Team grinding it out on the ground? It isn’t the Cardinal

Monday’s Sun Bowl features a team that boasts a smashmouth rushing attack. That team is not Stanford.

Although the Cardinal have a tradition of strong ground games, it’s the Pitt Panthers who play the way Stanford usually has in recent years.

Pitt has not one but two 1,000-yard rushers this year: redshirt senior Qadree Ollison (1,190 yards) and senior Darrin Hall (1,021). Both were invited to play in the East-West Shrine Game.

Both weigh 225 pounds, and both are fast. Ollison scored on a school-record 97-yard run in a 52-22 rout of Virginia Tech, flipping head-first into the end zone. Hall had a 73-yard touchdown run in the same game. He also had 41- and 75-yard TD sprints in an upset of then-No. 23 Virginia.

The Panthers have the nation’s No. 18 rushing attack with an average of 229.5 yards per game.

Meanwhile, Bryce Love — Stanford’s leading rusher — will miss the game as a result of a medical procedure on which head coach David Shaw wouldn’t elaborate. Love’s decision to return for his senior season was widely hailed, but his performance (739 yards on 4.5 per carry) failed to meet expectations, mainly because of a balky ankle and the inability of the offensive line to open holes on a consistent basis.

So just as Stanford did in the 2016 Sun Bowl, which Christian McCaffrey skipped to prepare for the NFL draft, the Cardinal will have to rely on backfield backups. Love was magnificent in McCaffrey’s absence, running for 119 yards and going 49 yards with a touchdown catch.

This time, Cameron Scarlett will start, with Trevor Speights and Dorian Maddox sharing the load. One of the line’s veteran players, guard Nate Herbig, decided he won’t play, preferring to get ready for the draft.

By the way, neither Ollison nor Hall considered sitting out the Sun Bowl, they said. “When you come in August, you make a commitment to the team for the rest of the year,” Ollison said. “I’d like to stand on that commitment, no matter if I was projected a first-round pick or projected undrafted, it doesn’t really matter.”

“That’s not me,” Hall said. “I wouldn’t do that to the team, and I wouldn’t do that to myself. I’ve worked so hard, and this is the last one.”

Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi was Michigan State’s defensive coordinator when the Spartans beat Stanford 24-20 in the Rose Bowl following the 2013 season. When Narduzzi found out the Sun Bowl matchups, he said, “This is going to be a game where the two teams both huddle. I think fans might get a kick out of that. They might not know what that is.”

At the time, he also said, “This is going to be like an old 1985 bowl game, where both teams are going to line up with two backs in the backfield and actually run the football — not throw it and spread.”

He probably changed his view of Stanford after seeing some recent game video. The Cardinal are chucking the ball far more often, on a percentage basis, than they did even when they had Andrew Luck. The running game has given way to a formidable aerial attack, centered on quarterback K.J. Costello and wide receiver JJ Arcega-Whiteside.

Stanford fans might not be impressed with Pitt’s 7-6 record. But two of those losses were to College Football Playoff participants Clemson (14-0) and Notre Dame (12-1) and another was to a 12-0 Central Florida team that finished No. 8 in the final CFP rankings.

The Panthers lost at Notre Dame 19-14 on a touchdown with 5:43 left; the Irish trounced Stanford 38-17. Pitt played 11 bowl-eligible teams, the most of any team in the nation.