Pitt defense shuts down Georgia Tech in 24-19 win
PITTSBURGH — Qadree Ollison and the rest of his Pittsburgh teammates found a unique way to combat the lingering effects of a loss to Penn State that could have defined their season: willful amnesia.
“Forgot about it. Forgot about last week,” Ollison said after rushing for 91 yards and two touchdowns in a 24-19 victory over Georgia Tech on Saturday. “It wasn’t hard. Don’t remember none of it. Don’t remember who we played.”
And then the senior running back laughed. Just a little. There’s nothing the Panthers can do about their nationally televised second-half meltdown against the Nittany Lions . Best to just move on.
“You’ve got to flush it out,” Ollison said. “You’ve got to forget about it and realize that all our goals are still intact. Nobody said you had to be undefeated to go to the ACC championship or national championship. If we win the rest of our games, nobody will remember what happened last week.”
Not exactly, but Pitt (2-1, 1-0 ACC) took a significant step forward by racing to a three-touchdown lead and holding off the Yellow Jackets late.
Ollison scored on runs of 31 and 8 yards, backfield mate Darrin Hall added a 5-yard scoring burst of his own and the Panthers opened conference play by playing the kind of game they’ll need to repeat many times over the next two-plus months if they want to be a factor in the wide-open Coastal Division.
“We know last week, that really wasn’t us,” safety Damar Hamlin said. “We didn’t get to show who we are as a team. So we just tried to get to this game as quick as we can to get off that bad page.”
Quarterback Kenny Pickett left briefly due with a left leg injury at the end of the first half but played the entire second half, completing 16 of 23 passes for a season-high 191 yards and an interception. Pickett wore a brace on the leg over the final two quarters, something he does regularly in practice but never in games. That will change going forward.
“We dodged a bullet really,” Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi said. “He’s healthy, but he likes to go run, and he wants to feel clean, but that ain’t going to happen. I’ll tape that thing to his leg.”
A week after rolling up 602 yards in a loss to South Florida, the Yellow Jackets managed just 386 against the Panthers, 99 of it coming on a lastgasp drive in the final minutes. The Yellow Jackets (1-2, 0-1) did little in the first half when six of their seven drives lasted five plays or less.
“We came out to start the game offensively and it looked like we had never played the game before,” Georgia Tech head coach Paul Johnson said. “We had a chance to get back in the game. But we never had a chance to get the lead.”
TaQuon Marshall scored on a pair of short touchdown runs in the second half and finished with a team- high 103 yards rushing. He struggled through the air, completing just one pass until Georgia Tech’s final drive. Marshall ended up 6 of 15 for 66 yards and an interception on a heave to the end zone with just under 10 minutes remaining that was easily picked off by Pitt’s Phillipie Motley to end any real threat the Yellow Jackets had of mounting a comeback.