Over at FanHouse, we did capsule previews of all the teams in the Field of 65. Here’s Oral Roberts. As noted, Scott Sutton is Oklahoma St. Coach Sean Sutton’s brother. That means he will get a full scouting report from someone who played against Pitt. Albeit, one that had Mike Cook still there.
On a personal night, one of my brother-in-law is a graduate of Oral Roberts. That’s plenty incentive to me for Pitt to win. Not that Jay cares that much. The wife is reasonably certain her brother doesn’t even realize ORU even won their conference.
Just a brief rewind, at the start of the BET, the log5 computations gave Pitt about a 3.1% chance of winning the BET.
The Pitt players aren’t worried about leaving it all behind in New York.
“This team will be ready,” said senior guard Ronald Ramon, who averaged 14.0 points per game in the Panthers’ four Big East tournament victories. “We got to come out and play hard, and play with the same focus we had at the Big East tournament. We need to just keep playing good basketball.”
“I’ve heard it a thousand times,” Pitt freshman center DeJuan Blair said, “and every time I heard it I said, ‘We’re not Syracuse.’ They probably just wanted to win the Big East. We’re looking for the national championship. Well, I’m looking for it. I’ve been in championships all my life. We have to stay hungry. The Big East, that is something we should have won. We just have to keep reaching.”
Coach Dixon isn’t backing away from his statements that Pitt is playing their best basketball. The players are with him on that.
“We won the Big East,” freshman center DeJuan Blair said. “But the best is yet to come.”
As for being a 4 seed, the team isn’t surprised and Coach Dixon isn’t going to complain about having to go out West — again.
Pitt is used to traveling west. The Panthers were sent to Boise, Idaho, in 2005, as a No. 9 seed for the first round (where they lost to Pacific) and were placed in the West Region last year in San Jose for the Sweet Sixteen as a No. 3 seed.
“We always seem to be out west,” coach Jamie Dixon said. “I always joke, ‘Do they know it’s Pittsburgh, Pa., or Pittsburg, Calif., without the ‘H’?”
Dixon isn’t concerned with the long trip. Pitt will fly to Denver on Tuesday and begin practicing for its seventh consecutive year in the NCAA Tournament.
“That’s just something that’s going to happen,” Dixon said. “When it gets down to it, they can’t satisfy everybody. That’s just the way it is. … Seven years ago, we stayed in Pittsburgh, and there was a huge uproar when that happened back then. Ever since, we’ve been making up for it.”
Dixon was on ESPN’s Mike & Mike this morning and repeated that theme when asked about being shipped out to Denver.
Kind of strange to read a columnist in Altoona write about Pitt needing to take another step in the NCAA Tournament.
See, winning the Big East is nice, but it just doesn’t feel complete. You’re still worried about the big dance.
But if (and hopefully when) you win the big dance, it feels great (I think at least, I wouldn’t know first hand). Nobody can say shit to you.
But in the meantime, we get to sit around and worry about Oral Roberts.