Pitt has had a lot of time to prepare for Thursday night opponent Utah because the Panthers had a month of training camp to focus on this game, right?

Wrong.

In reality most of training camp was spent with the Panthers' offense and defense working against each other, trying to perfect Pitt's schemes.

There is nothing similar about the way the two teams play or their strategies; so, as is the case for most games during the season, the Panthers have had only a week to prepare against scout teams running Utah's offense and defense.

Utah is an attack defense and utilizes a number of blitzes with a lot of man-to-man coverages in the secondary while Pitt uses a 4-3 defense that rarely blitzes and tries to get pressure from four down linemen and plays as much zone coverage as man-on-man.

Offensively, the Panthers rely on an old school, pro-style offense, lining up with a fullback and two tight ends and trying to play power football, while the Utes use a spread formation.

"This is always a challenging week when it's the first time that you're working against each other," Wannstedt said Monday at his weekly news conference. "During training camp, everybody's working and getting ready for the season, whether offense or defense. Now, we start exchanging people [to scout team] to get a show-team look.

"That's the first reality check for a lot of these younger kids when they look down and see that they're wearing a Utah jersey, thinking what's different about this picture [than it has been all camp]?"

Wannstedt said practices have been relatively good during the transition, but he has had to get creative in order to find players who can simulate some things the Utes do on offense.

That is why the stars of the show in the past week have been freshman receiver Todd Thomas and freshman quarterback Anthony Gonzalez. Both are athletic and have given the defense a good look at what the Utah offense may look like, depending on which player is under center.

Wannstedt said Utah uses two quarterbacks, one more of a runner, the other more of a passer. They also have a package in which they use a receiver to run a Wildcat offense.

"I would say that they're a little combination of West Virginia or South Florida. Then they'll jump into a Wildcat like Rutgers did with a receiver, and they'll run their Wildcat package.

"They have a lot of offense. They have two quarterbacks: [Terrance Cain], the starter at the beginning of the season, a little stronger athlete, they'll bring him in, and then there's Jordan Wynn who took over. He's a good passer, a good decision maker.

"Then they'll jump into a Wildcat package with a receiver in the backfield, start throwing passes, and then here we go. They're going to put some pressure on our defense mentally, to adjust and be sharp."

He said the defense is tough as well. It is a base 4-3 defense like Pitt's, but the timing of the blitzes and pressure packages are unknown variables. Pitt has seen some of what Utah will bring on defense from Rutgers, which is a team that seems to blitz more in one quarter than Pitt does in an entire season, so that has helped some in the preparation.

Utah's defensive line moves a lot at the line of scrimmage, and the Utes will use eight-man fronts and bring pressure from every position. Those things will keep the Panthers guessing.

"It was difficult to get ready for their defense because we don't run their style of defense," said Pitt offensive tackle Jason Pinkston. "So the younger guys have to try and pick up on all the movements they have [before the snap], but, once the game starts, we will have to figure it out. But most of their fronts and their blitzes and the pressure packages are very similar to Rutgers.

"We did a lot of practicing against what we've seen on film from their spring or their season and try to learn as much as we can. And then we practice what we think they might do because it is the first game, and we know there are going to be some new wrinkles."

Check out Ray Fittipaldo's Pitt B-Ball blog and Paul Zeise's Pitt Stop videos about football exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.