Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt met with the media for the first time since the Panthers' 27-24 loss to Utah and said, after watching the game film, he feels a little better about the team's long-term prospects than he did immediately after the game.

He said the bottom line was the Panthers made too many mistakes, but those are easily correctable. Two mistakes, which resulted in Utah touchdowns, were a matter of miscommunication and inexperience.

"I was disappointed that we didn't play better," Wannstedt said Monday in his weekly teleconference. "But, if you look at it, we gave up two easy scores on defense because of mental mistakes, really. And twice we were inside the 10, and we had to settle for field goals instead of touchdowns. When you look at those four plays, however you want to divide them up, that was probably the difference in the game.

"I think we have to take the positives out of that. It was not easy on our team; it was probably as loud of a crowd and atmosphere as we've faced since I've been here, to be honest with you, and our kids will learn from that."

Wannstedt stopped short of any second-guessing of the coaching staff. The Panthers made four trips inside the red zone, but scored only one touchdown and played for a field goal toward the end of regulation instead of trying to get the ball on a fade pattern to standout receiver Jon Baldwin.

"We were very good last year [in the red zone] and we know what we have to do [once we get there]," Wannstedt said. "We had very few negative plays last year, but we got down there in the red zone and we hand the ball off and we lose three yards; so now it is second-and-13 and we throw the ball incomplete and here you go. That was one series where we went backward.

"The next series, we get down there and we jump offside and we get a five-yard penalty, and now all of a sudden you're back in a long-yardage passing situation again.

"It's really not the plays or what we're doing or the philosophy on how we want to score points; we hurt ourselves. We went backward two times in two different scenarios."

That might be true, but it does not explain not trying to get the ball to Baldwin when in the red zone. Pitt had 17 plays from there and never threw to its 6-foot-5 wide receiver.

The only drive the Panthers put together and scored on consisted of three passes to Baldwin, two which were complete, and a two-point throw to Baldwin.

Wannstedt was pleased with the progress that Tino Sunseri made as the game wore on. The first-year starter was 16 of 28 for 184 yards, a touchdown and an interception. After some first-half jitters, he seemed to settle down, although his interception came in overtime.

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Ray Fittipaldo's Ballot 9/7/10

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Still, Wannstedt was happy with the way Sunseri played and said he is a player who should only get better.

"When that thing started and he walked out there, starting his first game with all of the variables, I thought that he got better, just from huddle control, got better from a communication standpoint on the sidelines, Wannstedt said.

"I thought he got more confident. By end of the game, there was no question he had a good feel for what they were doing and what we had to do from the standpoint of getting the ball to certain people.

"Every week he's going to improve, just like he did throughout the game. As I said at the beginning of the year, there's no easy way to do that. He can read all the Dan Marino magazines on how to play quarterback, and it's not going to help you personally. You have to go out and do it."

Wannstedt said Sunseri recognized what he did wrong on his untimely interception.

"Some quarterbacks come off and they don't understand what went wrong. He knew exactly what happened," Wannstedt said.

"He held the ball too long and probably should have thrown it out of bounds. He was the first guy to say it. Unfortunately, when you have a young quarterback and young players, there is a learning curve. As long as the curve is moving forward and upward, we're going to be fine."

There has been some second-guessing of the decision to switch the Utah game to the season opener instead of starting with a less formidable opponent, especially with a first-year quarterback.

"When you look around the country and see all the games that were played, I don't know of any nationally ranked teams that went and played another quality opponent, another ranked team on the road," Wannstedt said. "A lot of them played a neutral sites. We jumped into a hornets' nest out there; I'll be the first one to admit it.

"Would it have helped us to get a game under our belt? It's all hindsight. We didn't play well enough. If we don't give them a cheap touchdown and we punch one in, we've got a chance to win the football game, and I'd probably feel completely different. When you don't win, it's easy to sit back and say, 'Boy, it would be nice to have a game under our belt.' But we will learn from it."

NOTES -- Pitt had only one injury of note -- a hamstring injury to safety Dom DeCicco. "He's doing fine. I'm not going to get into day-to-day injury things. He's doing better, I should say," Wannstedt said.

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.