{"id":283933,"date":"2025-11-10T20:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T20:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/283933\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T20:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T20:57:09","slug":"pat-narduzzi-gives-hilarious-response-to-must-win-narrative-vs-notre-dame-amid-acc-title-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/283933\/","title":{"rendered":"Pat Narduzzi gives hilarious response to \u2018must-win\u2019 narrative vs. Notre Dame amid ACC title race"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pitt Panthers<\/a> are taking center stage against Notre Dame<\/a> with ESPN College GameDay in town next weekend. It\u2019s a game that has begun to develop a must-win narrative for both sides. However, Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi<\/a> doesn\u2019t see it that way.<\/p>\n

At his recent press conference, Narduzzi actually pushed back, giving a pretty hilarious response to the must-win narrative. Instead, he insisted that it\u2019s more important for the Panthers to win their ACC games coming home in the final stretch of the season. <\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely not,\u201d Pat Narduzzi said<\/a>. \u201cIt is not an ACC game. I\u2019m glad you brought that up. It\u2019s not an ACC game. I\u2019d gladly get beat 103 or 110-10 in that game. They could put 100 up on us as long as we win the next two after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

That 103 or 110-10 number wasn\u2019t exactly random. Narduzzi had been asked earlier in the press conference about losing their last two games to Notre Dame by a combined score of 103-10. That came on the back of a 58-7 game in 2023 and a 45-3 game in 2020. For one of those, Notre Dame was led by head coach Marcus Freeman<\/a> and the other was against Brian Kelly<\/a>. Narduzzi, however, was the Pitt coach for both of those games. <\/p>\n

In general, Narduzzi has had issues competing against Notre Dame. He\u2019s 0-4 against the Irish since getting to Pitt. Only one of those was a one-score game. <\/p>\n

At the same time, Narduzzi isn\u2019t wrong that it\u2019s hard to describe the Notre Dame game as a must-win for Pitt. The Panthers are currently 7-2 on the season and were ranked at just No. 24 in the initial CFP selection committee rankings<\/a>. A new ranking will come out before their game against Notre Dame, and a win against the Irish would be a massive boost on their resume, but it still seems like an at-large bid into the CFP is a long shot for Pitt.<\/p>\n

Winning the ACC isn\u2019t a long shot method to make the CFP, though. It\u2019s arguably the more practical path for Pitt too. <\/p>\n

The challenge, which Narduzzi is well aware of, is that there are currently five ACC teams with only one conference loss. That number includes Pitt. Another two only have two conference losses. It\u2019s a tight race for two spots in the ACC Championship Game. With the Panthers\u2019 only loss in conference play coming to Louisville, who has two conference losses, they\u2019re actually not in a bad spot. That is, unless they drop another conference game. <\/p>\n

At the same time, Narduzzi and Pitt would still love to beat Notre Dame. That would, in turn, effectively end the Irish\u2019s hopes of returning to the CFP. It would also act as a massive confidence boost going into those final ACC games, which include a major road test at Georgia Tech<\/a> before returning home to wrap up against Miami<\/a>, meaning a lot of the ACC\u2019s chaos could be tied to how the Panthers play in the coming weeks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pitt Panthers are taking center stage against Notre Dame with ESPN College GameDay in town next weekend.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,149984,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-283933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-pat-narduzzi-85-ursuline","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}