Pitt will host yet another weekday game under the lights at Acrisure Stadium in 2024.
Pitt will host Syracuse at Acrisure Stadium on Oct. 24 — which is a Thursday night matchup. It’s the fourth straight season in which the Panthers have hosted a Thursday night game, winning each of the last three matchups.
The exact time of the matchup, likely 7 or 7:30 p.m., will be released at a later date. As will the eventual television network and broadcast team.
The full 2024 schedule will be released Wednesday afternoon during an ACC Network special presentation. The Aug. 31 season opener against Kent State at Acrisure Stadium has already been revealed.
Pitt has played Syracuse the third-most times in program history but is rarely brought up in the same breath as the likes of West Virginia, Penn State or even Notre Dame.
There isn’t the same proximity (although, ‘Cuse is one of the closer ACC destinations) or the same deep-rooted history between Pitt and Syracuse that Pitt shares with either WVU and Penn State — and the fanbases aren’t nearly as antagonistic — but Pat Narduzzi considers the series a rivalry nonetheless.
“There’s been a lot of close games,” Narduzzi said in the buildup to the Syracuse game last season. “I think it’s a tough game. I think it’s physical. And I do see it as a rivalry. The longer I’m here, I really do. It’s one of the old Big East games that was played, and I do see it as a rivalry that we get to embrace.”
And with the ACC’s new, revamped scheduling model that now includes the incoming Cal, Stanford and SMU, Pitt has been placed in a “pod” with Syracuse and Boston College. Under that scheduling model, Pitt will Syracuse and Boston College annually through 2030. And Narduzzi is just fine with that.
“I love playing a team over and over again,” Narduzzi said. “I think that’s part of what makes a rivalry. You get to know who they are. It’s more fun to game plan. We go back to 2016, watching some of the plays they run, one of the plays they ran in that basketball game we played here, they ran last week against BC, they ran it against Western Michigan. It’s the same stuff coming back out, like, here it is.
“So, you’re practicing the heck out of that. There’s that chess match that you get when you play someone more than once or twice, and I kinda like that chess match.”
Pitt and Syracuse have met every season for the last 55 years, and the meeting in 2024 will be the 80th all-time meeting between the ACC foes.
Pitt has played Syracuse 79 times in program history, dating back to a 30-0 inaugural win in the 1916 season. With a 43-33-3 all-time record against the Orange, Pitt has gotten the best of Syracuse of late. But of course, the Orange did win the last matchup, a 28-13 victory at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, N.Y.
Syracuse will enter the 2024 season with new head coach Fran Brown hoping to revitalize a program that went stale under former head Dino Babers.
Would be soooo happy to DROP West Virginia. May the pox be on Scott Barnes for renewing this game for $$$. Syracuse is in the ACC and our ties go back decades. Playing WV especially in the beginning the season causes too many season ending injuries. Be like Clemson, they play traditional rival South Carolina in the LAST game of the season when injuries don’t matter so much.