Secondary dodges Oranges, still struggles

CINCINNATI- It rained oranges at Nippert Stadium on Saturday night. Fans were given oranges… CINCINNATI- It rained oranges at Nippert Stadium on Saturday night. Fans were given oranges when the Cincinnati Bearcats (9-2, 5-1 Big East) took on the Pitt Panthers (7-3, 3-2 Big East) to help show the uninformed that with a win, the Bearcats would take a giant leap toward making their first BCS Bowl game. The game they’d likely play in? The Orange Bowl. Clever, huh? Like most things handed out to crowds at sporting events, the oranges eventually ended up on the field. Once it appeared the Bearcats won, the storm began, although a bit prematurely. After the clock ran to zero the first time, a sea of fans dressed in red poured onto the field, tossing oranges along the way. But a Bearcat player was called for a penalty on the previous play, and the referees called for an additional four seconds on the clock. The fans ‘mdash; and the oranges ‘mdash; cleared off the field. The hundreds of fans stood behind the end zone facing the Pitt offense. The Panthers trailed by seven and had time for one last play. But Pitt was on its own 32-yard line. Bill Stull barely got off a shuffle pass to LeSean McCoy, who started up field and then pitched it to T.J. Porter, starting a string of laterals. The laterals went nowhere. While the last play was going on, the overzealous fans once again started out onto the field, only to realize the game wasn’t over just yet. ‘I just didn’t want to see the band on the field,’ said Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly, referring to the famous 1982 game between Stanford and Cal in which the Stanford band walked onto the field during the last play. Once the referee blew his whistle to signal that the game finally ended, the Cincinnati fans charged the field for the third time, once again chucking oranges every which way after their team took down Pitt 28-21. It was hard to tell if any Pitt players were hit by stray oranges, but if the previous 60 minutes of play proved anything, it showed that the Pitt defense was quite skilled at avoiding flying objects on the field ‘mdash; more specifically, passes. The Pitt secondary ‘mdash; which has been one of the Panthers’ biggest issues all season ‘mdash; once again played poorly. Cincinnati quarterback Tony Pike embarrassed the Panthers. They made Pike look like Mike Teel. Pike, playing with a broken left forearm, which isn’t his throwing arm, completed 26-of-32 passes for 301 yards and three touchdowns. He also led the Bearcats with 33 rushing yards. ‘[Pike] was incredible,’ said Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt. On numerous plays Pitt pressured Pike, only to have him narrowly elude a defender and hit a usually wide-open receiver, or make a perfectly positioned throw where only his receiver could get to it. ‘Defensively we were flying around, and we could not make a play on [Pike],’ said Wannstedt. ‘We were chasing him, and we could not get him on the ground.’ On all three of his touchdown passes, there was no Pitt defender within at least a few yards of the Bearcat receiver. The first touchdown pass was to Marcus Barnett and was right down the middle of the field. Either someone badly missed an assignment, or Barnett was wearing an invisibility cloak while on the line of scrimmage and took it off a few yards into his route. There was absolutely nobody near him. The second touchdown pass came with a little more than 3:30 to go in the first half. The Bearcats had a third-down-and-goal from the 4-yard line. Pike, under pressure, hit Dominick Goodman, who was standing flat-footed and alone in the back of the end zone for another easy score. Cincinnati led 14-7 at the half. On the third score, Pike hit Marshwan Gilyard, who beat Dom DiCicco by a couple of yards down the sideline, for a 41-yard touchdown and two-score advantage. Gilyard had eight catches for 110 yards, while Goodman caught seven for 101 yards on the day. With the win, the Bearcats are one victory away from claiming their first-ever Big East title and first appearance in a BCS game. All they have to do is beat the aptly named Syracuse Orange this weekend. If the Bearcats have near the same hostility for those Oranges as their fans did for the fruit-variety, the Big East is already theirs. The Panthers can’t think about the loss too much, as they welcome West Virginia to Heinz Field on Friday. While Pitt won’t make a BCS game, it still has a few options left as to which bowl game it can appear in. If Pitt finishes second in the Big East, there’s a good chance it will play in the Gator Bowl. So perhaps to pump up the crowd on Friday, the university might like to hand out gators to the fans in attendance. That way they can throw the gators on the field if Pitt wins. If Pitt loses, it could end up in a few other bowls, including the Papajohns.com or International Bowl. That means fans might have the chance to throw pizza or globes on the field in celebration. No matter what’s thrown on the field ‘mdash; at least if the Pitt secondary plays like it did on Saturday ‘mdash; there won’t be too many worries about hitting someone.