Sun Bowl Take 5: Stakes are high vs. UCLA in Pitt’s quest for 9th victory
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EL PASO, Texas — In the end, Pitt football’s season and, certainly, coach Pat Narduzzi will be judged by what happens Friday at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in 58-year-old Sun Bowl Stadium.
Is it fair and accurate to evaluate an entire season based on one afternoon in December?
Unquestionably, the Pitt-UCLA Sun Bowl matchup is big-time college football, featuring the No. 18 Bruins (9-3, with the No. 3 offense in the nation) and Pitt (8-4), only a year removed from an ACC championship and sporting a four-game winning streak. Fair or not, the outcome will be either celebrated (in victory) or judged harshly (in defeat).
Accurate? Probably not, but the stakes are high and expectations are higher. With an upset victory, Pitt might be ranked in the final Associated Press poll for the second consecutive season.
Write the numerical sequences 9-4 and 8-5 side by side. Which one would look better to Pitt fans?
A victory would be Pitt’s ninth, giving the Panthers 20 in back-to-back seasons for the first time in 40 years. Pitt hasn’t finished a season winning five in a row since 2001.
The game matters, at least, to those players who are here. But will things unravel for the Panthers, who are missing 10 of their best players, including opt-outs, transfers and the injured?
Or, can they defeat a team that averages more than 500 yards per game?
Here are some thoughts to ponder before the 2 p.m. kickoff:
1. Who are the Panthers?
Presented with that question, Narduzzi called his bunch “resilient” after they turned 4-4 into 8-4.
“They’re a team that’s together,” he said. “They love to play the game. They’ve been great down here. There have been no problems with bed check. It’s a pleasure to coach them.”
Sun Bowl executive director Bernie Olivas said he encountered many Pitt players this week, and he admired the way they comported themselves. “Yes, sir. No, sir. Please, thank you. They say hello to you before you say hello to them.”
Responded Narduzzi: “They take their hats off, too.”
2. Can Pitt still stop the run?
UCLA’s running game is fourth in the nation, second among Power 5 teams with an average of 246.3 yards per game. Pitt’s run defense is eighth (95.5), third in the Power 5 behind only Georgia and Michigan. Of course, that ranking was achieved when most of Pitt’s stars were active.
“They got one of the best rush attacks in the country. We got one of the best run defenses in the country,” Narduzzi said. “We’re pretty much built to stop the run. That will be interesting. We don’t have all our weapons, but if our guys do what they’re supposed to do and hang in there, we’ll be OK.”
UCLA running back Zach Charbonnet, a transfer from Michigan, has been nearly as productive as Pitt’s Izzy Abanikanda (an opt-out), finishing with 1,359 yards rushing.
Coach Chip Kelly had high praise for Charbonnet.
“He is the same every day. You don’t have to pull teeth or motivate him on what we’re doing,” he said. “There’s a constant inner drive for Zach to be better than he was the day before. The challenge is for us as coaches to make sure we keep up with him because he sets the bar pretty high.”
Pitt has experience stopping productive running backs. Syracuse’s Sean Tucker (1,060 yards this season) managed only 19 yards on 10 carries in a game this season.
3. What about that UCLA defense?
The Bruins do give up some real estate and points.
In their final four games, UCLA surrendered 1,914 yards of total offense (an average of 478.5 per game) and 146 points. Included in that grouping were two November losses: 34-28 to Arizona (3-6 Pac-12) and 48-45 to USC and Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams. USC pretty much had its way with UCLA’s defense, accounting for 649 of those yards.
4. Replacements
The loss of Abanikanda is huge for Pitt. His combination of speed and power propped up Pitt’s offense when the offense was struggling. Narduzzi knows that, but he has high hopes for Rodney Hammond Jr. and Vince Davis.
“Those guys have played a lot of football. Rodney probably would have played a lot more this season had he not got hurt early in the season,” the coach said. “There are a lot of people who thought he was the better back in the backfield.”
Hammond missed five games and ended the regular season with 366 yards rushing. Davis, a senior, has 1,786 in four seasons, but carried only 45 times in 2022.
Numerous Pitt defensive linemen will miss the game — Calijah Kancey, John Morgan and Deslin Alexandre (for sure) and Habakkuk Baldonado (likely) — so Westinghouse High School’s Dayon Hayes will be “the leader out there,” according to Narduzzi. “We’re going to need him to step up and play big.”
Hayes had three sacks against Miami when Kancey and Baldonado were injured.
The coach also mentioned freshman defensive end Sam Okunlola. “We’re expecting big things. He’s going to be a star in a Pitt uniform in the future. It’s going to be fun to go watch him play.”
5. And, finally …
Pitt has played 24 games under Narduzzi against teams ranked in the top 25, and it has won seven (Clemson, Miami, Virginia, UCF, Louisville, Wake Forest and Syracuse). That computes to one victory in seven of his eight seasons, including Syracuse in 2022 when it was ranked 20th and in the process of losing six of its last seven games.
Friday marks No. 25.