PITTSBURGH AT WAKE
FOREST
WHEN: 12:00
PM ET, Saturday, November 17, 2018
WHERE: BB&T Field,
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Pittsburgh’s ground-and-pound attack has taken the
Panthers to the brink of its first ACC Championship game. Needing just a win or
a Virginia loss to secure the Coastal crown over the final two regular-season
games and punch a ticket to play Clemson in the title game, the Panthers visit
a Wake Forest team on Saturday that is coming off a big win of its own.
Darrin Hall ran for 229 yards as the Panthers beat the Cavaliers 23-13 two
weeks ago to take over the top spot in the division, and fellow senior Quadree
Ollison added 235 yards last week and the longest touchdown run in school
history as Pitt rolled Virginia Tech 52-22. During the Panthers’ three-game
winning streak, the team is averaging 410 yards rushing and the defense is
playing its best football of the season. “You hope 250, 200 (yards rushing per
game). I mean, that's kind of what you'd like to … 492 was not in the goals,
but we'll take that, too,” Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi told reporters Tuesday. “You
want to run the football, and in today's world, everybody is just throwing it
all over the place, and I still believe it's a matter of stopping the run and
running the football.” Wake Forest erased a 10-point, fourth-quarter deficit to
beat then No. 22 North Carolina State 27-23 last week in sophomore Jamie
Newman’s first career start at quarterback.
TV: Noon
ET, ACC Network.
LINE: Pittsburgh
-7.
ABOUT PITTSBURGH
(6-4, 5-1 ACC): Hall ran seven times for 186 yards with a scoring run
of 73 yards, while Ollison carried 16 times and scored on runs of 8, 31 and 97
- topping the 92-yard run by Hall last season against Duke. The Panthers set a school
record with 654 total yards, including 421 yards on 23 rush attempts by their
top two runners, and their 13.9 yards per play was the highest in an FBS game
in 14 years. Kenny Pickett completed 7-of-10 passes for 162 yards in the first
half (a 78-yard TD to Maurice Ffrench), accounting for more passing yards in
the first half than he had for an entire game in all but three outings this
season.
ABOUT WAKE FOREST
(5-5, 2-4): Newman completed 22-of-33 passes for 297 yards, including
a 32-yard TD to Jack Freudenthal with 30 seconds left, to secure the Demon
Deacons’ first road win against a ranked opponent since 2008. The defense,
spearheaded by defensive back Amari Henderson’s 14 tackles, allowed just one
red-zone touchdown in five Wolfpack trips after yielding 24 TDs to opponents in
their first 27 trips entering the contest. There was some bad news for Wake, as
running back Matt Colburn (2,467 yards, sixth in school history), left early in
the second half with a left ankle injury and is questionable for Saturday.
EXTRA POINTS
1. Wake Forest rallied from 10
points down in the fourth quarter to win for the first time since 2007.
2. The Panthers' average of 256.9
rushing yards per game is their highest since the 1976 national championship
season. That year, Heisman-winning Tony Dorsett powered a run game that
averaged 290.5 yards per contest.
3. Ollison is the sixth player in
school history to compile two 1,000-yard seasons.
PREDICTION: Pittsburgh 35, Wake
Forest 21
No comments:
Post a Comment