A NY Daily News puff piece on Chris Taft. Quotes from Page, Morris and his high school coach.

In San Antonio, a surprise prediction for the Final Four from the East (Rutherford) Bracket.

Oklahoma State won the Big 12 championship largely because of its tenacity at both ends of the floor. But in Pittsburgh, which loves to win ugly, the Cowboys may have found an opponent that likes to play defense as much as they do.

In the other semifinal, the nation’s best player in the regular season (Saint Joseph’s guard Jameer Nelson) will face off with the NCAA tournament’s best player thus far (Wake Forest guard Chris Paul).

This is the one region where all four top seeds advanced, so it’s no coincidence that it’s also the one where all four teams are capable of coming to San Antonio.

Projected regional final: Pitt over Saint Joseph’s.

The Oklahoman looks at Pitt and learns they are the winningest program for the last three years. The paper also expects a defensive struggle with the “First team to score 60 points wins, if somebody gets that high.”

From the OSU athletic site, here is their press release on the game and game notes (PDF). Not exactly much of a history between the two teams.

Pittsburgh owns a 3-2 mark against Oklahoma State all-time on the hardwood, including a 2-1 record on neutral courts. The two teams played the first game in the series on Feb. 8, 1950, with OSU taking a 43-34 victory in Stillwater. The next four games were all played within a three-year span. Pitt defeated the Cowboys, 93-75, on Nov.
26, 1988, in Pittsburgh. The teams played twice during the 1989-90 season, with the 18th-ranked Panthers taking a 102-90 win over Oklahoma State on Dec. 1, and again defeating the Cowboys, 92-81, on Dec. 27, in Atlanta, Ga. The last meeting between these two schools came on Nov. 27, 1991, when OSU defeated the Panthers, 74-63, in New York City in the Preseason NIT. OSU was ranked No. 11 at the time, while Pittsburgh was ranked 24th. It was the only time Coach Eddie Sutton has ever played Pittsburgh.

My palms are already sweating thinking about this game.

Some of my friends dislike Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports columnist Bob Smizik because they perceive him to always be negative about Pitt. He isn’t, but Smizik is a very inconsistent, flip-flopping, tired, lazy sportswriter. He has been mailing it in for some time.

It isn’t like he even waits too long before ignoring his previous position. In the end of February, Smizik did a column about how irrelevant seeding was — while arguing Pitt might be better off in the NCAA as a #2 seed. A few days later his column argued that Pitt shouldn’t be concerned with the Big East Regular Season title. Just focus on the NCAA because

For a nationally elite team such as Pitt, the Big East regular season and tournament are relatively minor preludes to the NCAA tournament

I failed then and still fail to see how they were mutually exclusive. You get into the Tourney and get a good seeding position by winning. Winning the Big East Regular Season only helps the positioning in the Tourney (albeit not as much as we thought).

Two weeks ago, as the Big East Tournament (BET) was about to start. Smizik wrote about how Pitt shouldn’t be trying to win the BET, again because the NCAA is more important. He basically suggested Pitt should tank early to get a few extra days of rest. It was something that probably sounded good in the abstract, but to apply it means you are telling players not to try. Not to care for these games and then turn it on later. It doesn’t work that way.

Well, Pitt lost the BET Championship game, and last week Smizik said this about Pitt.

Can a seriously flawed team overcome its deficiencies and advance to the Final Four?

So, after losing by 3 to UConn in the BET Championship — in something Smizik didn’t want Pitt to try too hard — Pitt went from elite to seriously flawed. Flawed. Perhaps. It’s a fair argument in the parity of college basketball that every team has flaws, though. But “seriously flawed?”

Today, the Smizik column declares that Pitt just “knows how to win.”

The NCAA tournament has provided the rest of the country an opportunity to learn something we already knew: The Pitt basketball team is special. Basketball fans and media members are discovering that these Panthers are an uncommon group. They’re learning that Pitt is a throwback, a team that is fitting of all the cliches, a team where substance decisively triumphs over style.

Does anyone in the P-G sports department look at his columns from one week to the next? Smizik just seems to be trying to position himself so he can say “told you so” know matter what happens. Weak.

It almost seems too soon for the second round to seem so close. (Of course, not getting back to the computer since yesterday morning has an effect as well.) The Pitt-Oklahoma St. game is the match-up of the Sweet 16. The only one between two top-ten teams. OSU has been given the edge because they have been the better offensive team, while it’s defense has been excellent all year long. In the Tourney, so far, OSU’s offense has looked impressive, while Pitt’s has barely registered a pulse. Being objective, it’s hard to argue. The only contra argument is the opponents faced by OSU so far were not exactly defensive minded teams. Pitt, on the other hand, faced a very tough UCF team and the #4 defense in the country in Wisconsin. Pitt has been the #1 defensive team in the tournament (though near or at the bottom on the offense).

The similarity of teams and the way they play is a theme expected to beat into the ground. The fact that Pitt has started to win the close ones in the Tourney hopefully will be a plus in their favor against OSU. Who really knows.

A week ago, even while I was still pissed about the seeding, I did note the one good thing for Pitt in the East (Rutherford) Bracket.

Someone else noticed.

Not only does Pitt expect to draw support from the New York-New Jersey types, but it is certain to see a greater number of its fans in East Rutherford than it did Milwaukee, where about 1,000 Panthers followers attended.
…
Those traveling to East Rutherford should have an easier time getting there than into Milwaukee, which offered very few direct flights. The airports in Newark and LaGaurdia accommodate a large number of direct flights from Pittsburgh daily and there is always the option of driving.

So, when you factor in better travel opportunities for Pitt fans, difficult travel for Cowboys fans, and a Big East Conference influence in the New York-New Jersey area, the Panthers should have an edge this go-round from a crowd standpoint, even though Oklahoma State reached its most recent Final Four (1995) through East Rutherford.

When even the NY Times decides to play up Pitt’s NYC talent, you can expect the other dailies to do even more.