Coach Dixon, Rick Pitino, Jim Calhoun and Jay Wright would like to thank USF for that upset of Marquette. Not because it opens things wider to win the conference regular season. No, it’s a tremendous object lesson that you never assume a win. All it takes is one bad night.

I actually watched that game (my son fell asleep on my lap so I had nothing else to do). It was a horrible shooting night for Marquette. The Bulls did not do anything different. They didn’t have an incredibly great shooting night. Marquette just had a collectively bad game. Horrible shooting from the perimeter. Shockingly bad free throw shooting — even from good shooters.

So with that happening, you have to believe Pitt will come out and take care of business against DePaul. Regardless of whether they are winless in the conference and may not have Dar Tucker.

“We’re not sure,” DePaul coach Jerry Wainwright said Thursday, “if he will be available.”

DePaul (8-15, 0-10) has lost 10 in a row and 15 of its past 19 games since a 4-0 start.

The news got worse this week when Tucker, averaging a team-high 18.5 points per game, suffered a sprained left ankle when he stepped on a teammate’s foot during the afternoon shootaround before Tuesday’s game with No. 8 Marquette.

Tucker, who scored a game-high 23 points against Pitt last season in a 98-79 Panthers victory, is being replaced in the starting lineup by 6-foot-10 senior center Matija Poscic.

“We’ve been practicing as if (Tucker) is going to play,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said.

Wainwright said his team showed positive signs in the Tucker-less 76-61 loss to Marquette.

Junior guard Will Walker scored a career-high 30 points, and freshman Michael Bizoukas recorded a career-high eight assists, keeping the Blue Demons close most of the game.

Jermaine Dixon is saying the right things about this.

“We’re not going to look past anybody,” junior guard Jermaine Dixon said. “We need every victory we can get. Even though they don’t have any victories in the Big East, they’re going to come out and compete. They’re going to play hard. We know that.

“A lot of their guys go hard. They fought Marquette hard. They took them down to the wire. They made a big comeback. We know they’re going to play hard, but we’ll be ready.”

The game is on ESPN FullCourt, MSG, MASN, and FoxSports Pittsburgh.

Consider this the open thread for the game.

I don’t expect any Pitt player to take home the Wooden Award. Still, it’s nice that Pitt actually has two of the thirty remaining candidates in Sam Young and DeJuan Blair.

There are four teams that have two candidates on the midseason cutdown list: Pitt, UConn (Adrien and Thabeet), Marquette (Matthews and McNeal), UNC (Hansbrough and Lawson).

The Big East placed 1/3 of the players: Young, Blair, Adrien, Thabeet, Matthews, McNeal, Flynn (‘Cuse), Harangody (ND), Monroe (G-town), Williams (L-ville).

Levance Fields is a finalist for the Cousy Award — best point guard. There are 13 D-1 finalists.

Jonny Flynn, Dominic James (Marquette) and A.J. Price (UConn) are the other Big East PG Finalists.

Sam Young also is a finalist for the Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award. There are ten finalists. Sam Young could use some help in the fan vote. And he has more planned in his off-the court community service.

Pitt stayed at #7 in Luke Winn’s SI.com power poll. He notes Ashton Gibbs’ emergence on the perimeter and Jermaine Dixon knocking down 3s of late to make the team more complete on offense.

The ESPN.com power poll has Pitt at #4.