I kind of held off on posting about Greg Lee deciding to go pro, because it didn’t seem that much more concrete than earlier reports. Now Frank passes word that he made it so on TV. Okay. I’m guessing it was money. His family needs it or something. He’s a 4th-5th rounder at best. That or he got some seriously bad advice. He’s got the talent and the size. He just has yet to show the focus and consistency. That’s going to be a potential killer.

As noted, this opens the door for the incoming freshmen like Dickerson and Smith. Kinder suddenly becomes a number #1. DelSardo gets another chance to get back in the mix. Players like Pestano, Chandler, Moore and Turner have to take advantage of the time between now and spring drills to try and make their case.

Matt Cavanaugh needs to further work on figuring out how to use the extremely deep and talented pool at Tight End — Buches, Strong, Pelusi are already here. Plus Byham’s arrival.

Finally, it is up to Palko to make an effort to connect with the WRs already here and find out which ones are committed to becoming the “go-to guy.”

Final note. Looks like Pitt will have a very respectable schedule.

Pitt has finalized its non-conference football schedule for 2006. The Panthers will play home games against Virginia, Michigan State, Toledo and The Citadel and play at Central Florida. They will play seven home games and five on the road. In addition to the four non-conference games, the Panthers will play host to Big East rivals Louisville, West Virginia and Rutgers. They will play road conference games at Connecticut, Cincinnati, South Florida and Syracuse.

If ticket prices hold the line, that will be pretty good value for home game opponents.

So Harry Psaros has left Rivals.com/PantherLair for Scout.com/PantherReport. He takes over as publisher.

Bob Lichtenfels has done an admirable job maintaining this site for two years. He is well known and respected and I look forward to working with him. As your new publisher, I plan on making a tremendous amount of changes. Look for a new name, new logo, new “look” and dramatically improved message boards. This site has sat in a state of atrophy for several years. That is about to change. There will be a steady metamorphosis over the next six months. I can assure you this site will dramatically improve.

There are many of you asking why I chose to jump to Scout.com. Upper management from the network has been in close contact with me for several months. We have had multiple in-depth discussions. Their vision of the future is aggressive and exciting. Scout’s affiliation with Fox Sports is bound to lead to bigger and better opportunities for this site (in addition to massive exposure). A myriad of Scout.com publishers took their time to contact me. I was highly impressed with family oriented atmosphere and sense of camaraderie between the publishers.

Things have quietly been getting interesting in the last six plus months for the recruiting sites. Scout.com and Rivals.com have had their sniping over time and various names, and people change sides all the time. It’s been recent, though, that real changes have been brewing. A lot started when ESPN/Disney started making noises. First was a ESPN The Magazine article over the summer that seemed to some as a hit piece on recruiting sites. Then came the further news about how ESPN.com was creating its own recruiting database and info under the name of Scouts, Inc. — and how a lawsuit over the names by Scout.com hasn’t occurred is beyond me.

Scout.com responded by letting itself be acquired by Fox Interactive Media, a part of the Fox media conglomerate. This gave Scout.com more reach and deeper pockets.

At this time, Rivals.com is still operating as an independent. There are still sports/entertainment media groups that could become involved with them. CBS Sportsline.com, which is owned by Viacom and recently acquired College Sports TV would appear to be the most obvious. Comcast/OLN is another possibility, as is Time Warner, and possibly even the Tribune Company. At some point they are going to need to have somebody behind them, if the fight for subscribers becomes more pointed.

2006 looks to be a year of potential shakeout and consolidation.

One of the things that will have Pitt fans wondering for the next couple of days will be what DeGroat did to get put on the bench for the entire game after less than 3 minutes on the floor? He started, but was pulled quickly and never saw the court again. He shot 1-2 and committed a turnover. There was no explanation I could find, and no reported injury. Seems even more surprising given Kendall’s 4 second-half turnovers.

The word used to describe the game was “ugly.”

He did not plan on the Panthers shooting 38 percent from the field, committing 17 turnovers or having his starting front line combine for a measly 12 points.

A performance like that usually produces a loss. But the Panthers did what they seem to do better than almost anyone they play. They muddied the waters, made the Gamecocks play their type of game and stole a 58-51 victory on the road.

“When you go on the road, it’s about being a family, sticking together and coming through adversity,” senior guard Carl Krauser said. “We gutted it out and got a tough win.”

The story, of course, was Sam Young.

Young did not make his first appearance until midway through the first half, but he quickly made his presence known by scoring off three offensive rebounds in a 3:30 span to get Pitt back in the game.

When Pitt seized control of the game early in the second half, Young played the key role. He scored 10 of Pitt’s points in an 18-7 run to open the half, including a three-point play off an offensive rebound and a 3-pointer from behind the arc.

“Sam Young is the guy who turned the game with his offensive rebounding,” South Carolina coach Dave Odom said.

“We were struggling on offense,” Young said. “I saw an opportunity to step up. I thought I’d take that opportunity.”

That he did.

Coach Dixon was in his usual coachspeak, but was honest that the team needs a lot of improvement. Despite holding South Carolina to 51 points, Pitt allowed them to shoot better than 40%; Pitt turned the ball over too much and shot selection needs to be better.

For South Carolina, their leading rebounder was invisible in the first half then benched in the second.

“I’m terribly disappointed right now,” Gamecocks coach Dave Odom said. “Our team is not playing as well as it needs to play. Our team is not playing winning basketball right now.”

Balkman played two minutes in the second half after being benched because “I didn’t think he was playing well, and I didn’t think he was playing very hard,” Odom said.

Without Balkman, the team’s leading rebounder entering Wednesday, Pittsburgh finished with a 16-rebound advantage and erased a slow start that produced 10 points in the first 14 minutes.

Kelley’s 18 points appeared to hit the spot. But because Balkman was MIA and no one picked up the slack, the result was another bad statistic for the Gamecocks: They are now 0-7 when Kelley scores at least 17 points.

Kelley said the increased pressure to score occasionally results in turnovers; he had three in the second half Wednesday.

But Kelley said there are other problems with the Gamecocks, who have lost two in a row for the first time this season and have lost three of their past five.

“We’ve got to listen. I don’t think we listen much to the coaching staff,” Kelley said. “We’ve got to get everybody on the same page. Some guys may or may not care much about losing, but there are some guys in this locker room who do. We have to want to win.”

That’s one of those unfortunate things, because Kelley wasn’t the problem. He was the only one keeping USC in the game in the second half. He shot 6-10 while the rest of the team shot 12-32 (.375). He was 4-4 at the FT line, and the rest of the team was 8-17. He even grabbed 4 rebounds. This was not some sort of game where one player took an absurd number of shots to the exclusion of others. It’s where no one else for the Gamecocks was doing much of value.

The loss spoiled the retirement of BJ McKie’s jersey. Well, that’s why they do those sort of things before the game.

In the stories before the game, the theme was to get the ball inside first. Get the inside baskets and the outside shots for the guards will come. So much for that gameplan.

In the first half Pitt took 26 shots, and 12 were from outside the arc (making only 3). It would appear to have been some impatient guard play — led by Krauser. The guards took 12 shots, of which 10 were 3-pointers. Gray, Kendall, Biggs and DeGroat only took 9 shots, and 2 of them were 3-pointers. There wasn’t a lot of penetration in the first half. Some of that should be attributed to the South Carolina defense which swarmed the ball very well, and created 9 turnovers in the half — by 7 players.

What kept Pitt in the game was the offensive rebounding. Pitt held a 9-2 offensive rebounding advantage in the first half. This was keyed by Sam Young continually following shots to the basket (including his own once). He had 4 offensive boards and immediately followed with a lay-up or jumper to go 3-4 (3-5 in the half). Considering Pitt shot 8-26 in the first half, there is no way to underestimate the importance of Young’s impact.

The only other positive to take from that horrible 1st half — other than somehow being down by only 2 — was that there was an assist on half of the baskets. A not so subtle hint that ball movement gets better looks.

The second half saw the adjustments and refocusing of getting the ball inside more often. Pitt only took 6 3-pointers. The concerted effort was clear in that Gray — while shooting horribly in the game (3-10) — had 7 shots in the second half and making 3. Kendall also saw the ball inside a lot more, but was very sloppy. He had 4 of his 5 turnovers in the second half — never actually getting a shot off.

Pitt shot 10-21 in the second half while absolutely limiting South Carolina’s opportunities. The Gamecocks only had 1 offensive rebound in the second half, 3 for the entire game.

Pitt’s second half offense was keyed by 3 different players at different points. Keith Benjamin in the first couple of minutes with an offensive rebound and 2 baskets to give Pitt the lead. Sam Young was in the middle of everything from around the 17 minute point to about 9 minutes left in the game — 10 points (5-5 on FTs), 2 rebounds, 1 steal, 1 assist. (He also was whistled for a couple fouls, bringing him to 4, which was why he came out of the game at that point.) Carl Krauser in the final 5:43 where he had 8 of Pitt’s final 13 points.