Funny thing about that trip to Canada the basketball team will be taking. The original hope plan was to go to the Bahamas and play some scrimmages against the Florida Gators who already had a trip there for this weekend. The NCAA said no. According to Andy Katz, this is what Pitt will be trying to accomplish with the early practice:

Dixon started practicing his team Thursday, but his three newcomers — freshmen guards Ronald Ramon and Keith Benjamin and JC forward John DeGroat — weren’t allowed until school starts Monday. The newcomers will get in practice next week before the team leaves for the Labor Day weekend. But that means Pittsburgh won’t get in all 10 of the practices.

The Panthers are set with the big three for the season in point guard Carl Krauser (15.4 ppg, 4.5 apg) and forwards Chris Taft (10.9 ppg, 7.5 rpg) and Chevy Troutman (9.8 ppg, 7.5 rpg). But Dixon needs to see who will emerge as the fourth and fifth starters and wants to start getting a pecking order in his bench. Getting a serious look at the three newcomers — in practice — is critical too. But the NCAA counts the foreign exhibition games as part of the redshirt process. That means if Dixon is considering redshirting any of the three newcomers then he won’t play them in Toronto. Benjamin has had a nagging ankle injury that could prevent him from being used.

Dixon said he’s especially interested to see how three players — last year’s redshirt Dante Milligan and expected contributors Levon Kendall and Antonio Graves — handle more responsibility. The Panthers are trying to replace two longtime veterans of their Sweet 16 runs in Jaron Brown (11.7 ppg, 5.4 rpg) and Julius Page (11 ppg). Leadership will fall to Krauser, Troutman and Taft. But they still need to divvy up defensive responsibilities to Brown’s and Page’s replacements.

Also as part of the itinerary:

The team leaves Friday and will eat dinner at Niagara Falls before heading to Toronto. They will attend a Toronto Blue Jays-Oakland A’s baseball game at the Skydome. A’s manager Ken Macha, a Pitt graduate and Murrysville resident in the baseball off-season, will address the team.

Macha is a big Pitt basketball fan.

“He’s a big supporter,” Dixon said. “I’ve talked to him on the phone. He knows all about us.”

The Panthers will practice at the Toronto Raptors’ practice facility. Dixon is friends with Toronto general manager Rob Babcock.

Their best competition will be against each other. Still, I like the fact that Dixon took the early practice option this year. He’s not taking anything for granted.

This Scouts, Inc./ESPN.com story on coaches on the hot seat (subs. req’d) includes Coach Harris:

It seems the university is getting a little impatient with Harris. The team underachieved a season ago and finished poorly down the stretch, losing three of its final four. The Panthers’ defense is solid, but the team lost most of its skill players on offense, including record-setting WR Larry Fitzgerald. If Harris can’t pull off a New Year’s bowl bid in a watered-down Big East, word has it he’ll be packing his bags.

I repeat, 6 wins is what he needs. The opening of the article talks about NFL coaches looking at college football because the money is actually pretty good, and the stability is greater. If Harris does go, I suspect Dave Wannstedt will be available. As a companion, it also listed hot assistants — no surprise that Pitt Defensive Coordinator, Paul Rhoads was not on the list this year.

Final note from the “No S**t!” category. In the Big 11 notebook there is this little note regarding Paterno:

Paterno has exasperated some Pennsylvanians by stonewalling a revival of the Pittsburgh-Penn State revival. Some say Paterno’s grudge against Pitt goes back to 1982, when the Panthers wouldn’t join the Nittany Lions in an all-sports Eastern conference. The teams haven’t met since 2000.

Considering that is the first thing he mentions whenever the game is brought up, it seems like a reasonable inference.

Nothing in Pittsburgh about the game on Monday. The Getsy story and its ramifications has the majority of the news — it would have had it all, but the P-G had its special supplement on pro and college football today (more on that in a bit).

So, Getsy skipped practice after going to Coach Harris and asking to be released from his scholarship. Since he just asked yesterday, and didn’t indicate where he was intending to transfer no decision was made. While the speculation since last week was that he would go to Akron to hook-up with former Pitt offensive coordinator, and now head coach, J.D. Brookhart, things aren’t that cut-and-dried.

Earlier this summer, Harris blocked a player from transferring to Akron, and it is unclear if Harris has changed his mind on the issue or not. Yesterday he was non-committal when asked if he’d be willing to release Getsy to Akron.

“Right now, we haven’t thought about all that stuff,” he said.

One other snag would occur if Akron is being considered as a future Pitt opponent. Harris said he won’t allow players to transfer to a school that the Panthers recruit against or play.

Harris can’t win on this one. If he doesn’t let Getsy go to Akron he looks vindictive to both Getsy and his former OC. If he does let him go and Pitt plays Akron in the next couple years with Getsy at QB, and the unthinkable happens…

Nothing about this intrigue in the Akron Beacon-Journal at this point.

With Getsy leaving the team, though it isn’t official that he is gone yet, that makes Joe Flacco the back-up. To which most Pitt fans say, “who the hell is Joe Flacco?” Joe’s a redshirt freshman from New Jersey. But that makes you ask, “well who’s #3?” Good question.

With Luke Getsy’s departure, Pitt coach Walt Harris scrambled to find live arms for Tuesday’s quarterback drills. Tight end Robbie Agnone and walk-on punter Nick Krut took snaps for the first time, alternating with walk-on Matt Flaus. Agnone, a 6-foot-5, 225-pound freshman, passed for 1,490 yards and 13 touchdowns for Red Land High last year.

Harris having scared Darrell Strong from trying to be a QB to the TE position — the position many teams tried to recruit him for — is in know hurry to put him back in the QB mix.

P-G Preview — Pitt

Looking just at the Pitt articles. First, Smizik (cementing his position as firmly in the Anti-Walt camp) has decided to raise the bar on the wins and losses for Harris this season. The number of regular season wins, declares Smizik, will be 7 and even declares which games: USF, Ohio, Furman, UConn, Temple, Rutgers and Syracuse. This, despite conceding that 4 of those games could really go either way. Smizik reasons that since the schedule is so weak, Harris must win that many despite the personnel losses. I’ve said, that he needs 6 wins in the regular season.

Here’s a capsule look at the schedule and the Big East. The Key man on defense this year is expected to be Clint Session.

Finally, without the explanation accompanying each, the”5 Keys To the Season.”

1. Block and tackle
2. Stay healthy
3. Game-day coaching
4. Offensive efficiency
5. Win the games they should win

In the words of my favorite animated robot, “We’re boned.”