The Iowa State rumors won’t go away. Though no timetable is set in Ames. Rhoads does, afterall, have ties to the program.

Rhoads, defensive coordinator at Pittsburgh, was McCarney’s secondary coach between 1995 and ’99. He is an Ankeny native.

ISU has to at least interview him. Let that charm work its magic.

As Rex pointed out, the ESPN.com column from Joe Starkey on Wannstedt was a good one.

Twenty-one games into his tenure, Wannstedt is 11-10 overall, 9-10 against Division I-A competition. He has yet to score a significant victory. None of the four Division I-A teams that Pitt beat last season (Cincinnati, Syracuse, South Florida, UConn) finished with a winning record, and none of the five it has beaten this season (Central Florida, Cincinnati, Syracuse, Toledo, Virginia) has a winning record.

The “significant” win theme seems to be the meme of the week.

The fan base wasn’t exactly crushed when Harris resigned under pressure and left for Stanford. Wannstedt, a former Pitt player and a graduate assistant on Johnny Majors’ 1976 national championship team, took over amid great excitement and enjoyed an extended honeymoon period despite going 5-6 last year. His first full recruiting class was widely praised, and the Panthers beat up on weak opponents to win six of their first seven games this season.

Then came a 20-10 home loss to Rutgers, one in which some familiar problems resurfaced. Pitt couldn’t protect its quarterback, couldn’t run the ball and couldn’t stop the run at key times, allowing Rutgers to rush for 268 yards.

That was followed by an ugly 22-12 loss at South Florida — Pitt rushed for only 55 yards — and the disaster against UConn, which had been 0-3 in the Big East and started six freshmen on offense.

Pitt led 31-17 early in the fourth quarter but was bludgeoned for drives of 98 and 77 yards, sending the game into overtime — and Pitt fans into a frenzy.

Much of the fury has been directed at defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads, for obvious reasons, but Wannstedt and offensive coordinator Matt Cavanaugh also were blasted for sitting on the ball in the fourth quarter.

The obvious reasons with Rhoads is that the defense has sucked again versus decent to good opponents. Given my animosity to Rhoads, it should be no surprise that I don’t think he really addressed why fans want Rhoads gone

I’ll add another thing, the stubborness of Coach Wannstedt to even consider making changes on the approach on defense (“I’ve been doing this for 30 years.”), even as he then says they were trying different things. After last season and going into this season, we read and heard from Coach Wannstedt about how he and the whole team had to and did take a hard look at things. What needed to be done and all stuff like that.

The offense improved as it was tweaked to throw downfield a bit more to utilize the skill of Palko and the receiving corp, there’s even been improvement from the running game, as the O-line while inconsistent has definitely improved. Pitt has done things on offense to play up the strengths and not let the weaknesses kill them in most games.
The defensive players, we readm all slimmed down, got faster, worked harder. Yet, the defensive schemes and strategy still didn’t change. The approach remained the same. So, apparently that was the one area where the hard look was excepted.

Whether he wants to or not, Coach Wannstedt has to deal with some issues. He has to face the reality that some adjustments to the way he plays defense need to be made. I honestly believe Pitt will give him 5 years — he was the choice of so many in power — but he’s only got another couple years before he completely loses the fans.

Well, not my fault, they only put it on the net yesterday.

I’m stunned, everytime I see a list of top impact transfers for this season and Mike Cook omitted. Seth Davis at SI.com at least got it.

Mike Cook | 6’4″ | jr. | G-F | PITT
Began at East Carolina and did the unusual: moved to a higher-profile program. Will make a difference once he learns to play Big East D.

He seems to be playing rather good D right now, but there is a wait and see on that aspect until at least Saturday.

Sports Illustrated college B-ball preview puts Pitt at #10. Behind G-town (#7) and Wisconsin (#9). Washington is listed at #14. The team preview is rather stock, focused on Gray.

Maybe Delaware State will win the MEAC. Maybe they are a good team. They learned, though, the difference between being a top team in the MEAC versus being a top team in the Big East.

Every basketball conference has a preseason player of the year, and they are not created equally.

There are those who come from the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, like Delaware State’s Jahsha Bluntt. And there are those who come from the Big East, like Pittsburgh center Aaron Gray, who might as well come from a different planet compared with the MEAC.

The difference Tuesday night was staggering as the fourth-ranked Panthers did whatever they wanted in a 67-50 victory over the Hornets at the Petersen Events Center.

“We’re not used to players like that in our league,” Bluntt said.

…
“No one in our league is that big and talented,” DSU coach Greg Jackson said. “I think the game was an indication of how good Pitt is. They caused us a lot of matchup problems.”

The answers weren’t easy to find.

During DSU’s first timeout – when the game was barely under way – the time was nearly completely spent with Jackson taking advice from assistants Keith Walker and Mike Bernard.

“All you can do is play principled defense,” Fleetwood said.

The Hornets, known for their ball control, still let Pitt’s guards get into transition. But Pitt was ready for DSU’s slow-down approach and didn’t get flustered like some Hornets opponents have in the past.

Levance Fields is having an easy time getting the ball in to Gray right now. A good start with that, since last year the team struggled to get the ball inside if Krauser wasn’t in the game.
Pitt also played a solid D, keeping DSU from doing much — though some simply thought the team had a bad night shooting. Good defense will do that.

Still, some love for DSU, they are playing a brutal schedule that technically will only get better, but they are like nomads at the moment.

The game was the first of 14 consecutive road games to start the season. Delaware State plays North Carolina State, Wisconsin, Purdue, Marquette, Michigan and Baylor, among others, before playing in front of their home fans.

Coach Dixon liked playing a team that was going to give Pitt a different style to face.

Dixon knew Delaware State would challenge his team and purposely scheduled the Hornets to get his team exposed to a different style of play that it might encounter in the NCAA tournament.

“That was something we looked at,” Dixon said afterward. “We were well aware of how good they were. We knew they were going to play that way. They were very deliberate and ran the shot clock down from 35 seconds almost every possession. I think they will win their league. We did a pretty good job. Not perfect, but pretty good.”

Four Pitt players scored in double figures. Senior center Aaron Gray led the way with 17 points and eight rebounds. Junior small forward Mike Cook had 13 and Levon Kendall and Antonio Graves each had 10.

Levance Fields and Ronald Ramon are thriving in the backcourt at the moment. Fields is involving everyone in the game and Ramon is shooting very well coming off the bench.

Fields, who started his second game in a row, had eight assists — against only two turnovers — and five rebounds. Ramon continued his outside accuracy, coming off the bench to make 3 of 4 shots from 3-point range. He finished with nine points and three assists.

“We’re fortunate to have two very good point guards,” coach Jamie Dixon said. “We have two very good players that would be starting on most teams. I don’t know if anybody has any better point guards than we have. They are very good.”

The only bad news for Pitt basketball is that Freshman Gilbert Brown is going to have an MRI on his ankle today. Brown has had a miserable fall with Mono and a recurring ankle issue. He was supposed to be the one freshman with the talent, ability and toughness to have a shot at cracking Pitt’s deep rotation. Now, he is more likely to be redshirted at this point.

Omar provided a good first-hand report of the game, noting that the team seems exceptionally close this season.

The box score has lots of goodness. 20 assists on 24 baskets, only 8 turnovers, free throw shooting was a decent 14-19. (If Gray can get his FT shooting to 70% this year, I’ll be thrilled.) Lots of minutes distributed. Coach Dixon is definitely not burning out any players early in the season.