You know where a team ranks on the sports landscape at times when you take a look at the byline of the articles. To be fair most of Florida is preoccupied with the Florida Gators and the BCS game tonight (*ahem* blatant plug AOL Fanhouse will be liveblogging it, I’ll be helping with peanut gallery snark on the side). The beat writers for USF apparently were pulled in and shipped off to Arizona. (At least when the Steelers were heading to the Superbowl last year the beat writers for Pitt stayed with the b-ball.) So, the articles from the Tampa and St. Pete’s papers were from Pittsburgh sportswriters.

Colin Dunlop who usually covers high school and recruiting for the P-G moonlit for the St. Petersburg Times. Meanwhile the Tampa Tribune hired the Trib-Review‘s beat writer, John Grupp to do the story (labeling him as a “Tribune Correspondent”), meaning Grupp got to do two for one. Just one of those things that amuses me.

Mike Cook wonders if the Pitt team just lacks morning people or something.

“I think it’s the early game,” forward Mike Cook said. “We struggled with that last year, too. We weren’t shooting well. We weren’t passing well. We weren’t doing anything well. We relied on our defense.”

Despite shooting 34 percent in the first half, Pitt led, 32-22, at the break after limiting the Bulls to as many field goals (9) as turnovers in the opening 20 minutes. USF managed only three field goals in the final 7:16 of the first half.

“I think we’re improving defensively,” coach Jamie Dixon said. “I don’t think that we’ll ever turn the corner. But we’re getting better. And we should improve. We are working a lot on it.”

That’s about as close as Coach Dixon will come to publicly calling out the defensive effort from his team, and it just got tossed in there as an aside comment. It was a good defensive effort, though, and nice to see Pitt clamp down when the shots weren’t going.

“When arguably your best player can have an off night and you can win convincingly you have to feel good about your team,” McCullum said. “Their perimeter shooting is one of the areas they have improved greatly. Offensively, it gives them so much more balance. It sort of makes you pick your poison. You can drop off and help on Gray and make him kick it out. They do a great job of knocking down jumpers. They have good chemistry.”

Fields was 3 for 4 from 3-point range and Ronald Ramon was 3 for 5. Levon Kendall, Keith Benjamin, Antonio Graves and Tyrell Biggs made one apiece.

I have to be honest seeing Biggs make a three bothered me. Mainly because he will probably take more 3s when he should almost never do that.

Ron Cook wonders what is going on with Aaron Gray? Well most of us are at least a little concerned at this point. I’m more concerned about the poor shooting than the lack of touches.

Pitt’s competition is about to improve dramatically. Maybe it won’t happen so much when it plays at DePaul Wednesday night, but it certainly will when it plays Georgetown, Connecticut and Marquette in a three-game homestand that begins Saturday night. Those teams are capable of lining up and playing Gray man-to-man and covering Pitt’s perimeter players. It’s fair to believe the Panthers will need Gray’s offense to win.

“Absolutely,” Gray said, nodding. “The big thing is we’re winning, but I know I have to be more consistent. I have to do my part. I think I bring a lot to the table for this team. I just have to show it.”

Wednesday night at DePaul would be a nice time to start.

The DePaul game scares the hell out of me. DePaul is unbeaten at home. They have knocked off Kansas and Cal there, and blew Wake Forest completely out of the water. The Blue Demons are a Jekyll and Hyde team, and at home they are Hyde.