Thursday night, first-year Pitt receivers coach Bryan Bossard told his group the legendary story of Wally Pipp -- the former baseball player most famous for losing his starting role to Lou Gehrig at the beginning of Gehrig's streak of 2,130 consecutive games played -- because he wasn't happy with the way they had practiced that day.

His message was clear -- the Panthers have so many viable options at wide receiver it won't be hard for him to replace any of them in the starting lineup regardless of how much they've accomplished or how old they are.

That is a luxury Bossard has this year because the Panthers have their deepest and most-talented group of receivers, perhaps ever.

"Obviously these guys don't have any idea who Wally Pipp was, but I didn't think they worked hard enough and I just wanted them to understand that there is a lot of competition for playing time," Bossard said.

"I told them basically, they will be on the field come Saturdays in the fall. Now whether they are standing on the sidelines next to me, like Pipp, or in the game, like Gehrig, is totally up to them. I won't have to pick, they'll make my decision by how they come to work between now and then, and the guys who deserve to play the most will.

"It was the first time I challenged them, and I wanted to see how they'd respond. They came back today and had an excellent day of practice, so that tells me a lot about this group. They want to be good."

Despite the need to issue a challenge, Bossard could hardly contain his excitement at the prospects of working with the receivers because they are so talented, versatile and experienced.

The backbone of the group is formed by returning junior starters Oderick Turner and T.J. Porter and key reserves Cedric McGee, a junior, and Maurice Williams, a sophomore. Those four would constitute an excellent receiving corps, but the addition of two talented redshirt freshmen, Aaron Smith and Aundre Wright, pushes it into a higher category.

And that doesn't take into account the return of fifth-year senior Derek Kinder, a first-team all-Big East as a junior in 2006 who missed the 2007 season with a torn ACL. Kinder is limited as to what he can do in the spring, but he will be pushing for a starting job in preseason camp.

Kinder said he is taking his rehabilitation slowly, but admits it is tough to watch the younger players make big plays because he knows it means he'll have a much more difficult time breaking into the lineup.

"I get stronger every day, it feels better every day, but I'm not going to rush it," Kinder said. "You have to be smart but the competitor in me wants to be out there because I know nothing is going to be handed to me."

Bossard knows Pitt has recruited receivers well lately, but he said: "We just need to keep coaching them up and see how high we can go with it."

•

NOTES -- The Panthers had a light day yesterday in anticipation of the closed scrimmage today. ... Coach Dave Wannstedt said he'd like to get everyone healthy to play between 25 to 30 snaps. "Guys coming off surgery will not scrimmage. So we'll probably have about 10 starters not scrimmage and we'll limit both [linebacker] Scott McKillop and [running back] LeSean McCoy," Wannstedt said. "But this will be our first chance to evaluate these guys, and next week we'll start to take a look at our depth chart." ... The quarterbacks will not be wearing green (no-contact) jerseys. "I don't think you can have a scrimmage and say quarterbacks are not live. We might not as well wear pads if that is the case," Wannstedt said.