Jerry DiPaola stories, Page 104

For serious Pitt fans and, of course, the coaching staff, National Letter of Intent Day, set to kick off at 7 a.m. Wednesday, is just as important as most game days. Pitt lost to N.C. State and Boston College in October but still had time to salvage a winning season...

If the NCAA acts as expected Wednesday and grants transfer athletes immediate eligibility, coach Jeff Capel said guard Nike Sibande will play in Pitt’s ACC opener that night at Miami. “If he’s cleared, he’ll play right away,” Capel said. Sibande transferred to Pitt from Miami (Ohio) and has been practicing...

With Pitt’s nonconference schedule finished and the first of 20 ACC games scheduled for Wednesday in Miami, Jeff Capel’s thoughts are focused on basketball. Most of them, anyway. On the court, in his locker room, while speaking to reporters, Pitt’s socially conscious basketball coach has become a strong advocate for...

Forced to practice sporadically since a game with Winthrop was canceled Dec. 4, Duquesne men’s basketball coach Keith Dambrot said Sunday he hopes to resume workouts Dec. 20. The Dukes (1-1) haven’t played a game since defeating UNC-Greensboro on Dec. 2. Their trip to Indianapolis was canceled Saturday after a...

On the day he settled into the college basketball history books — going back-to-back with 20/20 games for only the third time in the past 25 years by a Power 5 player — Justin Champagnie said this with a straight face: “I don’t like to just hog the ball.” And...

Duquesne’s men’s basketball team received the bad news on the bus. Moments before departing Saturday for Indianapolis to play two games Monday and Wednesday, the trip was canceled when covid-19 test results came back positive for a player and coach. Games against Southern Illinois and Loyola-Chicago would have been the...

If Pat Narduzzi felt more pride than joy after Pitt’s last game, no one should be surprised. Winning the final game by rolling over Georgia Tech, 34-20, was no insignificant feat, but only when you consider the massive performance in the ground game — 317 yards, or 217 above Pitt’s...

Pitt won’t accept a bowl invitation this year. Coach Pat Narduzzi joined athletic director Heather Lyke on Friday in declaring on a university news release that the Panthers will not play in a bowl game. With a 6-5 overall record, Pitt was in line to earn a berth in one...

Defensive end Patrick Jones II announced Friday on Twitter that he is declaring for the NFL Draft and will not join Pitt in a bowl game, if an invitation is offered. Jones played Thursday night in Pitt’s final regular-season game, a 34-20 victory against Georgia Tech. He led the team...

A year ago, Duquesne was 8-0 and feeling good about its prospects for a winning season. This year, 62-year-old coach Keith Dambrot is running practice with the help of only one grad assistant while covid-19 protocols have forced some staff members into temporary quarantine. “I’m no spring chicken anymore,” Dambrot...

Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi extended a handshake to Georgia Tech coach Geoff Collins after the Panthers’ 34-20 victory Thursday night in Atlanta. Collins dismissively shook hands and abruptly walked away, leaving Narduzzi looking bewildered. Narduzzi said later he didn’t know why the meeting ended that way. Geoff Collins of Georgia...

When Pitt’s players, coaches and fans look back on the Panthers’ 34-20 victory against Georgia Tech on Thursday night, they’ll remember the game for its physicality. Vincent Davis, all 5-foot-8, 175 pounds of him, ran for a remarkable 247 yards on 25 carries, 64 percent of his total in the...

Senior defensive end Rashad Weaver and safety Damar Hamlin, two key members of Pitt’s starting lineup with NFL aspirations, did not make the trip to Atlanta with their teammates and will not play Thursday night against Georgia Tech, according to a travel roster issued by the university. Earlier this week,...

Before Jeff Capel took his team on its first road trip to confront Northwestern, the only Power 5 team on its nonconference schedule, he had some questions. Among them: How might Pitt’s young team react on the road in a pandemic? These days, every minor detail is different, including the...

West Virginia canceled its game Saturday against No. 11 Oklahoma at Milan Puskar Stadium after an increase in positive covid-19 cases and contact tracing within the football program, director of athletics Shane Lyons said Thursday. It is the second time the Oklahoma game was called off by WVU officials. It...

Jeff Capel had no intention of calling a timeout, stopping his team’s momentum and drawing up a play on a whiteboard that his players had the good sense to run, anyway. This time, he decided to trust Xavier Johnson. What happened next was maybe more encouraging than anything that’s happened...

Idle since Dec. 2, Duquesne plans to resume its nonconference schedule next week in Indianapolis with games against two Missouri Valley Conference opponents. The Dukes (1-1) will play Southern Illinois (2-0) at 4 p.m. Monday and Loyola-Chicago (2-0) at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Indiana Convention Center. Southern Illinois is...

Pitt started summer training camp with high hopes and an experienced team of 20 seniors and 16 juniors, seven of whom could hear their name called in the 2021 NFL Draft. If that comes to pass, it would be the most Pitt players drafted in 30 years. Argue, if you...

Many months and too many practices to count stand between Pitt football and the 2021 season, but perhaps a moment during the first game of 2020 kick-started the process. Sophomore cornerback A.J. Woods earned a start for the opener against Austin Peay after senior Damarri Mathis had been lost for...

There is nothing Jeff Capel needs to see more from his Pitt team than to see more of his Pitt team. Tiptoeing cautiously into a basketball season that is being played in the midst of a raging pandemic, Capel can’t be sure the Panthers will play a full season. “We’re...

The first 12 weeks of the college football season have been marked by regular covid testing, postponed and canceled games and — as Pat Narduzzi articulated Monday — concerns about getting hit “square in the mouth” by a worsening pandemic. Undaunted, Narduzzi isn’t prepared to let the season end in...

Justin Champagnie has known Ithiel Horton and watched him make shots for a long time, even before they became teammates at Pitt. So, Champagnie was not surprised Saturday night when Horton snapped out of his two-game slump and hit five 3-pointers to help lead Pitt (2-1) to an 89-59 nonconference...

Pitt continued to add talent to its best recruiting class in nearly two decades Friday when four-star outside linebacker/defensive end Naquan Brown, who decommitted from 2019 national champion LSU on Thursday, pledged to enroll next year. Brown is a student at Ocean Lakes High School in Virginia Beach, Va. Enough...

There was nothing remarkable about the final six weeks of the 2019-20 Pitt basketball season. The Panthers lost 10 of 13 games to finish with the program’s fourth consecutive losing record (16-17, 6-10 ACC). Yet, anyone watching closely — and Jeff Capel was surely one — could see signs of...