Tomorrow morning a new Q&A with the Marquette bloggers. I’m still catching up with actually doing stuff not on a computer. Bad craziness.

The game is on at 9pm. Game notes for Pitt and Marquette (PDF). Marquette, not only coming off a big, clutch win over Georgetown will be retiring the jersey of Maurice Lucas at halftime. He’s one of their all-time greats. I’m not familiar with him either, but I doubt many Marquette fans really recall Billy Knight or Sam Clancy at Pitt.

Greg Doyel at Sportsline.com once more can’t bring himself to pick Pitt, and apparently is aware of his history.

No. 9 Pittsburgh at Marquette: It has come to our attention that Pittsburgh gets picked against almost every time the Panthers make it into the vaunted and highly respected Top 10 Games. Cognizant of that, we vowed to pick Pittsburgh this week, regardless of the opponent or location. But we’re nervous because, while Pittsburgh is an almost-great team, the Panthers become beatable on the road. Marquette, meanwhile, is a very good team that becomes unbeatable at home. And this one’s at Marquette. But we promised a friend we’d pick Pitt. Pick: Screw it … Marquette.

Thanks for reading, Greg. No, I’m not the friend, but I know he is aware of this blog and how much I’ve harped on Pitt’s disconnect on the road. So I’ll take some credit for causing him to go against Pitt on the road.

Remember what I said earlier in the day about how people trying to rank and seed teams couldn’t abide having too many teams from the same conference ahead of power conferences? Seth Davis helps prove my point with his “seed report.” He gives a #1 seed to both Villanova and UConn, but puts Pitt at a #3. Tennessee and Iowa (Huh??) get a #2. He also has George Washington as a #3 seed — and a guy who loves to pound teams repeatedly for weak non-cons puts GW with their #321 non-con SOS at #3 — how?

At some point, you have to stop looking at the RPI spreadsheets and start heeding records, rankings and gut instincts. If you look at George Washington’s nitty gritty (1-1 vs. the RPI’s top 50, nonconference strength of schedule ranked 322nd), you couldn’t make the Colonials higher than a five seed. I’ve made them a three. They’ve lost one game all year long and are ranked seventh in the AP poll. You simply cannot leave them out of your top 16.

And at some point you have to admit your own inconsistencies and hypocricsies.

In an unrelated note, Luke Winn at SI.com raises Pitt to #10 in his power rankings — behind Tennessee, Florida and GW.

Demoting Pitt to No. 16 last week was the move that drew the most hate mail, and the Panthers responded with three straight victories (West Virginia, Cincinnati and at Providence) to climb back into the Top 10. Oakland surprise story Aaron Gray is only getting better by the week — he delivered an inspired performance against the Mountaineers, scoring 16 points and holding Kevin Pittsnogle to zero points (he averages 19.1) on 0-of-12 shooting. “Every shot he took was contested,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said of Pittsnogle.

Pitt fans have been among the loudest in the last few years at letting some of the b-ball writers know what they think.