The wife came home before 10 am today due to the water main break in downtown Cleveland. It should have freed me up to do plenty of writing. Ha. Instead, she came home and insisted this would allow us to take care of all the other errands that had to be run. Needless to say, my day was shot thanks to her surprise day off.

That’s why I couldn’t get to anything on tonight’s game with Siena.

Siena likes to run and feel that they need to against Pitt.

If the Panthers are guarding the Saints in the half-court on almost every possession, this game won’t be close.

“They have terrific athletes, they have shot blockers, and they play a very high-level of intensity,” McCaffery said. “That’s pretty much all it is. This is nothing complicated. They get after you. When they get over toward the ball, they’re up on the ball. They get in the passing lanes. They pressure it. And if you put it on the deck they contest, and if you drive it to the hole they contest that.”

Opposing teams are shooting just 36.3 percent against Pittsburgh, ranking the Panthers 16th in the country in that statistical category. They allow just 57 points per game.

“They’re going to make you make tough shots,” McCaffery said. “They’re going to make you struggle to make the normal cuts and passes that you like to make. So they’re just going to make it hard for you to score. It’s what we all try to do; they just do it really well.”

Siena has been something of a disappointment early in the season. They returned a veteran team that made the NCAA Tournament and scored an opening round upset.

The Saints’ balanced scoring is led by 6-foot-7 junior Edwin Ubiles at 14.8 ppg. Alex Franklin, a 6-5 junior, is next at 14.1 and 6-3 senior Kenny Hasbrouck adds 13.1. Ryan Rossiter, a 6-9 sophomore, leads the team in rebounding (7.1 rpg).

“They can shoot,” Brown said. “Every player down to the 5-man has the ability to shoot it. That’s what we’ve seen on film. They have no real inside game, except for (Rossiter). They use a lot of screens to kick it out and shoot.”

It will be a strange and considerable challenge for Pitt’s interior defense, including massive center DeJuan Blair, Brown conceded.

“This is going to be a test for DeJuan to play perimeter defense,” he said.

Of course, the Saints have been worse than Pitt at shooting from the perimeter this season. Part of the reason they are only 5-3 so far.

Speaking of 3s, Ashton Gibbs has been hitting his and is trying to get more minutes.

All of the freshmen have seen their minutes scaled back with the return of sophomore guard/forward Gilbert Brown. Dixon said it is up to each of them to earn their minutes in practice.

“The focus with those guys is practice is what decides it,” Dixon said. “That’s where their opportunities are, and they know that. I’ve talked to them. I’ve brought them all in and made it very clear to them what they need to do. They know what will make us successful.”

And that is not necessarily their shooting percentage. It’s the one trait that Pitt is most known for.

“The biggest thing is defense,” Dixon said. “They have to continue to improve defensively. That’s the thing we’ve made very clear to them.”

Should we give a live blog a shot tonight? I think so. The fun will start about 9:30 pm Click Here to participate. A word of advice, give Google’s Chrome browser a shot if you want to play. It performs very well with CIL, nary a crash or seizing up of the computer.