Gilbert Brown has been back playing for about a week. The rust started to shake off of him in the Legends Classic.

“It’s great to have him back,” senior forward Sam Young said. “We need him.”

Brown scored 10 points and matched his career-high with eight rebounds. He shot 4 of 6 from the field and added two assists and a steal in 25 minutes of action.

“He’s a big spark,” center DeJuan Blair said. “He’s our boost guy.”

Brown’s return gives the No. 4 Panthers a versatile sixth-man, shutdown defender and improving rebounder.

Last year he was starting after Mike Cook went down with the ACL injury. This year, he’ll be backing up Sam Young, but he’s fine with it since he knows he’ll be getting minutes.

“I’m playing 20-25 minutes a game,” Brown said. “I’m worried about when I get in there, that I’m contributing to the team.”

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Brown’s versatility means he can play three positions — shooting guard, swing and power forward, in a pinch. Pitt coach Jamie Dixon likes moving starting swingman Sam Young down to the power forward spot (replacing starter Tyrell Biggs) when he brings Brown in the swing because “it’s a little different match up.” Young creates from the perimeter, meaning he can stretch defenses and pull players taller than he out of the interior. He’s also good enough on defense to hold his own underneath.

Brown, meanwhile, is a long, athletic player who can shoot or drive like Young from the swing, where he expects he’ll get most of his minutes.

Brown contends he’s physically healthy — “When I wake up is when I feel the most pain in my foot. As the day progresses and I walk around and get into the shootaround, the pain goes away.” — and mentally stable despite a constant on-again, off-again injury situation. He actually said watching the team helped him learn a few things about playing defense.

Not the most promising thing that he’s still feeling pain. Great that he’s playing through it and says it fades during the day. Bad that there is still pain.

Sam Young keeps getting noticed by those national writers assigned to college basketball (and not just moved over from college football after the season ends). Andy Katz at ESPN.com puts him #2 on top players for the past week.

2. Sam Young, Sr., F, Pitt: The race for Big East Player of the Year will be quite a chase. Young is definitely in the mix. He’s leading the Panthers with 20.2 points a game and is becoming the team’s go-to guy. The senior forward had quite a week with 33 points against Belmont and 24 against Texas Tech in the semifinals of the Legends Classic in Newark, N.J., then capped off his week with a solid 15 points and 8 boards in the title victory over Washington State.

Right now the early race is between Hasheem Thabeet of UConn, Sam Young and Luke Harangody from ND (assuming he can get healthy from pneumonia in a reasonable time period).

I have been in the minority, I think, in believing that Luke Winn at SI.com does not dislike Pitt. I think he is drawn to two things that Pitt has tended to lack: NBA-caliber star players and outstanding tempo-free stats. So that has had him peg Pitt slightly below where it seems they should be.

Winn did predict, even before the season started, that Pitt would win the Legends Classic with ease. It seems he was there to watch the Washington State finale. He jumps on board the bandwagon of loving Sam Young’s shot-fake. He also makes a good point for Pitt’s hopes this year.

2. Pitt can’t afford to let post-trapping teams take DeJuan Blair out of games. The double-teams in Wazzu’s Pack-Line Defense are well-known for frustrating big men — see what happened to Notre Dame’s Luke Harangody in the second round of the last NCAA tournament — but how can’t you get Blair, who came into the game averaging 17.0 points, more than one shot attempt in the first half? With about 6:40 left in the first half, a Pitt fan stood up and yelled at Fields, “Hey Fields! Put the ball in the paint! Give it to the big man!”

It didn’t get much better in the second half: Blair had just one field-goal attempt then, too, as the Cougars continued to collapse on him in the blocks. He found other ways to contribute, grabbing seven-half rebounds (to finish with 10), blocking three shots, and setting high ball-screens to let Fields get in the lane, but still, Pitt needs more than seven points out of Blair to compete with elite teams. The Panthers survived, on Saturday, by getting decent nights out of Young and Fields, and holding the Cougars to just 24.1 percent shooting in the second half. Against a better opponent — particularly one that could create more of its own offense off of penetration, and had a decent perimeter defender to counter Young — the result might not have been the same.

This is wear Blair’s lack of height works against him. He can’t get the ball over defenders then pass out of the double team to open teammates as easily. He has to find lanes to get the ball through.