TEMPE, Ariz. - Walt Harris definitely improved Pittsburgh football, just not enough to get the Panthers to the elite level.

The 19th-ranked Panthers, playing in a bowl on or after New Year’s Day for the first time in 21 years, stuck to a game plan against No. 5 Utah but they still ended up on the wrong end of a 35-7 score on Saturday night in the Fiesta Bowl.

Pittsburgh ate up the clock with running plays, tried to hold down the score as long as possible, and hit the Utes hard. But talent won out for the school from the Mountain West Conference.

“I think our team played hard,” said Harris, who was announced as Stanford’s new coach on Dec. 12. “You know, as well as they could for as long as they could.”

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By halftime, the Big East-champion Panthers were worn down by Utah’s speed. The Utes scored on all three possessions in the third quarter, opening a 35-7 lead.

The last touchdown was a crushing blow to Pitt fans, outnumbered in the sea of Utah red at Sun Devil Stadium. They came alive briefly when Tyler Palko connected with Greg Lee for a 31-yard score with 4:28 left in the third, but Utah answered with a 94-yard drive to reopen a four-TD lead.

Pitt’s misery continued in the fourth when H.B. Blades forced Utah’s Paris Warren to fumble and Tez Morris recovered on the Utes

30. The Panthers were tantalizingly close to scoring again, but three downs after Lee caught a pass for a first down on the 19, Palko was sacked for the seventh time.

Josh Cummings then pushed a 44-yard field goal attempt wide right with 9:26 left.

Lee had seven catches for 93 yards, but agonized over the one that got away — a pass that hit him in the chest and bounced incomplete inside the 10 after he beat cornerback Ryan Smith.

“I lost it in the lights for a second and then I caught a glance of it again,” Lee said. “But I let it come into my body too much, and it hit off my helmet. I think that probably would have been a turning point.”

Palko, the Big East leader in TD passes (23), continued his stretch of good decisions, going 22-of-40 for 251 yards without an interception. But he also was sacked a Fiesta-record nine times and barely avoided another half-dozen sacks with poise and good moves.

Palko and Lee, who had 61 catches for 1,204 yards — the third-best total in Pitt history — during the regular season, have two years of eligibility left and constitute a legacy for incoming coach Dave Wannstedt.

Harris, a Northern California native, saw his resolve to stay eroded by a lukewarm administration. But he stayed on to lead his players in Pitt’s first Bowl Championship Series game.

“It’s a business, and you can’t control decisions that are made from higher up,” Palko said. “You just go with the flow, and we’re always going to be close friends. He’ll always be a phone call away from me for football and for life.”

There was no BCS the last time the Panthers were in one of the four top bowls — the 1984 Fiesta in which they lost to Ohio State.

That was a year after Dan Marino’s last season ended a dominant decade which saw a parade of future NFL stars like Tony Dorsett, Hugh Green, Rickey Jackson and Marino wear the Blue and Gold.

From the summit, Pitt reached the depths, averaging three wins in five years before Harris arrived to lead the Panthers to six bowls in eight years, the last five in a row, and a 52-44 record.

Wannstedt inherits 16 starters and all the specialists. He also will carry the burden of trying to return the Panthers to prominence.

Blades, a linebacker who led the team with 108 tackles as a sophomore, promised to do his best to keep the momentum going.

“Once we get back to Pittsburgh, I’m sure we’ll have a meeting with Coach Wannstedt and start getting into the swing of things,” he said.