A gritty team and one that won’t be pretty or make it easy.

Pitt isn’t masquerading during the NCAA tournament. The Panthers are who they are: a defensive, rebounding-oriented team that has streaky shooters in Sam Young and Levance Fields and a man in the middle in DeJuan Blair who can play at times well below the rim. The role players are hardly predictable. But, in the end, all that matters is this team is filled with winners.

Then there are the “just lucky.”

This was as lucky a victory for a team as you’ll see in this tournament.

L-U-C-K-Y.

And that word describes the Panthers’ trek through the NCAAs this year. They flirt with danger, play down to the level of their opponent, and then sneak out a win at the end.

Fields defended the Panthers, as you’d expect, and as he should. “If we have to win a game [this way], we’ll take it.”

But can they win the remainder of their games this way?

You kept waiting for the Panthers to turn the Musketeers into the Mouseketeers, but fourth-seeded Xavier shadowed Pittsburgh for much of the contest, which at times was absolutely unwatchable. All that was needed was some mortar and a cement truck and these two teams could have built a brick road to Detroit.

Other than the fact that this is our team — so naturally it can’t be true — the problem with this is you are essentially saying that Pitt has been lucky for 3 straight games. If so, then the flip side is that this must be a “team of destiny.” No. Hardly true either. You cannot legitimately, if you follow sports to any level, believe a team can be “lucky” three straight games. Once. Sure. A bounce a call. Things just work out. Call it luck. After that, it is just the way the team is. Making their own “luck.”

Pitt wasn’t pretty. They are not looking like the same team as they had in the season. No one is arguing that. Just like no one is arguing that they can’t  keep playing so tentatively and poorly in the first half of games. The trend is obvious. Up 3 at the half, to tied, to down 8. The quality of the teams increases and the halftime score reflects it.

They are, though, winning. They are advancing.

What Pitt did do (with a little help from some poor shooting from Xavier) was show that they can still play defense.

The Panthers ratcheted up their defense, pounded the boards, grew tougher as the game progressed and simply wore out their opponent. Yes, Levance Fields came up huge, with a go-ahead 3-pointer and a dagger of a steal-turned-layup. By then, though, it was in part because of the damage that Pitt normally does had been done.

“They pushed us around for the first half,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “But we responded in the second half, as we normally do. And we’re very proud of our guys, how they responded.”

This trend was perceived as a weakness as the Panthers came to Boston. Against East Tennessee State, the No. 16 seed, the Panthers were clutching a 59-57 lead with just 4:27 left. Two days later, they found themselves locked in a 74-74 tie with Oklahoma State with 2:42 showing.

In both cases, the Panthers pulled away late. But the idea was that those teams hanging around proved Pitt to be vulnerable.

The players saw it differently.

“We understand that no game is going to be easy,” Fields said. “Fortunately for us, in some ways, we still haven’t played our best basketball, but our opponents have been playing excellent. … It hasn’t been blowouts, but we’re making plays down the stretch when the game is on the line.”

Yes, this team can make you crazy in the Tournament.

This can’t be the same powerhouse that struck fear in the Big East Conference, the toughest league in America. Maybe I had Pitt pegged all wrong.

Then again, maybe not.

Once again, Pitt was Pitt, the most resilient team in America and a 60-55 winner against Xavier in the East Regional semifinals Thursday night at TD Banknorth Garden.

Keep asking senior forward Sam Young to do too much, and this is what you get: The Panthers doing double-time in the second half and pulling out another amazing victory.

The comeback Panthers keep giving their fans their money’s worth, while nearly pushing exasperated coach Jamie Dixon toward a nervous breakdown.

Trailing by eight points at halftime, the Panthers had another tournament opponent right where they wanted them.

Crazy as it sounds, Pitt plays better from behind.

The Panthers picked up their defense, got more easy baskets in the first few minutes than they did in the opening half and — surprise, surprise — led 40-39 with just over 12 minutes remaining and 46-45 at the 7:15 mark.

Why can’t they play that way more often? Pitt is a No. 1 seed for a reason, but it has played well in flashes rather than stretches during the tournament.

It shouldn’t take being pushed to the edge of the cliff before answering the bell, but that’s been Pitt’s frustrating modus operandi.

If you were on the liveblog, you would have thought Pitt was down 20 at the half and the players had walked off the court with a minute left on the clock and gave up. The frustration, vitriol and venting. Well, I’m guessing the message boards were not that different.

Hopefully tomorrow, the team will indeed put together a full 40 minutes? I’ll settle for about 30 minutes. I like the team’s chances — even against the white hot ‘Nova team — if they can do 30 (as long as 20 of the minutes are in the second half). We will find out if the pressure is really off of them now that they are past the Sweet 16 wall.

“This definitely means a lot,” he said of that whole Elite Eight business. “The players, the coaches, the university and the city have being waiting for it a long time. But, at the same time, we feel like we’ve still got work to do.”

The best thing is Pitt has yet to play its best game in this tournament. It was horrible in the first round against East Tennessee State and, in many respects, lucky to win. It had a bad second-half stretch against Oklahoma State in the second round, blowing all of an 11-point lead and falling behind by 1 before retaking control. And last night, Pitt was — in coach Jamie Dixon’s words — “pushed around” in the first half when Xavier took that eight-point lead.

But the pressure had to have a lot to do with all of that. No team came into the tournament with more pressure because of its wonderful regular-season success, which included making it to No. 1 in the polls for the first time, beating a No. 1 opponent for the first time and getting a No. 1 seed in the NCAAs for the first time. And because of those previous seven years of kicking at the Elite Eight door and ending up with nothing more than a battered and bruised foot.

Pitt was expected to be playing tomorrow for the right to go to Detroit for the Final Four.

Anything less would be considered a failure.

That’s a heavy, heavy burden.

Now that it’s been shed, don’t be surprised if Pitt plays a strong game tomorrow.

If the national stories weren’t about Pitt as a team, it kept coming back to Levance Fields.

Fields was just doing his usual thing. He made a few shots, had a half-dozen assists and looked completely average. With his short, rotund build, he resembles more of the guy you go up against at the local YMCA than the one who has the biggest cojones in college basketball.

After a couple of Young misses, Xavier took a 54-52 lead on Jackson’s drive in the lane. The 5-foot-10, 210-pound (he won’t divulge his actual weight) or so Fields came down and hit the dagger and followed it up with a steal and layup on the next possession to give the Panthers a 57-54 lead with 23.9 seconds remaining.

“They put the ball in my hands and I made a play,” Fields said.

Or as losing coach Sean Miller put it.

“That kind of says it all about a senior point guard,” said Xavier coach Sean Miller.

Miller was actually talking about the play after the three, where Fields came up with the ball when B.J. Raymond was surrounded and lost the handle after Brown forced him out, Blair was behind him and Fields was able to poke it free and take off for the lay-in.

No matter who lost that game, the losing team was going to feel like they blew it. Simply because both teams missed a heck of a lot of shots that they usually make. This very easily could have been Pitt’s lament.

“I feel like we just gave the game away, you know? We worked so hard to get here and we played so hard. And we gave it away in the second half,” junior Derrick Brown said.

“Stuff that we usually do, we didn’t do. Like make layups. Defensive rebounds. It’s just tough to lose this way.”

…

“We just didn’t get it done tonight. The main thing is we missed layups – point blank layups. That was inexcusable,” Raymond said. “I don’t feel like I did my best.”

Oh, and Fields took out a laptop for a sportswriter with one of his errant passes in the game.