Game notes for the WVU-Pitt game are out for both WVU and Pitt (PDF). Still no explanation for what game and why the discrepancy between the schools for the number of times they have played each other — WVU has the series record at 90-77 in their favor; Pitt has it at 77-89.

At this point, there is nothing new in the storylines. Both teams need this game. WVU to keep it’s fading NCAA Tourney hopes alive. Pitt to help get at least 4 or 5 seed in the NCAA and to keep in the top-5 of the BE to get a 1st round bye in the Big East Tournament.

The only story is one from WV about how the Mountaineer players tend to dive for balls among other things.

“I don’t mind being on the floor taking charges or diving for the ball,” Herber said. “Sometimes I’m trying to slam into someone and get them out of the zone and he releases contact. And you fall down.”

Beilein does not want to rein in Gansey’s enthusiasm. He did, however, have a talk with Herber.

“The coach told us when the Big East refs came in before the season to try and help us and tell us what to do and not do, they said about one-third of the refs thought Joe was the biggest flopper in the league,” Gansey said.

“I think he’s stopped that,” Beilein said. “He realizes that in this league, if he’s going to get a good call, he can’t fake calls.”

What do you expect. Herber is from Germany. Watched and played too much soccer is my guess.

Last week, I did a couple posts about the non-con and RPI calculations. I got some e-mails questioning my obsessiveness. I wouldn’t say they questioned my sanity, but they wondered why I was still so bothered by it. Part of it has to do with my biases. My first love in sports is baseball. I’ve always loved the game and I love the numbers. I don’t run my own figures, but I know and understand derivatives, regression charts so that I can get into some of the crazy figures.

Sports like basketball and football are much harder to simply quantify the same way. The RPI, though is an interesting tool that can help provide insight into the quality of a team. And of course, it is a major tool in figuring out the who gets in and the seedings of the NCAA Tourney. It is also one of the few mathematical formulas available in basketball, hence my interest.

It has its flaws, though, and the tweaking done to the formula this year may have been a bit much. Even Joe Lunardi, who has gotten a nice gig at ESPN for RPI and “Bracketology” points out the problems (Insider Subs.)

The NCAA turned the RPI on its ear by weighting road wins (and home losses) at 1.4 while devaluing home wins (and road losses) to 0.6. In other words, winning on the road is now worth more than twice as much as winning at home and losing at home hurts more than twice as much as losing on the road. These values were apparently based on the rather crude arithmetic that, across all levels of Division I men’s basketball, home teams win a little more than two-thirds of the time.

This is part of why Pitt’s overall RPI was hurt so badly. The home losses to Bucknell and Georgetown — providing huge boosts to those team’s RPI really hurt Pitt. Lunardi also fails to mention the other reason for the change — to encourage teams to go out and play some games on the road.

My macro-thinking followed these lines: Every year there are a handful of teams for which the RPI just doesn’t jive with a commonsense appraisal of their respective records.

This is probably to be expected when you’re dealing with more than 300 teams in more than 30 different conferences. If we were to look back at each season, we’d be able to identity these few teams fairly easily and also see that the selection committee did the same in its evaluations. No harm, no foul in other words, provided any new formula didn’t worsen this condition substantially.

All of which brings us to 2005. And, while the new RPI is rewarding most teams that perform well on the road, it is failing miserably in the commonsense department.

Instead of three or four teams each year for which the numbers must be discounted, we have at least triple that (and probably more). Instead of becoming a more reliable tool, I believe the RPI is now much less so.

If you think there will be no outcry, just wait until Selection Sunday. I’m guessing there will be a whole lot of head-scratching as committee members try to figure out how Vermont could lose two out of three and keep an RPI in the high teens.

Lunardi lists a half dozen teams who have RPIs that are just out of whack with common sense. Pitt isn’t one of them, but it helps explain the rankings for Holy Cross and Old Dominion. Teams that are high in the RPI despite a relatively unimpressive record of wins, but lots of “good” road losses.

Next year the Big East schedule will be a mess with 16 teams. TV will drive the schedule, so teams won’t even know who they will play and how many times for at least 4 more months according to Andy Katz.

The Big East expects to let the 16 teams for the 2005-06 season know who they will be playing in June after CBS and ESPN make their selections.

Dates and times wouldn’t be set until over the summer, but the matchups will be dictated by television. So if CBS requests Louisville-Connecticut, you can expect ESPN will want the same game. That means those two teams would be matched up in a home-and-home series.

A number of these scenarios will occur. If both television partners want certain games, then those would likely be the home-and-home matchups. The Big East won’t lock in primary-rival partners like the 12-team ACC does.

The Big East will play 16 games in 2005-06 and go through a two-year cycle with the schedule. Teams will play 10 teams once, three teams twice and two teams not at all.

Expect some games to happen naturally, like Louisville-Cincinnati and Marquette-DePaul.

The ACC sent out its schedule for the next three seasons but then abruptly withdrew it after it was released. The league needs to address equity issues before agreeing to the schedule.

I repeat: the BE will be splitting apart in a bout 5 years.

Add Seth Davis of SI.com to the list of those who have been unimpressed with Chris Taft this year.

Chris Taft can’t possibly still be thinking about the NBA. Can he?

Of further note with Davis. At the end of his column, is a list of weekend games he will be picking on Friday. Davis is now 0-4 in picks involving Pitt. He picked against Pitt, 3 straight times and then went with them against Villanova. He has the UConn game listed. I’ve already sent him a request not to pick Pitt for the rest of the year. If anyone else wants to do so, it can’t hurt. Just be sure to mention your favorite tune from the Radiators.

In the early summer of 2003, Billy Gaines, a Pitt receiver, went to a church cookout along with his best friend and roommate, Kicker David Abdul. Gaines and Abdul got drunk at the cookout, and decided to explore the church and found themselves up in the crawlspace above the ceiling. Gaines slipped and fell head first to his death.

The alcohol was supplied to them by the only adult of legal drinking age at the cookout — Rev. Henry Krawczyk. Today the priest was given 7 years probation. This was agreed in a plea bargain with the *ahem* blessing of Gaines’ parents, “who didn’t want the priest to go to jail.”

The parents, by the way still have their $75 million dollar lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, in part because they failed to properly supervise and discipline Krawczyk for past incidents of supplying alcohol to minors.

No, those are not the measurements for some anime chick. That’s 36 points off of 3-pointers, 17 points from free throws, and 27 points inside the arc from the Villanova game.

The issue of perimeter defense has once more reared its ugly head.

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon talked about how his team needed to do a “better job defending,” how it had “some breakdowns” and how it “came up short in a few areas” after an 80-72 loss at Villanova two days ago.

It was revealing stuff for a guy who rarely criticizes his team in public. But it might have also been necessary for a coach who is trying to keep his 17th-ranked Panthers (18-5, 8-4 Big East) in check as they get closer to tournament play.

The Big East tourney tips off at Madison Square Garden in 15 days; the NCAAs open in 23.

That means Dixon has precious little time to shore up his areas of concern, most notably a perimeter defense that has yielded far too many 3-point baskets in recent weeks.

Villanova was the latest opponent to victimize the Panthers from the outside, going 12 of 23 from 3-point range for a 52.2-percent success rate. It should be noted that the Wildcats rank third in the Big East in 3-point shooting percentage (37.4) and have won six of seven games when they’ve produced 10 3-pointers or more, but that doesn’t mean Dixon let his team off the hook easily.

“We have to be better,” he said.

In the past five games, three Pitt opponents have hit for double-digit 3-pointers. West Virginia, which plays at Pitt on Wednesday night, went 13 of 40 in an 83-78 overtime upset of the Panthers on Feb. 5, and Notre Dame went 14 of 29 from long range in a down-to-the-wire 68-66 loss at Pitt on Feb. 12.

What’s more, in three of the Panthers’ four Big East losses, they’ve yielded at least 11 3-pointers. Georgetown went 11 of 21 in a 67-64 win at Petersen Events Center on Jan. 5.

Pitt with its defense, forces teams to take a lot of outside shots. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but as Ken Pomeroy points out with yet more stats, Pitt’s opponents to get over 30% of their points from 3-point shots. Out of 330 teams, Pitt is 279th in amount of % of points scored from 3s (and the stats don’t reflect on the Villanova game).

As far as what that means for the last 4 games, BC and UConn are teams more like Pitt, in that they like to get the ball inside. UConn, especially as Rashard Anderson is out, is definitely going to be going inside more than they did last time. ND and WVU, as we all know are teams that will and can make 3s. Those two games will be the ones to watch with regards to what Pitt does to shore up the perimeter defense.

A notebook piece, observes that Levon Kendall hasn’t been shooting much, or particularly well in recent games.

Aaron Gray comes in for another puff piece (I think this is his 3rd or 4th this season). This one focuses on his improvement during the season. The biggest thing I’ve seen on offense, is he is getting much better about catching the ball and going right up for the basket. Earlier he would either re-grip the ball or put it on the floor before jumping. This allowed a defender an extra second to either try and block, foul or get in position where Gray had to give up what should have been an easy 2. It really showed against ‘Nova when they focused much of their interior defense on Troutman. Gray was left alone for most of his baskets.