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Dave Wannstedt had high hopes for the first practice of the second half of spring drills, believing that a spirited scrimmage had set the tone for a productive week of practice. “I expect that Tuesday, Thursday, Friday we’ll have three good, solid practices, good fundamentals,” the Pitt coach said before Tuesday’s session. “I expect the [...]

While much of the focus of Pitt’s spring drills has been on the quarterback play, it wasn’t until the first scrimmage Saturday that the Panthers put full-contact pressure on their passers. What it exposed – even more than how Bill Stull, Pat Bostick and Tino Sunseri responded to getting hurried, hit and sacked — is [...]

With the first scrimmage of spring drills looming Saturday, Pitt took the field wearing only shoulder pads and shorts, which gave the Panthers the impression that Friday’s practice could be a light workout. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Dave Wannstedt had other ideas. He put his players in a series of situational drills that [...]

Allderdice defensive end Will Clarke, who verbally committed to play football at Pitt, has instead signed a national letter of intent with arch-rival West Virginia. “Will is a big, strong and athletic defensive end who fits well into our defense,” WVU coach Bill Stewart said in a statement released by the university. “He has good [...]

Entering Pitt’s spring drills, the positions of primary focus for finding a replacement were tailback and middle linebacker, with LeSean McCoy leaving for the NFL Draft and Scott McKillop’s eligibility expiring. Yet Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt knows that he has a talented trio of tailbacks in Shariff Harris, Chris Burns and Dion Lewis – not [...]

Pitt quarterbacks were off-limits for interviews until Tuesday, allowing Bill Stull, Pat Bostick and Tino Sunseri four practices into spring drills before answering any questions about their so-called position battle. So-called because Stull has taken almost all of the first-team reps. And Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt called it “Billy’s job to lose.” That said, the [...]

In a flash, the tailback competition took an interesting twist. As quickly as he darted through several defenders before bouncing outside toward the left side for a 70-yard touchdown run, Dion Lewis announced his arrival as a contender to replace LeSean McCoy. A mid-semester enrollee, Lewis is a 5-foot-7, 190-pound freshman from Albany, N.Y., via [...]

It’s called the inside-run drill for a reason. Tailback Shariff Harris learned that lesson the hard way after he bounced outside on the first play of full-contact drills and ran toward the left sideline. Safety Elijah Fields chased Harris down, wrapped him up and slammed him out of bounds and onto the track. When Harris [...]

Pitt football coach Dave Wannstedt huddled his players together on the practice field of the indoor football facility and voiced his displeasure with their play tonight after the second session of spring drills. Wannstedt made it clear last season his disapproval of turnovers, so he was nearly beside himself after watching a series of botched [...]

Dave Wannstedt likened football practice in pads to “watching paint dry,” so the Pitt football coach had little use for the Panthers’ opening day of spring drills even if it was slightly more exciting but less revealing. “The enthusiasm is good,” Wannstedt said. “You know how I am about practicing without pads on. It’s good [...]