Pitt notebook: Expectations high, but Pat Narduzzi says preseason rankings don’t matter to him
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Pitt hasn’t been ranked in the Associated Press preseason college football poll since 2010, a streak that could end this month.
The Panthers finished 2021 as ACC champions and were ranked No. 13 in the final AP poll. They return 15 starters from that team, and Sports Illustrated predicted Pitt will be ranked 19th nationally before the first game is played.
In five of Narduzzi’s previous seven seasons at Pitt, his team has been ranked at least once during the season.
Preseason rankings are a topic that stirs conversation and arguments among fans while the media likes to report on it and speculate. But Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi said it doesn’t register on his interest meter.
“Not worried about it. Don’t care,” he said. “I want to know where we are ranked at the end of the (season) and how many wins we have in the win column. That’s going to be the key. Those preseason rankings mean absolutely nothing.
“Pull out your (rankings) from the beginning of the year and see what it looked like. Does anybody ever do that and see how wrong they were?”
OK, here goes:
Using the preseason and final polls as guides, five teams were ranked at the end of the season and unranked at the outset in a compilation of votes from the 61-person electorate. They include No. 3 Michigan, No. 5 Baylor, No. 7 Oklahoma State, No. 9 Michigan State and No. 11 Ole Miss. No. 13 Pitt also was unranked before finishing 11-3, its best in 40 years.
For the record, national champion Georgia was No. 5 in the preseason and runner-up Alabama was No. 1.
Lookin’ good
Narduzzi doesn’t like to talk about injuries to his players — even when the first game is a month away.
But he did remark that no one was limited at the outset of drills Monday.
“Nobody is limited except maybe me, right? My calf is a little tight,” the 56-year-old coach said.
”We’re really, really healthy right now going into fall camp,” he said, knocking on the wooden podium during his news conference Monday. “We want to see it stay that way.”