The Pitt basketball non-con has gotten plenty of love for finally being tougher.

All those easily beatable teams Pitt played in November and December often caught up to the Panthers in March. Their NCAA tournament seeding didn’t always seem comparable to the record they achieved.

Last season, the Panthers won their first 15 games and played in the Big East tournament championship game for the fifth time in six years, yet were only fifth-seeded in their region. Some players suggested they might have had the same seeding even if they hadn’t won three Big East tournament games in three days.

If the Panthers are seeded lower than expected in the 2007 tournament, and they certainly expect to appear in it, their schedule probably won’t be the culprit.

I’ve been an advocate of a tougher non-con schedule for years. My reasons were concerned with the NCAA seeding but had as much to do with this:

• More TV exposure early in the year, which only happens when you play good teams (or you are Duke) since this allows those of us not living in Pittsburgh to actually see the games plus it helps for recruiting to point to the number of TV games.
• It gets so tiresome after a while to hear the talking heads on ESPN screaming about how Pitt hasn’t played anyone yet (admittedly not a great reason, but anything to shut up Gottlieb is a good thing).
• I follow the RPI way too closely, and seeing triple digit non-con SOS just depresses the hell out of me.

So now, Pitt has a solid non-con. It isn’t an insane gauntlet. It’s got the “gimmee” with games against Western Michigan, Delaware St., Northeastern, Duquesne, Robert Morris, Florida A&M, Buffalo and Oakland. Respectable to challenging games with Florida State (which could be seen as an even tougher game by the end of the season), at Auburn, UMass and Dayton. Then it has the good to excellent match-ups at Wisconsin, Washington, and at Oklahoma St.

So Mike DeCourcy (who I consider one of the best national b-ball writers and like to read) at The Sporting News gives a bit of the contrarian view.

The Panthers have significantly increased the difficulty of their pre-conference schedule — it’s gone from Putt-Putt to Pebble Beach in just one year — and so comes the inevitable reaction. Which is? It’ll help the Panthers come March.

Oh, yes, we’ve heard that one before.

When Michigan State took on Duke, UCLA, Kentucky and Kansas in 2003-04, it was going to make the Spartans tougher in March. How’d that work out? The Spartans were beaten frequently, earned only a No. 7 seed and were upset by Nevada in the tournament’s first round.

Under John Chaney, Temple played absurdly difficult schedules annually, averaging six non-league road games the past three years. The Owls haven’t even seen March since 2001.

The team that won last year’s NCAA championship, Florida, played St. Peter’s, Bethune-Cookman and Florida A&M, among others. The Gators’ non-league schedule was rated No. 253 by the RPI duplication published at Collegerpi.com. That team still earned a No. 3 seed and played pretty fair ball in March.

It’s a lost aspect to Florida winning the National Championship last year, but for those advocating teams play tougher non-con schedules, Florida just took away the “it toughens them up for the NCAA” and/or helps with seeding arguments.

DeCourcy, though, is fair in the piece. He does offer a good reason for Pitt to do this. Especially this year.

What a challenging non-league schedule does for a team — a veteran team like these Panthers — is prevent the players from getting bored. Not that this outfit is so complete that boredom is the only obstacle. Coach Jamie Dixon still is figuring out who’ll be his starting small forward, how to best use versatile forward Sam Young and whether there’ll be sufficient outside shooting threats. He’s got two experienced point guards, but Ronald Ramon and Levance Fields will have slightly different roles than a year ago.

Figuring out roles for everyone and the rotation will be the big challenge early in the season. I’d rather have that problem, though.