Skulking away from a crypt of a locker room in their gray T-shirts with PROVE IT printed on the back, the Pitt Panthers had to marvel at what a short road it is from high expectations to low comedy.

In the moments after their humiliating, season-opening loss to Bowling Green of the Mac & Cheese Conference yesterday, a handful of standard issue explanations were proffered by Pitt coach Hot Seat Dave Wannstedt, but there was no point in oversimplifying anything.

Pitt stinks.

It's not even September and already this team needs a new slogan for its laundry: DISPROVE IT.

"I'm sure nobody would have expected this," said sophomore tailback LeSean McCoy, whose performance left the people wearing LeSean For Heisman T-shirts folding their arms in front of them. "They had my number. Give them credit."

Bowling Green limited the freshman sensation of last season to 71 yards on 23 carries, seven of those in a second-quarter scoring drive in which Pitt tried to ignite a running game that never fired. McCoy got the call on the first five plays of Pitt's fourth possession, gaining 3, 2, 3, 3 and 3 yards. After Conredge Collins and LaRod Stephens-Howling gained 7 and 8, respectively, on the next two carries, McCoy got two more whacks. He got 5, then 3 again.

All that managed to drive the ball to the Bowling Green 4, but somehow convinced offensive coordinator Matt Cavanaugh that the time was right for freshman wideout Jonathan Baldwin of Aliquippa to hear his number called for the first time as a collegian. Bill Stull's fade pass to the left corner was overthrown, and only a busted coverage allowed Derek Kinder to score on the next play, erecting both a 14-0 Pitt lead and the foolish notion that the afternoon might proceed as is expected when the home team is a 13-point favorite and ranked 25th in the country.

"At that point, we felt like we had the running game going, and, when we came in [at halftime], we felt we were controlling the clock and the number of plays, just the way we wanted to," Wannstedt said. "If we'd come in here up by seven or 10 points, that would have made a huge difference."

Instead, Pitt went from ranked to rank in just over 38 minutes. From the moment Bowling Green quarterback Tyler Sheehan fooled the Panthers' defense with a play fake and a pretty 5-yard end zone flip to tight end Jimmy Scheidler (with 8:01 remaining in the first half), until most of the 45,063 announced as present began to absent themselves, the Falcons outscored Pitt, 27-3.

It would be easy to say that the 27-17 final could not have been more embarrassing a start to Wannstedt's fourth season, except that it could have. Bowling Green cornerback Kenny Lewis, a senior out of Penn Hills High School who intercepted Stull's last pass in the end zone, had a 65-yard fumble return for a touchdown nullified by an inadvertent whistle.

That came after Cedric McGee committed one of three Pitt fumbles, which Wannstedt tried to dress up as the standard culprit for starting 0-1 in a climate where the fan base is thinking eight, nine, 10 wins and a trip to a bowl that somebody's heard of.

But, again, no one should have walked away from this one thinking that had a play here or there gone differently, Pitt would have won. Similarly, you may scratch any sense that the Panthers have so much offensive talent that the main problem is spreading the ball around to the satisfaction of the ultra-talented.

"We knew that McCoy was a very talented player, especially when he gets out in space," said Falcons linebacker John Haneline. "We were just trying to pack him in tight and keep him between the tackles."

McCoy shouldn't absorb inordinate blame for this, even if too often he danced in the hole looking to gain 80 instead of resolving to get 8. Neither should Stull, who ultimately was forced to throw 51 times in his first full start, way over the pitch count.

Wannstedt explained at the start of the week that Bowling Green had seven seniors returning to its defense. I thought that was the good news, because that defense allowed an average of 32 points per game last year. This defense is such that twice in the past four years, Bowling Green has run up 500 yards of offense and lost.

Cavanaugh's offense is in no such danger.

Of Stull's 29 completions in this opener, 16 were for less than 10 yards, 25 were for 12 or less. So locked into the dink-and-stink passing game was the offensive coordinator yesterday that Stull flipped another 5-yarder to Kinder on fourth-and-10 from the Bowling Green 44 with 8:47 left and Pitt down by 10. Fortunately, unlike Pitt's mortification, it was incomplete.