First a little self-congratulations for being dead-on:

Pitt is going to be a team, barring an upset to one of its cupcake opponents that will be in the top-15 by conference play, but no one will know whether this team is really that good.

I wrote that back in mid-November after Pitt’s first game. Conference play begins today and Pitt is #15 in both the AP and the ESPN/USA Today polls. Pitt has moved up about 7-8 notches so far.

The counter argument for Pitt’s soft non-con schedule is the fact that they may have the toughest conference schedule in the Big East, because of the new system in place.

In an effort to get more television exposure and ease tensions within the league by some member schools that didn’t like the idea of divisional play, commissioner Mike Tranghese decided to have the top four teams in the league play each other twice and every other team once.

That means Pitt, the defending champs, must play home-and-home games against the other top three teams — current No. 1 Connecticut, defending national champion Syracuse and Notre Dame.

“I think the biggest concern was everyone wanted to play everyone else,” said Rob Carolla, director of communications for the Big East Conference. “There were certain years where Syracuse didn’t play Connecticut, and TV wants to see those games.”

The so-called second-tier teams are Providence, Seton Hall, Boston College and Villanova. They play home-and-home games against one another, but only have to play Pitt, Connecticut, Syracuse and Notre Dame once apiece. The system, which has been widely panned by the first-tier teams, presents an unbalanced schedule that could skew the won-loss records for the Big East season, and as a by-product, affect seeding for the NCAA tournament.
…
The tradeoff for Pitt is more national television games, which means more exposure for the program. (The Panthers play seven times on ABC, CBS, ESPN or ESPN2 between now and the end of the regular season). The downside, of course, is the potential for incurring more losses.

As a Pitt alum outside of the local area, more national games is nothing but a positive. The last few years, until the Big East Tournament in March, it would be happy time if Pitt was on ESPN or ESPN2 once or twice.

Now with VT coming into Pittsburgh tonight, the obligatory article on local connections. This is an easy one, since their head coach, Seth Greenberg, used to be an assistant coach at Pitt.

Well, Pitt assistant coach and ace recruiter Barry Rohrssen is a Greenberg protege, so every time Rohrssen lands a player such as blue-chip forward Chris Taft, a small piece of credit should go to Greenberg.
…
Rohrssen, while playing at St. Francis (N.Y.), was a counselor at the prestigious Five Star Basketball Camp in 1980 when he met Greenberg, a 24-year-old assistant coach under Dr. Roy Chipman at Pitt.

Greenberg was instrumental in signing players such as Clyde Vaughan, who is Pitt’s second all-time leading scorer.

Part of Greenberg’s sales pitch was talking about the possibility of a new arena on Pitt’s campus.

The one arrived two decades later.

The gregarious Greenberg laughed Monday when recounting the story. He got his first look at Petersen Events Center when his team took the court for a late-afternoon workout.

“This is the building we told recruits they’d play in,” Greenberg said. “It’s just a few years late. Once a facility (the Bryce Jordan Center) was built at Penn State, Pitt’s wasn’t far behind. I really think that helped facilitate the process.”