(Don’t) Bet the House: Pitt vs Virginia Tech Picks

We’re finally at the stage of the season that the staff picks aren’t getting so easy anymore. Last week, we had a decent amount of folks, including myself, pick UNC to top the Panthers once again.

Thankfully, we were wrong, and Pitt finally beat UNC for the first time since joining the ACC. They made it interesting, of course, but what’s a Pitt game without some late game dramatics.

This week comes arguably Pitt’s most important game of the season if it wants to repeat as Coastal champs. With a win today, Pitt knocks off the toughest opponent it has left, and gives itself a pretty decent shot at winning the Coastal if Pitt were to take care of business against Boston College, and Virginia Tech beats Virginia next week.

Virginia Tech has been surging a bit as of late, and is certainly a much better team than earlier in the season when it looked like Virginia Tech fans wanted Fuente’s head.

Until today, I didn’t have a great feeling about this game. Virginia Tech is favored by about 3.5 to 4 points in most places. For some reason I woke up today and felt Pitt might just pull it off. I think if this was a home game, Pitt would lose. Pitt seems to get some of its better wins on the road sometimes. I think they just feel less pressure, and it feeds into Narduzzi’s “us against them” mentality. Having said that, the forcecast calling for rain the entire game isn’t great for a team producing most of its offense through the air. The run game is going to have to be great for Pitt to score some points today, and it’s not been stellar this year. Pitt’s defense will keep Pitt in the game no matter what, and the rain will hurt Virginia Tech as well.

A Pitt win today really would do wonders. It puts them in decent position to win the Coastal as mentioned earlier, would be a win over a “hot” team on national tv, would likely mean they’re ranked next week, and would guarantee an 8 win season.

Some may disagree, but Pitt winning 8 games in a year with the nonconference schedule they had is a very good accomplishment every year.

To the staff picks...

Anson (7-3) – Virginia Tech

Jordan (7-3) – Pitt

Stephen (7-3) – Pitt

Mike (7-3) – Pitt

JD (6-4) – Pitt

Corey (6-4) – Virginia Tech

Matt (5-5) – Pitt