This will be another emotional road game tonight. It’s senior night for Seton Hall. Granted, they have only one senior, but he is a meaningful player.

“I haven’t really thought about it, no,” [Paul] Gause said of reflecting on his time in a Seton Hall uniform. “I’ve just been trying to focus on the next game, and when the season is over, I’ll reflect. But right now, I’m just trying to get as many wins as possible before I get out of here.”

To most teams, the NIT is nothing more than a consolation prize for not making the NCAA Tournament. In Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez’s book, that’s usually what it is. But this season is different. He is realistic in knowing it’s a long shot for the Pirates (15-12, 6-9 Big East) to make a run to March Madness.

Which is why he’s fighting to make the NIT — in part to reward Gause, a player Gonzalez didn’t even recruit.

“Paul Gause was probably — for me — the key guy to inherit for this program,” Gonzalez said. “Paul (will) have his just due (Saturday night). Here’s a kid who’s moved ahead of Shaheen Holloway in terms of career steals. If we play enough games — and that’s another reason why I’m fighting for the NIT — and we can extend Paul Gause’s career, he might be able to catch Danny Callandrillo with the school’s all-time steals record.”

Gause is their best defensive player. He will be harassing Fields tonight.

The Pitt players are saying that they learned something valuable from the loss to Providence.

Sophomore center DeJuan Blair said the biggest key to the game will be matching Seton Hall’s energy level and desperation. That shouldn’t be hard considering the message the Panthers received after the Providence game.

“It was huge wake-up call,” Blair said. “We’re not going to let this one slip away from us. We just have to come in with hunger. We just weren’t Pitt [on Tuesday], and it showed. We just have to take every game like it’s our last. If we do that, we’ll be good.”

Freshman Ashton Gibbs was more blunt and specific about some of the problems.

“I don’t think some guys came to play, including me,” said Pitt guard Ashton Gibbs, who had a career-high 15 points in the game. “We were not as focused as we should have been.”
…
“Jumping to the ball,” said Gibbs, on what the Panthers stressed on defense in practice.

“There were a lot of situations where guys got beat and we didn’t help out. Our rotation was bad. So we stressed jumping to the ball and being down on defense and covering up.”

Yes, you know defense was a big focus this week after letting Providence get so many good looks, and convert them. Seton Hall’s coach is playing up the underdog role.

“They are a great, great team,” Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez said. “It’s probably the worst thing that could possibly happen for us is they lost to Providence on Senior Night in an unbelievable atmosphere. Now, I’m not saying they would have come in and we could beat them anyway, but … to expect them to lose two in a row is probably highly unlikely.”

Seton Hall, which won Wednesday at South Florida, is 0-11 all-time against No. 1 teams.

Seton Hall sophomore guard Jeremy Hazell is the second-leading scorer in the Big East at 22.6 points per game, and junior guard Eugene Harvey is averaging 12.3 points and ranks fifth in the Big East at 4.8 assists per game.

Gonzalez expects his team to play relaxed.

“We have nothing to lose,” he said. “We don’t have enough to probably beat the elite teams, but at the same time, we can hang with almost anybody on a given night.

“There is a lot of unpredictability. There is some excitement when we go into games. If we make shots and our guards play really well, we can cause some problems for people. It’s a fun position to be in.”

All the attention seems to go to the Big Fella, is it hurting Sam Young and Levance Fields?

Pitt’s Levance Fields and Sam Young aren’t getting much Internet support in their bids to win national awards that appear to be more popularity contests than based on actual merit.

Fields, the nation’s leader in assist-to-turnover ratio, ranks 11th out of 19 finalists for the Bob Cousy Award with less than 2 percent of the vote. Among those ahead of Fields is junior Darren Duncan of Division II Merrimack College. Florida State’s Toney Douglas leads the voting, followed by Marquette’s Dominic James, who’s out for the season with a broken foot.

Young, one of 10 finalists for the Lowe’s Senior Class award for excellence on and off the court, has received three percent of the vote. Louisville’s Terrence Williams leads the Internet voting at 31 percent.

If you want to help, here’s the Lowe’s link and here’ the Cousy. I guess, part of the problem is Pitt isn’t doing much in the promotion. Marquette as an example has a direct link on their basketball page. I’m not seeing that for Pitt.

What do you mean Blair gets all the attention?

An interesting concern for the game, will be how well the Prudential Center floor can handle having the ice underneath. The Florida Panthers and New Jersey Devils play at 1pm. I know the technology is far different from years past, but the floor might be a bit slick tonight.