Fifth Avenue Forum

don't know how you can even be sad, you should have seen this coming with 12 minutes left in the fourth.

How exciting. It's a shame they have to play a second half.

Pomp posted a clip on Twitter of the bullsh!t pass interference call on Jackson that helped continue the ND drive that resulted in their go-ahead TD.

Someone replied that the back judge that threw that flag - Gary Dancewicz - is the exact same official that threw the flag on the K’Waun Williams phantom PI call in 2012. Dancewicz’s father was an All-American QB for Notre Dame in the 1940s.

None of this absolves Pitt’s coaching staff of the beyond-bonehead mistakes they made on their own when they cost their kids that game yesterday, but this is just another thing I’m going to be angry about today.

Update: Kenny the kangaroo's road record now sits at 4-15 (.211 winning percentage). Next chance for a loss: Pitt UVA in two weeks under the Friday night lights

When I watched Kenny Pickett being interviewed about that foolish fake punt on our 2nd to last possession and heard him say this my heart dropped a bit:

It’s coach Duzz’s call, and I back him till death,” Pickett said. “I love that guy to death, so whatever he thinks is best, is best. You know, everyone else wants to be a football expert out in this world and they have no clue what the hell they’re talking about — a majority of the time.

“No offense to any of you guys [in the media] but sometimes it’s you guys, too. That’s just the flat-out truth of it. That’s coach Duzz’s call, and I back him 100 percent.”

That language and the “Us against the world.” mentality behind it is absolutely not what you want to hear come out of the mouth of a 20 year old college student – football player or not. To me it smacks of delusion and used-car salesman leadership.

Granted he’s a young man but he’s no novice in being interviewed…a simple “That’s not my decision to discuss” not only would have sufficed but thown the blame spotlight squarely back where it belongs – glaring directly into Narduzi’s eyes. That was a sad thing to happen in a season of surprises, both good and bad.

This guy sometimes has some good insights, but the majority of the time is the most miserable, self-loathing Pitt fan you could possibly conjure up. I dont know why I go to his site sometimes, so mark this down as me hate-reading him:

https://pittpov.com/2018/10/15/povs-mmq ... o-nd-2018/

When I watched Kenny Pickett being interviewed about that foolish fake punt on our 2nd to last possession and heard him say this my heart dropped a bit:

It’s coach Duzz’s call, and I back him till death,” Pickett said. “I love that guy to death, so whatever he thinks is best, is best. You know, everyone else wants to be a football expert out in this world and they have no clue what the hell they’re talking about — a majority of the time.

“No offense to any of you guys [in the media] but sometimes it’s you guys, too. That’s just the flat-out truth of it. That’s coach Duzz’s call, and I back him 100 percent.”

That language and the “Us against the world.” mentality behind it is absolutely not what you want to hear come out of the mouth of a 20 year old college student – football player or not. To me it smacks of delusion and used-car salesman leadership.

Granted he’s a young man but he’s no novice in being interviewed…a simple “That’s not my decision to discuss” not only would have sufficed but thown the blame spotlight squarely back where it belongs – glaring directly into Narduzi’s eyes. That was a sad thing to happen in a season of surprises, both good and bad.

What a jackass. The coaching decision was positively atrocious -- just run your offense you moron, no one is falling for a fake in that context -- but to claim that the starting QB backing up his coach in the post-game presser is somehow "sad" or that Kenneth Shane Pickett's responsibility in a press conference after a brutal loss is to "throw the blame spotlight squarely" on his coach...what an assclown. There are too many dudes like this guy in this fanbase, no matter how disillusioned one can fairly be after 30 years of *gestures broadly* this.

The first 30,000 fans at the VT game will receive a Bill Hillgrove bobblehead. Heck yes. Can't wait for the Pittsburgh Dad Jr. mock yinzer tweets on this bad boy

Six years ago this month began a journey that ended up being too brief for Pitt basketball fans, but, by his own estimation, much too long for former Panthers center Steven Adams.

Vaguely outlined in his new autobiography — titled “My Life, My Fight: Rising Up From New Zealand To The OKC Thunder” — the 7-foot, 250-pound five-star center prospect Jamie Dixon lured to Pitt was all set to go play somewhere new. And for someone new, rather than the only college coach he had ever known, introduced to him by mentor Kenny McFadden, Dixon’s former teammate in New Zealand.

Adams, almost always regarded as a witty, candid personality in the basketball world, notes early on that Pitt was his only option at the time he committed, and he went there because they offered him first. He is brutally honest in the book about his college experience, writing that he felt “restricted” by Dixon’s philosophy, both for him and any big man in the program. It also helps explain why he steadfastly stated he’d be back for his sophomore season, only to abruptly leave school and declare for the 2013 NBA draft less than two weeks after Pitt’s season-ending loss to Wichita State in the first round of the NCAA tournament:

“In reality, my freshman college season was pretty good. I put up decent numbers and didn’t show any major weaknesses. But because I hadn’t enjoyed it, I finished our final game just relieved to be getting a break,” Adams wrote with co-author Madeleine Chapman.

“I had complained to Kenny [McFadden] a lot during that season, and he promised he would start looking for other college options after I told him there was no way I could play four years being so restricted. Since then I’ve heard that some top coaches will restrict a potential draft pick in their freshman year because it forces them to return to school the following year.”

“To Coach Dixon, I was a big man for rebounds and dunks and nothing else,” he wrote. “Kenny had spent countless hours drilling into me that no matter what position you play, you should have a full skillset. But pretty quickly I found my skillset diminishing as the bigs only worked on ‘big’ stuff and had no time for shooting or ball handling. If I shot a mid-range floater — my new favorite shot — during a game, I’d be told off and benched. … That wasn’t the game I wanted to play; it was the game I was forced to play.”

He hated Pitt’s strength and conditioning program, to the extent that he “thought seriously about chucking it all in, quitting America and going home to New Zealand where I was more comfortable.” His moniker for the weight room was “meathead training” because he didn’t see how it helped him as a basketball player.

And off the court, he laments how easy his studies were at Pitt. Adams insists he was interesting in farming, and wanted to take classes that were closer to the field of agriculture, or in math and science, but discovered “I’d already been put in some of the easiest elective courses.”

“It’s a weird situation because I think the athletic department assumed that all the basketball players wanted to do the least schoolwork possible and worked out their timetables for them,” Adams continued.

He concedes that he didn’t need any of the learning or studying habits he developed in the New Zealand educational system, and that he “basically didn’t go to school” because his assignments were so open-ended. “I’d just go to the exam, write an essay on what I thought about a topic, and get really good grades.”

The first 30,000 fans at the VT game will receive a Bill Hillgrove bobblehead. Heck yes. Can't wait for the Pittsburgh Dad Jr. mock yinzer tweets on this bad boy

Bill Hillgrove is an underrated Pittsburgh legend. I can't tell you how many times I've heard his voice listening to Steeler and Pitt games from the past 35 or so years. Even if the Pitt basketball team is 0-18, I will still tune in if I'm in the car to listen to him and Dick Groat.