Hopefully good things to say before, during and after.

HALFTIME UPDATE: Pitt winning 39-16.

Look, Pitt is playing some great defense, but they are being aided significantly by Louisville playing tighter than Peyton Manning in a meaningful game.

Hard to find much to complain about that doesn’t seem nit-picking right now.

FINAL UPDATE: Pitt holds on 61-56.

Oy.

They had to make us sweat. No FGs in the final 13:38 is what they said. I guess that’s why it’s good to build up a huge lead.

Hate to say it, but Gray needs to learn to take his hands from off his throat in the final minute or two when shooting free throws.

I don’t disagree with Dixon’s strategy to run clock. It had been working to a point, but Pitt players really lost focus.

Kendall was playing tremendous defense. He had like 5 blocks.

More later.

Big East Basketball Blog has the big round-up of articles and previews. I’m just going to touch on a few things.

Brief predictions for today’s games. Seton Hall beats Rutgers. Syracuse somehow beats Cinci. Georgetown falls to ND. Pitt over Louisville.

The official press release from the Big East on last night’s awards. Jay Wright won Coach of the Year. Randy Foye from ‘Nova won POY. I’m a little surprised since I really thought his teammate Ray would split off votes.

Aaron Gray won Most Improved Player.

The 7-foot, 270-pound junior became a starter for Pitt this year and finished the regular season as the only player in the conference to average double figures in scoring (14.0 ppg.) and rebounding (10.4 rpg.).

“I think the consensus, nationally, is that he is the most improved player in the country,” Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said Tuesday, after presenting Gray with a sizeable trophy to coincide with his huge frame.

Making him the 4th Pitt player in the last 7 years to win.

He joins Carl Krauser, Brandin Knight and Ricardo Greer as Pitt players to win the award in the past seven years.

“I saw Carl Krauser win it my freshman year,” Gray said. “It was one of my goals. It was motivation. What makes it so great is that my team has been successful. If I was the most improved player and my team wasn’t in the tournament, I don’t think this would mean as much.

“Our team has exceeded everyone’s expectations. I think I’ve exceeded everyone’s expectations. Now we just have to do a great job of finishing up the year.”

Winning this award is not only a tradition at Pitt, it has become a recruiting tool. When Dixon walks into the households of recruits, he points to the success of players like Gray.

“When I talk to parents, I tell them our first goal is to graduate players,” Dixon said. “And, secondly, they get better as players. Winning this award four of the past seven years says a lot. We’re proud of that. That’s the most important award of the year for us.”

The unbalanced 16 game conference schedule will continue for one more year because of TV. BE Commish Mike Tranghese indicated that after that the BE will likely go to an 18 game conference schedule with everybody playing once and 3 home-and-homes. The Pac-10 is also expected to follow suit (giving them a perfect home-and-home balance) and there have been rumors that the Big 11 might as well.

I have to say that this would help power conferences because it will boost RPI further to favor the conference strength. It also serves the power conferences in two other ways if more go this way. It reduces the number of non-con games needed to schedule. That reduces the demand for patsy games — bringing down the price a bit to pay for such games. It is also a way to check the growing strength of conferences like the MVC and WCC as they will get less chance to show how good they are against the power conferences.

Carl Krauser is 4 rebounds from 500 for his career. As I’ve mentioned before, he will be the only player in Pitt history with 1500+ points, 500+ assists and 500+ rebounds.

Finally, a puff piece on the Oakland Zoo from Central PA.

It wasn’t more than 30 minutes after Carl Krauser had lost his final game at Petersen Events Center, yet there he was.

He had just apologized to Pitt’s fans in his postgame press conference for the team’s first — and only — home loss of the season.

He had just signed a basketball for a young fan who was waiting in the hallway.

He had even bid some strangers a “good night” as they walked past him.

All this after Friday’s heart-wrenching 65-61 loss to Seton Hall, and yet there was Krauser, standing at center court of the empty arena, discussing what was special about being a Pitt player.

“Fans,” the most popular Panther said. “Without these guys, we’re playing in front of seats. You want to hear the fans going crazy, screaming, and having your back. Because we have their backs every time we step on this court.”

The Panthers have made it easy for their fans to have their backs with a 64-6 record at Petersen — the palatial 12,508-seat facility opened in the fall of 2002. But it hasn’t just been their play that has made them so beloved in the Steel City — it’s been the relationship the Pitt players have built with those who cheer them on.

“They’re just so down to earth, they’re like friends with us,” said sophomore Ian Smith, the vice president of the “Oakland Zoo,” as the Pitt student section is known. “I’m friends with pretty much all the guys on the team. So, we want to come and support them. Not only for being their friends, not only for being our basketball team, but for the pride of our school.”

Students and fans love their teams all over the country, but what makes Pitt special is the mutual respect and admiration that the players also have for their fans. During the Senior Night ceremony — in which Krauser and three others were honored — before Friday’s game, Panthers coach Jamie Dixon spoke about that relationship.

“I don’t know if any other group (of seniors) connected with the students and the fans the way these guys did,” Dixon said in his speech to the packed house.

Of course you should read it all.

Pitt lost its last 2 games. 3 of its last 4. Two of the losses came on the road, and all three losses to likely tourney teams. Pitt is struggling.

Louisville has not won 2 straight games since the beginning of January (Providence and UC-Davis). They have been 4-5 since the end of January. All of their losses on the road, all of their wins at home. In that stretch the only win over a tournament team was against Marquette. They are considered to be improving.

The numbers are different. Pitt is a 4 1/2 point favorite. Based on mathematical calculations, Pitt has the best chance of any BE team to win today. Neither team played a neutral site game this season. Pitt is 16-1 at home and 5-5 on the road. Louisville is 16-3 at home and 2-8 on the road. Both teams lost in MSG to St. John’s in the same week.

Right now, I have no sense as to how this game will go. I don’t think anyone is really sure on either side.

There’s a lot of talk about the confidence of Louisville right now.

They say they’re playing their best basketball of the season right now and it would be a mistake to underestimate or overlook them. In their last two games, they took both West Virginia and UConn down to the wire in four-point losses.

“Everybody from the end of the bench to the front of the bench has confidence now and we’re playing a different style of basketball,” guard Taquan Dean said following U of L’s Tuesday afternoon workout at Gaucho’s Gym in the heart of the Bronx near Yankee Stadium. “I think a lot of Big East teams now are coming to realize these guys have to be reckoned with, and if we keep playing the same way we’ve been playing, we’ve got a good shot at it.

“I know other teams are watching and they have to be a little nervous because we’re playing good basketball right now. We know we can play with the best of them and we’re going in there to win it. We’re getting there (improving) because everybody is coming around.”

Which should seem vaguely familiar for Pitt fans since the same sort of talk surrounded Pitt coming off of their 4-point road loss to UConn. How Pitt was playing good ball, and what a good sign it was to take the #1 team to the wire. Yada, yada, yada.

Part of that changed perception for Louisville is also the change in personnel because of injuries and recovered health from earlier in the Big East Conference play.

Way back then – when Louisville, a Final Four team last season, was ranked No. 10 and Pitt was at a season-high at No. 12 – the Cardinals were playing with a hobbled Taquan Dean, a slow-to-recover Juan Palacios and a slow-to-acclimate David Padgett.

They were overrated by talented, yet unhealthy and lacking confidence. Dean played only 12 minutes and Palacios had only eight points. Pitt won 61-57, a mild upset that allowed the Panthers to jump three more spots in The Associated Press poll.

That was so two months ago.

Now, Dean and Palacios are healthy and the Cardinals are playing well. Palacios had 29 points in the regular-season finale at No. 1 Connecticut. The Cardinals beat Marquette, the Big East’s fourth seed, three days before that. They’ve recovered from a morbid midseason stretch in which they lost five of six games, and Dean recovered from his injury and was an all Big East second-team pick.

“They’ve had a good turnaround,” said Pitt guard Levon Kendall. “They are playing with new confidence.”

But all is not wonderful for Louisville and coach Rick Pitino. Padgett, the Cardinals’ second-leading scorer and only inside presence, won’t make the trip to New York after having season-ending knee surgery Monday on his knee that he injured in the Connecticut game.

The loss of Padgett transformed Louisville (18-11, 6-10) into a guard-oriented, outside-shooting team.

Yes, they are playing a different style with different people, but certain things remain.

It has changed the complexion of Louisville’s team, Gray said.

“Maybe a little bit,” the 7-foot center said, responding to a suggestion that Pitt could have an edge in the paint. “(But) it changes about every game. Teams do a good job of focusing down low sometimes and that opens up our perimeter guys. We’ll see as the game progresses.”

Pitino knows Pitt is likely to present as tough a challenge today, despite having struggled down the stretch in the regular season.

“They’ve been a top-10 team for most of the season, and they’ve been very deserving of that ranking,” Pitino told the Louisville Courier-Journal. “They’ve been very consistent, have great experience and have one of the premier big men in the country (Gray).”

Louisville will press. They will play a tough defense, they won’t have a strong defensive presence inside.

Pitt will have to play tough perimeter defense against the 3. Pitt will need to make foul shots and be aggressive going to the basket.

The easy thing is to say that certain players need to have big games.

Colombia native Juan Tello Palacios has arrived just in time to give U of L hope. After struggling all season while playing his way back from a severe ankle injury, the 6-foot-8 Palacios is “really blossoming,” in the words of Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun.

Palacios poured in a career-high 29 points in Saturday’s 84-80 loss to Calhoun’s team. He has had high-scoring games before, but never of the type that he showed in Storrs. He was 3 of 6 from three-point range, made 5 of 10 midrange shots in traffic and, perhaps most important, got to the free-throw line 10 times and made all of them. The final two tied it with with 54.6 seconds to play.

“He’s not just playing the best he has played all season, but he’s at an all-time high,” U of L senior guard Taquan Dean said.

For either team.

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon can recite a laundry list of things that have contributed to the downfall of the Panthers in their losses this season. Sometimes, it was poor defense. Sometimes, it was turnovers. Other times, it was missed free throws. Many times, it was a combination of those things.

Invariably, there was one other constant in Pitt’s losses: Carl Krauser.

When Krauser, Pitt’s senior guard and leading scorer, had an off game the results usually weren’t positive for the Panthers. Krauser shot 30.6 percent and averaged a little more than 11 points per game in Pitt’s losses. He was 5 for 17 from the field against St. John’s, 4 for 11 against Connecticut, 3 for 8 against Georgetown, 3 for 16 against West Virginia and 2 for 10 against Seton Hall.

I can’t simply subscribe to just one player needing to step up. You are then presuming everyone else will be about average. Will Louisville win if Palacios has a good game but Dean struggles? How about Pitt if Gray is subpar while Krauser gets hot? Either team might still win, but I like Pitt’s chances more if everyone plays about their season average.