Pitt's Gavin Bartholomew embracing little things behind undefeated start

Stephen Thompson / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Last week, as Pitt’s tight ends walked into the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex to begin preparations for their next game against Syracuse, a gift from their position coach was waiting for them in the unit’s meeting room. Laid out across the desks each player sits at was their own crowbar. 

Tight ends coach Jacob Bronowski must believe his players are visual learners because the props he used to illustrate his unit’s responsibilities this week came with a detailed PowerPoint presentation breaking down the purpose of a crowbar and how the players can mimic their utility this week against Syracuse’s defensive front. 

“To pry the d-ends open,” senior Gavin Bartholomew said, explaining the meaning behind Bronowski’s tools. “We’ve got a big responsibility this week. We’ve got some big-time blocks we’ve got to make so that’s our mentality this week.”

Bartholomew is more than happy to do that kind of dirty work. After two seasons of underwhelming production, he came into the 2024 season figuring to fit as a critical part of the passing offense. But six games in, he’s on pace for the second fewest receiving yards of his career and hasn’t scored a touchdown yet. 

Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi called Bartholomew “unlucky” earlier this season, but a lack of targets or catches, which at other points in his career were harder to stomach, now go down easy as his team remains undefeated. Winning cures all ills and Bartholomew is comfortable embracing his role when it contributes to a victory. 

“My mentality is to dominate any play that I’m on,” Bartholomew said. “I’m never looking back or looking forward to what has happened or is going to happen. I always try to stay locked in on every play I’m in. The ball’s going to find me. I’m not worried about it, never have been.”

Bartholomew’s business-like attitude is shared by the rest of his teammates, he said. 

Coming out of their second and final bye week of the regular season, Pitt operating on a truncated schedule as it prepares for this season’s biggest game to date. The 5-1 Orange are the best team these Panthers have played yet this season and this midweek clash at Acrisure Stadium kicks off a more difficult second half of the season. 

It could be tempting for the Panthers to rest on their laurels after getting off to this program’s best start in more than four decades, but this team knows it has more in them and is eager to keep the magical start rolling into the back end of the schedule. 

“Yeah, we’re undefeated right now but that doesn’t matter, records don’t matter. We’re just focused on Thursday.” Bartholomew said. “For one thing, I know we’re not getting complacent. We’ve got a lot of guys on our team that are hungry and they want to keep eating and they’re going to show that.”

Thursday represents an important opportunity for Pitt. While simply surviving as one of 10 remaining unbeaten teams in college football is an impressive feat on it’s own, it will mean little if the Panthers collapse down the stretch. But beat a quality Syracuse team this week in front of a primetime, national television audience, and they could have some new fans jumping on the bandwagon. 

“Anytime you get to play on a Thursday night at 7:30, or whatever time it is, everyone’s watching, the whole world’s watching,” Bartholomew said. “So that’s the time we really get to display who we are as a team and show our identity.”

Junko finds consistency through confidence

As Week 9 of the college football season begins, Pitt’s Caleb Junko leads the ACC in average yards per punt and, after averaging north of 50 yards per kick over his last two games, was named to the midseason watch list for the Ray Guy Award, given annually to the best punter in college football.

It’s a remarkable development for Junko, who’s inconsistency was a deciding factor in some of Pitt’s close losses a year ago. When the rest of the world had little confidence he was capable of being a punter at this level, Junko kept the faith in himself and that faith is now being rewarded. 

He credits Bronowski, also the special teams coordinator, for coming in this season and giving him the confidence and technical know-how to kick well and replicate that success over and over again. 

“Last season, going out there I didn’t have any conviction behind what I was doing besides just kicking the ball,” Junko said. “Now I really have set goals as far as form, sticking to the form that [Bronowski] taught me, overall stance, drop. … It changed up how I was punting. It’s completely new.” 

Delayed scheduling 

The ACC announced this morning that it would exercise a six-day hold on determining game times and television designations for conference contests played on Nov. 2, including No. 19 Pitt’s showdown with No. 22 SMU in Dallas. The league will wait to see how this coming weekend’s games play out before deciding when to play the game and on what channel to broadcast it. 

Pitt and SMU are two of the better teams in the league, both jockeying for position in the upper crust of the ACC standings. Critical in the race for a bid to the ACC Championship game, it is also one of the more compelling contests on that week’s schedule. As of right now, it’s one of just two games (No. 4 Ohio State at No. 3 Penn State being the other) slated to be played between ranked opponents in Week 10.