Published: November 15, 2009 11:33 pm      

Pitt turns corner with 27-22 win over Notre Dame

PITTSBURGH — Whenever Pitt seemed ready to turn the corner and return to national prominence in the last five years, the last 10, even the last 25, a game like this always seemed to ruin it.

No longer. By learning how not to lose the kind of games that perplexed coach Dave Wannstedt for several years, and Walt Harris and his predecessors before him, the No. 8 Panthers are winning like no Pitt team has done since Dan Marino and Bill Fralic were pulling on those old-style blue and gold uniforms back in the early ’80s.

If they can win one more time — on Dec. 5 against No. 5 Cincinnati in what will the biggest game the school has played since beating Georgia in Sugar Bowl in January 1982 — the surprising Panthers will own the Big East and play in a BCS bowl.

“We always talk about finishing games,” running back Dion Lewis said following the Panthers’ hold-on-tight 27-22 victory over Notre Dame on Saturday night. “We did that.”

It wasn’t a textbook example of a ranked team putting away a talented but troubled one. Pitt leads of 20-3 and 27-9 dissolved as fast as it took Irish star Golden Tate to score on an 87-yard punt return and an 18-yard catch — and that was in less than two minutes.

“He gave us a chance to win the game,” Irish coach Charlie Weis said.

Jimmy Clausen, the quarterback who’s playing up to his reputation on a team that again appears to be playing below its talent level, has pulled off four comebacks in the fourth quarter this season — about the only way the Irish have found to win.

With 3 1/2 minutes remaining and the Irish owning the ball and a chance to win it after already scoring 19 points in the fourth, a tense nervousness could be felt in a sold-out Heinz Field that had been rocking and rolling all night.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Wannstedt said. “We knew how talented Notre Dame is. This was a big emotional game for our kids to play in because of the crowd, Notre Dame, national TV. It would have ben easy for our kids to get caught up in that.”

They didn’t, and Clausen — Kid Comeback — couldn’t get it done. Under the kind pressure he faced all night, he lost a fumble on a third-and-16 play that was initially called an incompletion but was overturned on replay. A week after a Clausen fumble at the 1 led to a 23-21 loss to Navy, the Irish lost to another top-10 team.

The Irish keep missing. They’ve lost their last eight to top-10 teams and are 1-10 against ranked opponents since 2006 and, at Notre Dame, that won’t get it done. As Weis said when he was hired in 2005, 6-5 seasons don’t cut it in South Bend.

Weis’ Irish career began so successfully with a 42-21 rout in ’05 of ranked Pitt in the very Heinz Field where this latest loss took place. Now, it might be the stadium where that career effectively ended. All Wannstedt knows is that, “It was great to walk out of here with a little better feeling (than in ’05).”

For the Fighting Irish, a split against Connecticut and Stanford in their final two games would leave them 7-5. They were 7-6 last year — losing their final home game to Syracuse — and 3-9 the season before that.

Asked about the state of the program, Weis said, “That’s too big a picture eight now. I’m too shortsighted, and the main thing is getting the team to worry about the last two games.”

Unlike that ’05 game, Notre Dame and its cast of nationally recruited players couldn’t upstage the stars Pitt has developed from players whose high school reputations weren’t nearly as big.

Jonathan Baldwin, a receiver not considered to be the level of the Irish’s Tate and Michael Floyd, soared and stretched to make five catches for 142 yards.

Dion Lewis, the freshman running back who was recruited by Pitt and hardly anyone else, ran for 152 yards, including a 50-yard TD, and now has 1,291 yards.

“This was a great statement game for the players and the coaches and just for Pitt’s tradition,” said Bill Stull, who threw for 236 yards and a touchdown and didn’t turn the ball over.

Now, the Panthers must patiently wait out an off week and a Nov. 27 date with rival West Virginia before playing the biggest game in any of its players’ lifetimes.

“We’ve still got a long way to go, and we’ve still got to take care of business,” Baldwin said.

For Notre Dame, it’s wait ’til next year. Again.

“I’m trying to play every game like it’s my last,” Tate said.

The unanswered question is, now that the Irish couldn’t beat another Top 10 team, whether this season is Weis’ last.