PITTSBURGH — Saturday’s matchup between No. 22 Pitt football and No. 9 Notre Dame was one of the most anticipated regular-season home games for the Panthers in quite some time.
However, Pat Narduzzi’s comments on Monday hung over the matchup and received national scrutiny.
“Absolutely not,” Narduzzi said when asked if the Notre Dame was a must-win. “It is not an ACC game. I’m glad you brought that up. It is not an ACC game. I would gladly get beat 103 or 110-10 in that game. They could put 100 up on us as long as we win the next two after that. Again, our focus is on Notre Dame and getting as many wins as we can, one at a time.”
It was a game that featured ESPN’s College GameDay, legendary Aaron Donald’s retirement ceremony with many more Pitt greats in the house and an opportunity to take down a Notre Dame team with its College Football Playoff hopes in the balance.
Pitt fans did their part, flocking to the North Shore of Pittsburgh in droves. Fans camped out at the College GameDay set overnight and students lined up outside the stadium hours before kick off to get prime seating in the Panther Pitt.
There was a buzz around this game — and a late-season November matchup — that is very rare for Pitt.
In front of a sold out 68,400-capacity crowd, Pitt failed to show up in a 37-15 loss against the Fighting Irish on the national stage.
“I apologize to the fans,” Narduzzi said postgame. “It was a great showing. Walked out to GameDay. It was a heck of a day, at least to start, for our Pitt fans, for the University of Pittsburgh, for this city of Pittsburgh. I appreciate everything they did. I wish I could have given them more.”
Pitt is all too familiar with a promising start during a season only to see it crumble down the stretch. Last year, Pitt started off with a 7-0 record before losing its final six games.
After seeing its five-game win streak snapped and an ACC title berth still on the line in the coming weeks, Narduzzi says Pitt will not let the loss snowball.
“Very easily,” Narduzzi said about keeping the loss from snowballing. “That’s my job as a head coach to make sure we don’t let it snowball into anything. We’ve got a great Georgia Tech team now. We’ve got another top 25 team coming up this week, and that’s where our focus goes. We’ve got to get ready to play down in Atlanta, and I’m excited. Our kids will be excited. This will not snowball into anything.”
Linebacker Rasheem Biles is one of those Pitt players that has last season’s disheartening slide engrained in his mind.
“We ain’t hitting no wall,” Biles said. “We still got everything in front of us, we know that. We just going to bounce back, have a great week of practice and prepare for Georgia Tech.”
Quarterback Mason Heintschel suffered his first loss as a starter Saturday. He too says that this loss won’t affect the Panthers’ ACC aspirations.
“Oh, it won’t, absolutely,” he said. “Everybody in the locker room knows that everything’s still ahead of us. We’re frustrated with this game. We’re gonna learn from this, too. This is a great learning point for this team. Sometimes you look at your mouth to get back on track. So we’re gonna bounce back, and we’re gonna have a great week of practice. We’re gonna be ready for Georgia Tech.”
The Panthers are 5-1 in conference play and are in the thick of a compelling ACC race.
Pitt heads on the road to play Georgia Tech next Saturday and will return home in two weeks to cap off the regular season against Miami.
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