s another school — but what I witnessed over the course of this game was what should have been been expected of an undefeated team that also had gone mostly unchallenged to this point: Their strengths remained strengths, right up until the opponent wised up, sharpened up and attacked the weaknesses.

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Friday Insider: Marte didn’t appreciate back seat

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DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

fridayinsiderA weekly feature aimed at rounding up a whole lot of odds and ends from a whole lot of time spent around our local teams …

• Starling Marte is best buds with Gregory Polanco. The two hang together, in the Pirates’ clubhouse and in the outside world. Both are Dominican. Marte is only three years older.

And yet — and I’m going to be careful in wording this — I can tell you that Marte wasn’t all that thrilled when all of Pittsburgh was almost hysterically clamoring for Polanco early this summer. Again, not because of any issue with Polanco the person or the player. “He’s a great hitter,” Marte told me at the time. “I want to see him here, too.” But there also was a bit of a chip with the sentiment. “I’m here, too. I can play.”

Well, flash forward to Thursday night and the 3-2 edging of the Red Sox at PNC Park, in which Marte’s 13th home run — a bomb to the bleacher walkway — that made the difference. Seven of those home runs have come in the past 35 games. So have 19 RBIs. And since the All-Star break, he’s batting .356. Not many have been better, and no one tops his .616 slugging percentage.

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News/views: Pitt can’t pass on passing

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Chad Voytik breaks loose for a 32-yard touchdown run Saturday at Florida International. -- PETE MADIA / PITT ATHLETICS

Chad Voytik breaks loose for a 32-yard touchdown run Saturday at Florida International. — PETE MADIA / PITT ATHLETICS

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

NEWS: Paul Chryst spoke about Pitt’s offense being capable of an upgrade, all the bodacious numbers aside, at his weekly press conference Monday on the South Side. Even the running game, which has averaged, um, 344.4 yards.

VIEWS: Well, yeah.

Because, as Chryst tried to put it carefully in respecting the three teams over whom the Panthers have run roughshod: “The numbers are misleading on a lot of things. We can be cleaner. We can do a better job of the receivers blocking, we can do a better job getting through the second level, getting on our pulls. I mean, there are a lot of things we can get better at in the run game.”

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Tuesday 12 Qs: Holdzkom, Ike, Sid, JoePa

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DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

photoWelcome to Tuesday Twelve Qs, our chat that takes place each week. This week’s edition will have to start at 2 p.m., an hour later than usual, because of the Steelers’ schedule being messed up by the short week for the Thursday game in Baltimore.

The format is simple: Use the comments section below to submit an entry, with no more than one per person, please. Submit it anytime you want. I’ll pick from those to get the thing rolling, then monitor new entries once we go live at 2. All topics welcome, as always.

UPDATE 1:47 p.m.: OK, I’m back from Steelers HQ, so let’s get going now because we already have so many Qs lined up in the queue …

Wild Bill: Would you agree that the chaos the Ravens are going through right now gives the Steelers a Thursday night advantage? Or, is the crisis something that might help the Ravens rally together with an “us against the world” mentality?

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Column: No need to overthink this Pitt start

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Pitt’s James Conner bursts through a hole in the Boston College defense Friday night. — PETE MADIA / PITT ATHLETICS

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. — The official Pitt football playbook is as thick as a small tree trunk and weighs a solid three pounds, if you ask Chad Voytik. And as the guy responsible for making every page of that book count, he ought to know.

Here’s something else the first-year quarterback knows: “You get the ball to your playmakers, and they make plays.”

Yep. All it takes sometimes is a page or two.

Or maybe, as was the case for the Panthers’ oddly stirring 30-20 breakdown of Boston College in both teams’ ACC opener Friday night at Alumni Stadium, it’s just a paragraph or two.

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Friday Insider: Pirates’ truth odder than fiction

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DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

fridayinsiderA weekly feature aimed at rounding up a whole lot of odds and ends from a whole lot of time spent around our local teams …

• The numbers and narratives that get tossed around in public about the Pirates’ finances often border on the insane, but a few of late have crossed definitively into that territory. The latest — and maybe greatest ever — is that the team took on $25 million, no $35 million or is it now $45 million in new monies since last season.

Do I have a taker for $55 million yet?

It isn’t true. It isn’t close to true, and I’m about to waste my breath here sharing why.

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News with Views: Pitt’s (much) taller task

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Pitt’s James Conner saw more green than the Amazon rainforest Saturday at Heinz Field. — PETE MADIA / PITT ATHLETICS

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

Paul Chryst barely mustered a monosyllabic hiccup in his Tuesday press conference when asked if Pitt will have difficulty avoiding overconfidence after crushing Delaware, 62-0, in its opener.

“No.”

That was it.

He wasn’t being glib, either. You could see from his expression he was actually reaching for a way to expound upon the answer, then didn’t even bother.

And why should he have?

No means no, right?

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Tuesday 12 Qs: Tomlin, Broxton, Geno, Dri, Clash

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DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

photoWelcome to Tuesday Twelve Qs, our chat that takes place each week at 1 p.m. live from the Steelers’ headquarters on the South Side.

The format is simple: Use the comments section below to submit an entry, with no more than one per person, please. Submit it anytime you want. I’ll pick from those to get the thing rolling, then monitor new entries. All topics welcome, as always.

UPDATE 1:05 p.m.: Sorry, a little late. But away we go …

TLCinDC: If the Steelers finish worse than 8-8 this season, does Mike Tomlin end up on the Rooneys’ hot seat? In that instance, what’s your best guess on how that scenario plays out?

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Column: Tyler, Pitt point the way

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Tyler Boyd dives for a 12-yard touchdown catch in front of Delaware’s C.J. Jones. — PETE MADIA / PITT ATHLETICS

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

The totality of all that Pitt achieved in its 125th football opener on a sizzling Saturday at Heinz Field, the 501 yards of offense, the five times the defense allowed the chains to move, the cumulative 62-0 slaughtering of some sadly overmatched Delaware Sacrificial Chickens … the whole scene could still somehow still be summarized by the state of one finger on one player.

Yes, Tyler Boyd is OK.

Yes, in all likelihood, he’ll be ready for the ACC opener next Friday at Boston College.

The official prognosis of the Clairton Kid’s dislocated finger on his left hand, the result of ramming a tackler’s helmet on a punt return late in the first half, came from Paul Chryst with a vague, “We’ll find out.” And Boyd himself wasn’t available for comment because of the injury.

But Boyd’s teammates, to a man, sounded optimistic bordering on certain.

“He’ll be fine,” quarterback Chad Voytik was saying. “I talked to him for a little while.”

“I can’t speak for him,” left tackle Jaryd Jones-Smith said, “but he was in really good spirits.”

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Friday Insider: Rev up Penguins’ cycle

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DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

A weekly feature aimed at rounding up a whole lot of odds and ends from a whole lot of time spent around our local teams …

• Hints have been scarce about what the Penguins’ new system will look like under Mike Johnston, but I was able to cull this much from the staff, based on another hint that was dropped several months ago: They’re about to get back on the cycle.

My meeting this week with Johnston and assistants Rick Tocchet and Gary Agnew confirmed that one of the reasons they — and Jim Rutherford and management — are making such a priority of mobile defensemen is that they’ll attack the opponent more by wearing them down than by simply out-rushing them up ice. All three forwards will be expected to be proficient at the cycle, center included, and a defenseman will be involved, as well.

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