First up, the Mike Jones transfer out of Syracuse appears to matter more than I realized. I thought it would be bad longer term but not this game given his lack of minutes and who he backs-up.

Jones, a 6-foot-8 forward from Hopkins, S.C., told SU coach Jim Boeheim that he was homesick, and Boeheim said Wednesday that playing time was an issue.

Jones averaged only 6.5 minutes per game, playing behind senior Demetris Nichols, the Orange’s leading scorer.

Matt disagreed below, thinking he would see a lot more minutes in this game. The move also leaves the Orange very shorthanded for this game due to injuries as well with likely only 7 scholarship players dressed. Of course the last ime Pitt went on the road to face a team that was short-handed due to injuries was the Oklahoma State game a couple weeks ago and…

Pitt is ready to get to the conference slate starting with Syracuse.

“This is like a second season,” junior guard Ronald Ramon said. “We definitely want to step in against Syracuse and play our best.”

…

“I think they are ready to go and excited,” Dixon said. “We played very well throughout (the nonconference schedule). I think it’s been good. We got better as we went on. That’s the important thing. We did a lot of traveling, and that takes its toll. But it was good.”

Now the Orange are waiting for Pitt — and to be honest this still hasn’t gotten old even as it is no longer so strange — as Pitt is the big dog going into this game. The team looking down on Syracuse.

Pittsburgh comes into tonight’s game as the highest-ranked team in the Big East.

In Jamie Dixon’s fourth season as head coach, the Panthers have become the 21st century’s version of the Connecticut story. In the early 1990s, UConn shed its label as Big East doormat to become one of the conference’s standard-bearers.

Matt Glaude did some nice work on a Pitt-‘Cuse preview that I’m not even going to bother. Just go read it and enjoy.