Did you know that every time you watch the Pitt Panthers, you might actually be seeing…a NFL team coached by a guy who died over 30 years ago?

“It’s always hard preparing for Pitt because they do such a great job,” said Mountaineer coach John Beilein. “It’s like the Vince Lombardi teams. You know a bit of what they’re going to do but you just can’t stop it and it’s hard to score on them. What this team continues to have is more and more experience playing every single day as a unit with very unselfish players. That’s made them special.”

Jamie Dixon and Vince Lombardi. I’ve never made that connection before. But seriously, Beilein makes a good point. We’re going to try to get it into Gray if they’ll let us but if they want to put extra defenders on him then the guards (Levance and Graves) will do what they’ve done previously: make shots. So in that sense, the ‘Eers know what we want to do. Our execution (mainly making shots) is the key though and it’s usually very good.

They mention WVU’s surprising 18-4 record, something I looked at yesterday.

Each team takes very good care of the rock in the offensive zone and neither team tries forcing the ball through passing lanes that are either too small or don’t exist at all.

Both teams have been extremely adept at handling the basketball. For the style that they play, Pitt has a terrific 435-276 assist-to-turnover ratio. West Virginia’s is nearly as good at 386-253.

“To think that there are two teams that play so well handling the ball and passing the ball it’s pretty unique and rare and doing it in different ways with different styles of play,” said Dixon.

WVU is somewhat downplaying the importance of the game.

“Yes it’s Pitt and it’s a league game,” he said. “But we’ve just got to keep going and plodding through like we have been all year and not put any more importance on one game than another.”

Does Coach Beilein sense a loss and doesn’t want his young team getting too low if they lose to a rival? Actually, the same can be said conversely; if they were to upset us then he doesn’t want his players getting too high going into a non-con game against UCLA on Saturday.