I’m seriously debating locking myself in a small, dark room with a TV and laptop. If you are more social than that, plenty of other metro areas have places to be with other Pitt alum/fans to watch.

If you are in Boston, it starts early.

Pitt Pep Rally/Pre-game Event
Thursday, March 26 – 4 p.m.
Johnnie’s on the Side
138 Portland Street
Boston, MA

Located just two blocks and an easy walk to TD Banknorth Garden.

With performances by the Pitt Pep Band and Cheerleaders and a special appearance by the Pitt Panther Mascot. Special Panther drink specials and complimentary appetizers (while they last!).

All of the following came from the Pitt alumni calendar:

Tampa/St. Pete’s

Courtside Grille I
110 Fountain Parkway North
St. Petersburg, FL 33716 http://courtsidegrille.com/home.html

Ft. Lauderdale

Miller’s Ale House in Fort Lauderdale
2861 N Federal Hwy
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33306
(954) 565-5747

Lancaster, PA

Trio’s Bar and Grill
3707 Marietta Ave
Columbia, PA 17512
http://www.triobarandgrill.com/

NYC

Village Pourhouse
64 3rd Ave at 11th St. East Village
New York, NY 10003 www.pourhousenyc.com

New Jersey

Fox and Hound English Pub & Grille – Edison
250 Menlo Park Drive Edison, NJ 08837
Phone: (732)452-9100

Hilton Head

One Hot Mama’s American Grille: Hilton Head-Bluffton
7 Greenwood Dr # A
Hilton Head Isle, SC 29928
(843) 682-6262

Washington, DC

Penn Quarter Sports Tavern
639 Indiana Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20004

Atlanta

Hudson Grille – Perimeter Mall
4400 Ashford-Dunwoody Rd.
Atlanta, GA 30346

Chicago

Gamekeepers Travern & Grill
345 W. Armitage
Chicago, IL www.gamekeeperschicago.com

Austin, TX

Fast Eddie’s Round Rock
100 Parker Dr
Austin, TX 78728
512-248-0646

Denver

Choppers Sports Grill
80 S Madison St.
Denver, CO 80209-3002
303-399-4448

Palo Alto, CA

The Old Pro Sports Bar
541 Ramona Street
Palo Alto, CA
650-326-1446

Santa Monica, CA

Yankee Doodles
1410 3rd Street Promenade
Santa Monica, CA
www.yankeedoodles.com

San Francisco

Giordano Brothers
303 Columbus Ave
San Francisco, CA
415-397-2767

If there are any other gatherings. Missed or impromptu, be sure to leave them in the comments below

Cleveland (thanks Pauly P, one of these times I’ll get down to join the crowd)

Bob Golic’s Sports Bar
1213 West 6th (corner with W. Lakeside, Warehouse District)

Some more onsite reports from the open practice.  Rush the Court, has some photos and observations.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. The East Region open practice might have been the most boring 5 hours of my life (not counting lectures). There’s a reason the NCAA makes this event free (outside of the fact that they more than make up for it through the $8 programs, $5 Cokes, and $23 baseball caps). The crowd was 95% white males in their mid-30s or above along with a handful of kids chasing autographs from players who they were looking up during the practices checking to see which ones had the best stats. My favorites were the old guys sitting behind me who kept on commenting on how good Gary McGhee and Brian Zoubek were (the tallest guys on the court) and what outstanding pros they were going to be.

Bill Raftery and Verne Lundquist were on hand to talk to each of the head coaches ahead of the games. No surprise that it was noted that they barely spoke with Coach Jamie Dixon. They just saw and spoke with him the prior weekend in Dayton (to say nothing of the fact that Raftery has called probably a half-dozen or so of Pitt’s games this year). Little has changed. The other 3 coaches played in other locations.

The Panthers seemed to be the loosest of the 4 teams. Despite being in drills, they were constantly playing around with DeJuan Blair,  Sam Young, and Levance Fields being the ring leaders.

Only Duke seemed to be going hard in the 50 minute practice sessions. So, it doesn’t seem like much can be read into these.

Nice article with Mike Rice (Robert Morris HC, ex-Pitt assistant) and Ron Everhart (Duquesne HC, A-10 member) talking about tonight’s game with Xavier and Pitt.

Both give the clear match-up advantage at point guard to Pitt, and at least imply that will be the difference. Rice also notes that there isn’t a significant talent differential. Pitt may have the stars, but the Xavier players are pretty damn good.

The Pitt players swear they are focusing on the game at hand.

Said Blair: “We’re not looking ahead. I’m not letting anybody look ahead.”

They know the dangers. Some of the Pitt players admitted they got caught peeking at top-seed Memphis last season.

“Not this year,” Panthers sophomore Gilbert Brown said.

The Pitt players are saying the right thing about facing their opponent.

Pitt seniors Tyrell Biggs and Levance Fields have been impressed with the Musketeers’ ability to rebound when they have watched their games in recent days.

“They’re really tall at every position,” Fields said. “So we’ve got to do a great job of boxing them out and not giving them second-chance opportunities.”

“They’re very athletic,” Biggs said. “That’s the one thing that jumps out at me. They have a bunch of guys who can really jump.”

Xavier is confident and one of the thing they stress, is their depth.

“That’s part of our success this year,” said junior forward Derrick Brown. “It’s not just sticking with five or six players. We’re a very deep team. That’s why on any given night different players step up. It’s not always one player averaging 25 points or anything like that because this is a team. We’ve got young players and different players in different roles and I think that’s why our program continues to be successful, because the experienced people get used in all different situations.”

Xavier comes into the game with a 27-7 record and solid wins over Portland State and Wisconsin in first- and second-round games last weekend in Boise, Idaho.

Brown has been a key factor, averaging 13.7 points and 6.0 rebounds a game. The core group includes senior forward C.J. Anderson (10.0 ppg, 5.4 rpg), junior center Jason Love (6.9 ppg), and guard B.J. Raymond, who leads the team with a 14.1-point average.

Miller, who is coaching against his alma mater, says the overall depth wears people down. “It is a big factor for us,” he said. “We have nine players. We try to have different players step up on different nights. We really are a team in every sense of the word and have a lot of different players who can beat you.”

Here’s the one thing about their depth. It is there, but it isn’t used right now. It’s the Tournament. Rotations shrink. While they didn’t have a hard time with Portland State, to allow them to play four bench players 11 minutes or more. The Wisconsin game was  a bit different. While they had 3 bench players with 18 minutes, he major reason was that starting center-forward Jason Love could only play 16 minutes with major foul problems.

You play your best players. Period. So will they throw some more players inside to absorb fouls against Blair? Certainly. But if they are getting burned at both ends, that won’t last. The multiple bodies weren’t enough to keep Love out of trouble.

As expected, the Sean Miller faces the team where he played is a popular theme. He acknowledges, but keeps trying to bring it back to Xavier.

“Yeah, I’ve watched them with a lot of pride over the last 8 years, as much as from a coach’s perspective, from the fact I once went there, and even the amazing job they’ve done, from Ben Howland and transforming their program from Fitzgerald Field House to the new arena,” Miller said.

“And watching Jamie Dixon take over and just the consistent success that they’ve had in the Big East Conference speaks for itself. And a lot of the things their program has become known for we, too, try to take great pride in what we do at Xavier.”

Pitt’s longtime trainer, Tony Salesi, is still close to Miller. As, apparently, are many of his old teammates who seem to feel they can root for their school and their friend/teammate.

“It is emotional,” Martin said. “It’s our alma mater. We had a lot of wins there. I love Pitt, but my heart is with Sean. That’s my man. I’m going to have my Xavier shirt on.”

Porter, who also has close ties to Pitt center DeJuan Blair, said he will be happy one way or the other tonight.

“I’ve spent a lot of years with Sean,” Porter said. “We were roommates and close friends. You always want your friends to do well. I’m in a no-lose situation. It’s either going to be Sean or DeJuan playing in the Elite Eight for the right to go to the Final Four.”

Andy Katz at ESPN.com says the pressure in this game is all on Pitt.

“We’ve just got to get back to the basics and it starts with defense,” Fields said. “The offense will come but we’ve got to outrebound teams and cut down on turnovers and we did that in the second round.”

The Panthers know they’re close. The three seniors — Fields, Sam Young and Tyrell Biggs — know this team is built for a six-game run to the title. This is easily Jamie Dixon’s best shot to win a national title in his six-year tenure at Pitt.

“It’s right there,” Fields said of getting to the Final Four. “But we’ve got to take care of phase three first.”

That’s Xavier. The Musketeers are in their second straight Sweet 16. They don’t have the pressure to win. Reaching the Elite Eight for the third time since 2004 would be quite remarkable. Xavier lost to UCLA in the West regional a year ago in the regional final. But like last season, and now this one, the X can play freely. Pitt cannot.

Oh, hey,  now we have a Sam Young story. All three get at least some attention.

Stories of Young’s devotion to his craft are legendary around Pitt. People talk about the nights he slept on an air mattress in the gym after hours of shooting alone, or how he would blow off social gatherings on weekends to find a pickup game on campus. That tunnel vision didn’t just begin in college, either.

“This is a guy who’d be at school at 6:30 in the morning working out or at the gym,” said close friend Chris Howard, Young’s teammate at Friendly High School and now a guard at South Florida. “When he was at Hargrave [Military Academy], there’d be times we’d call each other and be on speakerphone while we were doing push-ups.

“He’s not one of those guys you’re going to see in the club. Sometimes he’ll call me and say he’s going to movies, and I’ll joke around and say, ‘Who are you going with? Who’s the girl?’ And he’ll say, ‘I’m going by myself.’ That’s the kind of focus you’ve got to have until you get to the place you want to be.”

The aim of his focus wasn’t always clear to others. Pitt keeps rebounding statistics in practice, and Lombardi said Young easily could have led the team in that stat every single day with his leaping ability and strength. But whole practices would go by when he wouldn’t even try to grab a rebound, so intent was he on proving he was not just a post player.

Then there’s the head fake. Few college players are associated with a signature move as Young is. He’ll rise up almost halfway into his shooting motion, often even lifting one foot off the ground. Defenders will fly out to contest the outside shot, only to watch Young glide by for a short jumper or a dunk.

Big East opponents have bitten on this deception for years. Oklahoma State’s players, who had to have “stay home Young’s head fake” highlighted and underlined at the top line of their scouting report, still fell for it repeatedly Sunday.

And according to the story, Coach Dixon tried to break his head fake in favor of a more conservative manner. Interesting. Otherwise, it’s mostly a review of a lot of his background/history we’ve read before.

Okay, there is no shortage of articles relating to Pitt. I’m skipping all the capsules that every newspaper does.  I think we get it with the base stats on each team.

It’s a big game, with a few days building behind it. So, there are plenty of stories on DeJuan Blair. The New York Times focused on his rump — an amusing and decent piece.

But Blair’s game has more nuance to it than simply rocking his hips and pushing people out of the way. The Pittsburgh associate head coach Tom Herrion marvels at how Blair uses his rear end to create angles, something he said took more than physical strength.

“What’s amazing about him is how subtle and legal he plays with that,” Herrion said. “He’s not a brute player. It’s all subtle. His feel and his instincts allow him to take advantage of his body.”

The maestro of properly using one’s backside is Barkley, who earned the nickname the Round Mound of Rebound and angled his way into a Hall of Fame career. In a 1984 Sports Illustrated article, the 6-4 Barkley articulated why he had success against taller centers like 6-11 Melvin Turpin.

“It’s easier for me to get low,” he said. “I can put my butt on Melvin’s legs, but Melvin can only put his legs on my butt.”

Blair puts it this way: “It’s hard to get around my wide body. Why not push people out of the way with it?”

Ron Cook apparently wasn’t expecting much since Blair wasn’t too talkative on the subject

As a companion, this Wall Street Journal article on the return of the big man in college is well worth reading. The focus is mainly on Blake Griffin, but it is interesting and provides a quick little history lesson on their lessoning impact.

There’s also a couple stories from the Boston papers. One trying to look forward.

Asked if a trip to the White House to meet with the president gave him any added motivation to want to win it all, Blair perked up. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be cool,” he said. Then, turning serious, he added, “I’m not worried about that right now. We’re in Boston right now, we’re not in Detroit. When we get to Detroit, we can talk up a storm about that.”

The only thing on Blair’s mind yesterday was getting past Xavier tonight.

“Xavier is a tall and athletic team,” he said. “They like to play and they like to run and they have an excellent rebounding team, so it’s going to be a little challenge for me. But I’m just going to try to do what I can do.”

The other just recapping his story.

“He’s a very unique player,” said Xavier coach Sean Miller, a former standout point guard at Pitt. “He reminds me of a guy I played with, Jerome Lane, and Jerome led the nation in rebounding. And DeJuan is right there.”

While his body type and game frequently draw comparisons to Lane, as well as players such as Karl Malone, Blair shrugs them off like so many opponents who battle him inside.

“I’m just trying to be me,” Blair said. “That’s all I am.”

The similarities are not lost on Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon, who sees certain qualities that allow such players to make up for their lack of height inside.

“Oftentimes you have to have soft hands and good feet,” Dixon said. “If you have a combination of those things, you can have success. He’s got all those attributes, I think, so that’s what he builds around and plays around.”

The players are trying to stay loose as the game looms.

In winning their first two tournament games, Blair and the Panthers settled down and allowed their talent to take over. They started playing more and thinking less, putting them in the right frame of mind for tonight’s game against a dangerous Xavier team coached by former Pitt standout Sean Miller.

“You want to have fun, especially with this being our last go-round,” point guard Levance Fields said of himself and fellow seniors Sam Young and Tyrell Biggs. “You try to have fun, but at the same time, we want to be as focused as possible.

“As the (second-round) game (against Oklahoma State) went on, we loosened up, got a little bit more excited and played better.”

…

“You want balance,” said Fields, who’s 82-16 as a starter at Pitt. “You want to be determined but also a little loosey-goosey. You don’t want everybody to be uptight and feel the pressure’s on.”

The only other Pitt player to get feature stories is Levance Fields. Seems to be the focus on NYC point guards thing. I always wonder if it is some sort of hive thing with media. It’s one thing when it is a pool of local beat writers but this is a bit different.

Pitt will survive or burn out with The General.

That’s the sometime nickname of Levance Fields, Pitt’s senior point guard and the most important player in the Panthers’ universe. The stocky 5-10 guy from Brooklyn, from legendary Xaverian High School and from the long list of big-time New York City point guards, is the one who runs the show for the top-seeded Panthers, the one who will be staring down Xavier tonight at the TD Banknorth Center.

Just ask him.

“DeJuan, Sam, those guys are our two horses, our stars,” Fields said. “When the game’s on the line, I’m going to have the ball. The biggest thing for us is confidence. I feel confident when I have the ball and I want to take that last shot. And my teammates and coaches feel the same way. They want me to have the ball.”

If you feel a bit put off by Fields’ bravado, well, two things: He’s from Brooklyn, so he doesn’t care; and he’s got a pretty solid resume to back those words up.

Just look back to Sunday in Dayton. Oklahoma State was throwing all it had at Pitt, hitting shots from all over the court. Down by a point with 3:30 to play, Fields turned it up a notch.

He drove and kicked out to Young for the go-ahead three-pointer. Next trip down, a putback by Fields. Next one, a Fields three. Game over.

Okay, that was a NYC area paper. So it is almost standard to bring in the local hook. But a New Hampshire paper with this?

“People brush him off because he doesn’t pass the eye test,” Pitt assistant coach Tom Herrion said from his team’s locker room at TD Banknorth Garden yesterday. “His appearance isn’t the fittest, but yet he’s the toughest. He’s a big shot taker, a big shot maker. He’s a winner. Hopefully he can keep that going in the next couple weeks.”

So where does Fields belong? At this point, he deserves to be mentioned among the Big Apple’s success stories. The 21-year-old, a three-time finalist for the Bob Cousy Award, given each year to the nation’s best point guard, has spent his four seasons at Pitt maximizing his talent.

“You can make the argument that he does as good a job playing that position as anyone out there,” said Xavier coach Sean Miller, himself a former all-star point guard at Pitt.

If you’re an unaffiliated basketball junkie searching for someone to root for during tonight’s NCAA East regional matchup (7:27 p.m., CBS) between No. 1 Pitt (30-4) and No. 4 Xavier (27-7), look no further than Fields. Sure, 6-7, 265-pound DeJuan Blair is the star (he looks like he could be the long lost son of former Michigan star Robert “Tractor” Traylor), but Fields runs the show.

“He’s the leader out there,” said Holloway, a 6-foot guard averaging 5.7 points per game for the Musketeers. “If you watch Pittsburgh, and you take him off the team, you can see that they’d be a lot different.”

Sam Young gets snubbed on the stories. Hopefully he’s got some more motivation then.

More in a bit.

On the topic of regional SI covers. In addition to Pitt there were: Gonzaga, UNC, ‘Cuse, MSU, and Oklahoma,

We’ve been warned that tomorrow will provide plenty of old-Pitt player stuff.

Jason Matthews and Darelle Porter are flying in from Pittsburgh. Bobby Martin, a personal trainer to college and professional athletes, lives in Boston.

Of course, Sean Miller wanted to go to UNC (thank you Roy Williams).

Miller, though, is only talking about the game.

“For us, I think where it really starts and stops is to be physical ourselves, to not allow them to dominate the glass. I don’t think they nearly get enough credit for being a great offensive team. Their transition – they get dunks and easy baskets that break your backs,” Miller said in Wednesday’s press conference. “We have to be rock solid in our transition defense and rebounding, two things that we’ve been very good at this season. And for us to have a hope, I believe, of advancing or beating them at the end of the game, you’d have to see us do a great job in those two areas.”

There was an additional note of Pitt looking rather loose at the open practice today.

Xavier players had no shortage of confidence during their 50-minute walk-through practice or press conferences. But Pitt had more. Panthers players laughed and joked around during their practice session. Some, like Fields, abandoned the team shoot-around in the final minutes to sign autographs.

Something our own correspondent, Brian mentioned.

A columnist doubting Pitt’s mental toughness.

To me, it’s more than tactics. The Panthers have yet to fully demonstrate the kind of mental toughness in the tournament that allowed them to do so well in the Big East. If they had there wouldn’t have been two close calls against inferior competition.

He’ll only be satisfied judging by his final statement if Pitt wins in a blowout. Whatever.

Since that brings us back to that whole matter of breaking through the Sweet Sixteen, there is this story from Bob Ryan.

There is great local pressure on this team because the recent success has made it the equivalent of a pro franchise in a city lacking NBA basketball. The Panthers have sold out every game in the 12,508-seat Petersen Events Center since it opened in 2002 (and where they are 99-10) and they have developed a rabid following that far transcends Pitt alumni.

This is the best team in Pitt history and this is the Last Chance Saloon for Messrs. Young and Fields, two high-quality seniors.

Pitt has done all this to itself by raising the bar so very high. Duke, Villanova, and Xavier can afford to fall short. They are all playing with house money here. But the Pitt Panthers must understand that if they do not at least make it to the Final Four, there is a question they will be hearing all spring, summer, and perhaps for the rest of their lives.

“Hey! What happened?”

I really don’t want to have to answer that question.

There still seems to be plenty that think Pitt can make the Final Four, or at least people aren’t moving from their picks before the Tournament started.

Here’s a sort of vague, three reasons why each team will win bit.

2. The Three Musketeers. Xavier is hard to shut down — and even harder to catch on a significant off night — because it doesn’t rely on any one player to carry the offense. B.J. Raymond, Derrick Brown and C.J. Anderson all average double-digit points and are all equally capable of leading the offense if one teammate is struggling. Nine different players scored in the Musketeers’ first-round victory over Portland State, with Anderson leading the way at 14. Brown, Raymond and Dante Jackson all scored 13.

3. Crashing the boards. Pittsburgh’s best offense is sometimes simply throwing a shot up and letting rebounding machine DeJuan Blair collect his millions. That strategy might not work against Xavier because the Musketeers are even better at splitting rebounding duties than they are with balancing the scoring. Xavier enjoys a plus-7.9 advantage on the glass and boasts seven players averaging between 3.5 and 6.0 rebounds per game.

A group of three that can lead the offense, a team with experience and they rebound. No wonder the Pitt players see similarities.

Pitt’s 6-foot-7, 265-pound DeJuan Blair will encounter 6-9, 255 Jason Love in the middle; the Panthers’ Tyrell Biggs (6-8, 250) and Xavier’s Derrick Brown (6-8, 277)possess similar outside shooting skills; and Pitt’s wing scorer, Sam Young, who goes 6-6, 220, will face C.J. Anderson, who measures precisely the same.

But in the backcourt, it’s a much different story: Xavier possesses B.J. Raymond and Dante Jackson, who stand 6-6 and 6-5, while Pitt’s Levance Fields is only 5-10 and Jermaine Dixon is 6-3. But, Jackson is not the ballhander that Fields is, and Raymond isn’t the threat from long range that Dixon is.

Of course, the hope is that Fields is feeling even better and that the Oklahoma State game was only the start of his return to form from in the regular season.

If anyone doubts Sam Young’s importance, just take note of how his minutes are way up as the season got to the end.

Young’s workload is increasing in March. After playing 35 minutes or more only three times in Pitt’s first 27 games, the second-team All-America has averaged 37 minutes in the past seven games. Young is relishing the extra work, posting 29-, 31- and 32-point games in that stretch. “As we’re going on, I think a little less rest is probably a possibility,” Dixon said.

He played all 40 minutes on Sunday.

Ashton Gibbs gets a full puff piece.

A solid upbringing produced a self-assured young man who carries a 3.3 grade-point average as a communications major. Gibbs’ work ethic was instilled by his father, Temple, who played college football — this is not a misprint — at Temple, where he roomed with future NFL Pro Bowl cornerback Kevin Ross.

“I learned at an early age that working hard is vital if you want to be good at anything,” said Temple Gibbs, an electrical contractor whose football career was cut short by a knee injury.

Bob Farrell, basketball coach at Seton Hall Prep in West Orange, N.J., said Gibbs might be the best shooter he’s had in 32 years on the job.

And Jermaine Dixon had his own backstory fleshed out.

Not long ago, Pitt guard Jermaine Dixon was Jermaine Cooper. That’s when he finally decided to disown the Cooper name the way his father disowned him all those years ago. It’s what his half brothers, Phil and Juan Dixon, wanted. It’s what their mother, Juanita Dixon, would have wanted.

Jermaine Dixon still talks fondly of his mom, who died of AIDS in 1994 when he was 7. “Even though she had [heroin] problems, she was a great mother. She always made sure we were good.”

There isn’t much nice for Dixon to say about his father, Robert Cooper. He bailed when Dixon was a baby.

“I wonder about him sometimes,” Dixon said. “I wonder what he’s thinking now. I wonder what he thinks when he turns on the TV and sees me.”

Don’t think too much about him. He is not worth it.

It’s hard to have a jinx when they do a slew of these by market.

Courtesy of Sports Illustrated

It is very dangerous out there in the world of recruiting. UConn in a bit of trouble it would appear on its face.

The University of Connecticut violated NCAA rules in the recruitment of former guard Nate Miles, a six-month investigation by Yahoo! Sports has found.

Miles was provided with lodging, transportation, restaurant meals and representation by Josh Nochimson – a professional sports agent and former UConn student manager – between 2006 and 2008, according to multiple sources. As a representative of UConn’s athletic interests, NCAA rules barred Nochimson from having contact with Miles or from providing him with anything of value.

A UConn assistant coach said he made Nochimson aware of the Huskies’ recruitment of Miles. Later, the assistant coach said he knew that Nochimson and Miles had talked.

Nate Miles never played a game for UConn. He was kicked out of the school this past fall when he violated a restraining order against a female student. He’s now at the College of Southern Idaho, a junior college.

How much trouble UConn could actually be in and when anything could happen, is still a big question mark. Hell, USC is still cruising along a year after the revelations regarding O.J. Mayo and his time in LA.

Still, I am betting that somewhere in Maryland, Gary Williams will hear about this and just smile.

Least of all, Sean Miller.

“In terms of this NCAA Tournament, the focus is really on our players and our team, for us to be back in the Sweet 16,” Miller said. “That’s the story of this game. That’s really where the focus should be.”

But Miller, who starred at Blackhawk under his father John Miller and was recruited to Pitt by John Calipari, admitted he will never forget his days in Oakland.

“I had a great experience,” he said. “I was treated like you would want to be treated. The friendships that I have today, so many of my close friends really stem from that four-and five-year experience there.”

Then he turned the attention back to his Atlantic 10 regular-season champion.

“And it really stops there as well,” he said.

Ah, would that it were that simple. If it were, everytime a job on the west coast opened up, Coach Jamie Dixon’s name wouldn’t be bandied about. This is a storyline. A dramatic point to pound at until fingers are bloodied because no one can really hit the nail when no one wants to talk about it.

While the Panthers are the top seeds in the East, facing No. 1 seeds is nothing new to Xavier. This is the third straight year that the Musketeers have faced the top seed in the tournament.

“We’re just looking at it as a great opportunity to make another big stamp on our season and the program,” senior C.J. Anderson said.

“Everyone has seen a lot of Pitt and is familiar with the players and their program.” Anderson added.

For the record they lost both of those prior meetings with a #1 seed.

Coach Dixon figured he’d speak to a Big East coach in Cinci coach Mick Cronin about Xavier. He’s expecting a good game.

“It’s going to be a great game,” Cronin said. “I really think Xavier matches up well. They’re physical, they rebound and they defend. A lower-scoring game is going to favor Xavier.”

…

From Cronin’s vantage point, the Musketeers’ strength is their defense, which he calls the best he’s seen from an XU team under Sean Miller.

“They’re very consistent with their defense,” Cronin said. “They’re athletic. They have size and strength, and their depth allows them to keep fresh bodies on the floor and helps them maintain their defensive intensity.”

…

Of the three, Blair, the Big East co-player of the year, presents the most difficult matchup.

“He’s relentless,” Cronin said. “There’s no other way to describe it. It’s hard to keep him down for 40 minutes. When the game is on the line he’ll find a way against four guys to grab the ball and put it in.”

One thing in the Musketeers’ favor, Cronin said, is that they have 10 fouls to give in 6-foot-9, 255-pound Jason Love and 7-foot, 265-pound Kenny Frease.

And Cronin believes that XU is strong enough up front to hold its own on the boards against the Panthers.

“I think this is the best rebounding team Xavier has had in a long time,” Cronin said. “That’s how they beat us. That’s an area where they can definitely compete with Pittsburgh. That’s important because Pitt has had games where they don’t shoot the ball well but they dominate you on the glass.”

He also thinks their guard-foward B.J. Raymond is going to have to have a big game for Xavier to win.

Of course, Sean Miller has an A-10 coach that is quite familiar with Pitt in Duquesne’s Ron Everhart. Unlike Cronin who feels a low scoring game favors Xavier, Everhart feels differently.

“If they can make it an up-and-down game and force Pitt to constantly play transition defense, it’s the only time (Pitt center DeJuan) Blair and any of their guys are vulnerable,” Everhart said Tuesday. “The more possessions they have, there will be more fouls called, more trips to the line, more action — more chance to get a team that relies heavily on four to five guys into foul trouble.”

Everhart, one of four coaches to oppose both teams this season and the only one of that group to beat either, is convinced Xavier’s size, shot-blocking ability and outside shooting could prove troublesome to Pitt.

…

“Xavier might have an edge in depth on Pitt, but it doesn’t have an experienced senior point guard who has played through four NCAA tournaments like Levance Fields,” Everhart said. “He distributes the ball and gets guys shots, and teams that traditionally win national championships are built like Pitt. They have multiple seniors, one of whom is a point guard, and they know how to win close games.”

Then he said this about getting to coach against your alma mater.

Everhart coached last week against his own alma mater, Virginia Tech, in the NIT, and he believes there is something about going against your own school that can’t be quantified or analyzed.

“Maybe you prepare with a little more intensity, you’re sharper and more organized — you want your guys to be prepared to play your alma mater,” Everhart said. “For whatever reason, it does mean something. But Jamie (Dixon, Pitt’s coach) always has his guys ready to play, and I’m sure he’ll coach this week with a little bit of an edge, too.”

For the record, Duquesne lost to VT in OT. I could live with that as Xavier and Miller’s fate.

So what do we have. A coach that favors slow, plodding games things such a thing favors Xavier. Another coach that likes up-tempo sees that as helping Xavier. Thanks guys. Glad the two of you could help clear that up.

It isn’t surprising, though, that Pitt is favored and most are picking Pitt for this game. Of course, the Pitt players swear they are focused on just the game in front of them and getting past that barrier.

Pitt, which has never beaten higher than a No. 6 seed in the NCAA tournament the past seven seasons, has been ranked at the top of the polls and is one of the favorites to win the national championship, but the Panthers know all too well how those dreams can die well before the Final Four. Pitt players are determined that the Sweet 16 won’t be another Groundhog’s Day for the program.

“All we’re focused on is the next opponent,” senior forward Sam Young said. “That’s the only thing on everyone’s mind. We’re not saying we’re going to get to a Final Four or win a national championship. We have learned from that.

“When I hear someone talking about the Final Four I stop them right there. We have to worry about the Sweet 16. We can’t worry about any other game. We have to worry about today’s game. If we don’t pay attention to who we’re playing now we might be watching the Final Four.”

The concern these days is not the offense, but the defense is not what it has been. But, it is not dead, yet.

But recent numbers — Sunday’s first half notwithstanding — point to a resurgence in Pitt’s perimeter defense. In the Panthers’ final regular-season game, Connecticut shot just 4 of 14 from 3-point range (28.6 percent). West Virginia duplicated that number in the Big East Tournament. Last Friday, East Tennessee State put a scare into the Panthers in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, but not from the arc; the Buccaneers were just 4 of 22 (18.2 percent) from the perimeter.

And in the second half Sunday, Oklahoma State was 2 of 12 (16.7 percent).

“In the second half, though, we were getting out with our hands up,” Brown said.

Take out the Cowboys’ first half, and opponents are shooting a mere 14 of 62 (22.5 percent) from 3-point range. Overall field goal percentage during that span, again subtracting the 17-of-27 performance of Oklahoma State in Sunday’s first half, is an impressive 36.3 percent (78 of 215), about 5 percent lower than opponents shot over the season.

Maybe the new anomaly was Sunday’s first half.

“I felt like we were playing (defense) pretty good in the first half,” Wanamaker said, “but in the second half we really contested their shots.”

Hot shooting hurt as well.

I’m going to make a prediction about the game. I expect something good from Brad Wanamaker. I know he’s had some bad games in recent weeks. I’m of the opinion that he has made great progress, but is at his worst when playing against teams that press on defense. His court vision and ball handling is just not there to handle defenders in too tight. He dribbles too far away from his body too often because he is looking to keep the option of driving to the basket available. It means having to corral the ball when trying to pull up for a shot or stopping the dribble.  I think against a team like Xavier that does play more of a half-court game, Wanamker will have some space and will be able to do some good things.

With five teams from the Big East in the Sweet Sixteen, this seems like an ideal time to engage in a little premature Big East triumphalism. Especially after having to endure the past year of Big East football (and having to hear nothing but ess-eee-seee arrogance).

It’s a full slate of Big East bloggers representing the teams in the Sweet Sixteen to discuss this coming week. Laugh at the lesser conferences and poop on the hopes of others.

The participants include:

Mike Rutherford operator of the Card Chronicle, who is feeling a lot better about getting a haircut this time.

Sean Keeley who directs Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician (Syracuse) and knows who Devendorf has on speed dial.

Andrew Porter from UConnBlog will be explaining the magic of Jim Calhoun’s hospital visits.

Chris of I Bleed Blue and White (Villanova) who will be taking time away from stalking the Wildcats.

Come on by at about 9pm tonight. We will discuss some of the match-ups. What we are looking for in the games. Is there still cross-support amidst the Big East programs or simple hate? And plenty of other things.

I’ll be moderating, and if time allows we will take some questions. The liveblog can be found when you Click Here

Awesome. CBS is sending Bill Raftery and Verne Lundquist up to Boston to continue stalking Pitt.

The truly obsessed and early arrivers can go watch Pitt practice on Wednesday from 2:10 – 3 pm at the TD Banknorth Garden. Xavier practices at noon.

For those who wish to make the argument or ask why other teams that struggled in the first or second round do not seem to be getting the same level of grief that Pitt has gotten. It is not some perceived disrespect. It is because Pitt struggled in both rounds.

The other teams in the Sweet Sixteen that were expected to contend for a national championship and did not blow out opponents in both games: Louisville, Michigan State, Memphis, Villanova, Duke and Oklahoma. They only had struggles in one game. You can argue fair or not. And I know that most Pitt fans feared the potential  Oklahoma State match-up far more than the Tennessee one because of the press and 4-guards. That just comes off as trying to justify and make excuses.

It’s unimportant. Pitt is in the Sweet Sixteen. It would have been nice to have done it with less drama, but teams that looked stronger than expected in the first round like Dayton, Maryland, Texas A&M, Wisconsin and UCLA are no longer playing.

All that matters is winning and moving on. Pitt has done that after the first weekend.

If you saw the first half of this game, you witnessed some amazing shooting from both teams. Of course if you wanted to see that glass as half-empty, I guess you could have called it poor defense–Bill Raftery quipped that both coaches must have signed a non-aggression pact. All during that time, however, the Panthers were also collecting offensive boards in bulk. They’ve been known to do that on occasion. The hero for Jamie Dixon’s team was Sam Young, who not only scored 32 points but also snagged five offensive boards. (He even recorded three blocks.) Right now Xavier coach Sean Miller is printing up T-shirts for his team: “Don’t Go for Young’s Shot Fake.”

Heck, right now, Pitt may be the heavy favorite to win on Thursday, but it is Villanova people love. Just like others are falling over themselves to jump back on the UConn bandwagon in the West bracket. It’s a weekend of perception. Lingering impressions of domination will do that.

Those who didn’t look closely, only took note of Sam Young’s awesome 32-point showing.

“I was hot,” said Young, who was 9-for-12 from the floor, including 3-for-6 on three-pointers, in the first half. “I felt like I’d be more aggressive.”

Pitt finally got OSU to cool off in the second half, limiting the Cowboys to 33.3-percent shooting. And although others may find fault with the Panthers’ performance in Dayton, don’t count Dixon among them.

“We had to find a way to beat a very good team on a good night, and we did,” Dixon said. “And we did it with rebounding and our toughness, and the defense really stepped up in the second half.”

And there is no question that Young was the headline for the game. He deserves a lot of love. When Sam Young is in a groove, he can take over a game and the offense really can fly.

What is important for the next game, though, is how Levance Fields looked.

2. Levance Fields has regained his pre-Big East tournament groove. Since injuring himself on Mar. 7 against Connecticut, the senior point has scored just six points in each of two games. But on Sunday, he went for 13 (three more than his season average) and added nine assists.

More importantly, he says he’s back to 100 percent health. He even indulged reporters after the game by running down a checklist of potential injuries that might be — but aren’t — bothering him. The finger he jammed seconds before the first half ended against OSU? “Aw, that’s nothing,” he said. Proof of that: he came back on the following possession to drain a three-pointer with three seconds left. He also went unaffected by a mid-court collision with Moses. (More on that later.) “And the other injury,” he joked afterward, meaning the groin tweak that’s been nagging him. “Nope. Not affecting me.”

Oh, and this is great.

From courtside, Fields’ second half collision with [Marshall] Moses looked a little fishy, particularly when Young leaned to the downed point guard’s level, whispered something, and came away smiling.

Afterward, Fields revealed how the exchange had gone. “[Sam] said, ‘You’re playing it up, right?’ ‘Yeah,’ I said. I was playing it up.” He added, “Someone probably should have warned me about that [pick]. Thank goodness I’m not the smallest guy in the league.”

Heh. Probably not as funny in Stillwater.

Coach Dixon acknowledged the importance of the game forFields.

Dixon said he just now is getting healthy again. “He didn’t practice for two weeks. He just started practicing again last week. Practice is important …

“This was a big game for Levance. He needed this, needed it for his confidence. We’re a different team when he plays like that.”

Fields had nine assists and just two turnovers. He set up Young for a 3-pointer that gave Pitt a 74-72 lead, then made a layup and a killer 3 to make the score 79-74.

“My coaches and teammates really believe in me and want me to have the ball with the game on the line,” Fields said. “There’s no greater feeling than knowing that. “

Of course, some people can only watch the game and think how next year those players won’t be there (sigh).

You know one of the nice things about heading to Boston for the regional? It means an old school hoop-head sportswriter in Bob Ryan is right there. He may be a general sports columnist, but his love has always been for basketball. He was in Dayton watching Pitt.

And then there’s Fields, a senior who’s on his last Panther roundup. He knows what the stakes are, too. But it’s been a long, tough road for the tank of a point guard, what with two injuries and a lot of frustrating recent moments on the floor.

With his team trailing by 1, he got into the lane and whipped a pass to his left to fellow senior Sam Young, who had kept the Panthers afloat in a wildly exciting first half (49-49) with 23 of his 32 points. Young drilled his fourth 3-pointer of the game.

A Marshall Moses follow-up tied it at 74 for the Cowboys. Fields has been battling a pulled groin, and he only had gone to the hoop with authority perhaps twice since arriving in Dayton. But now he decided the time had come and off he went, slicing in for a pretty lefty layup, plus free throw (which he missed). But Pitt never would trail again.

Oklahoma State’s James Anderson missed a three. On the ensuing Pitt possession, a second-chance deal, Dixon called time out with five seconds left on the shot clock, and what transpired was a coach’s dream. Young passed up a good shot to give Fields a better one, and Fields nailed a right-corner three.

“Two good players making a play,” Dixon said. “We always talk about the pass making the shooter, and that pass made the play.”

…

Blair finished with 10 points and 12 rebounds, but Oklahoma State accomplished its goal of neutralizing the frightening pivot force. Confronted with a constant front and back double team, he only took one shot in the first half.

It’s a pick-your-poison strategy, of course. The Cowboys had to hope no other Panther would, you know, go off. But Young did. This is a guy who has dropped 31 on UConn and who has an almost old-fashioned game that combines good open shooting with lots of neat ball fakes leading to artful banked floaters and the like. He knows what he’s doing. He’s got a retirement party face and he really does play as if someone gave him a waiver in order to have a 10-year college career.

“I was kind of piggy-backing off my last game,” he said with a shrug. “I was feeling good and I wanted to be aggressive.”

Pitt has made its way to Boston with a C-minus/D-plus game against East Tennessee State and a B/B-minus game against Oklahoma State. The Panthers have been turning it over too much, and that has to stop. But they are coming, and Dixon is not apologizing for anything he saw in Dayton.

“If you’re still alive, you’re playing good ball,” he insists. “Any coach will tell you that. But you can always get better, and any coach will tell you that.”

Fields seemed to be finding himself — or simply getting healthier — in the Oklahoma State game.

Fields admitted he didn’t play well in the Big East tournament against West Virginia, when he had an uncharacteristic five turnovers. He also wasn’t happy with his effort in the first round against East Tennessee State, which pressed Pitt into committing 18 turnovers in the near-upset. Oklahoma State forced two straight turnovers late in Sunday’s second half by putting on a 1-3-1 press. Though only one of the miscues was assigned to Fields, he took credit for both.

“Being a leader and a point guard, I take the blame,” he said. “I’m not trying to take it to be a hero or a scapegoat. It’s just the truth. It starts with me.”

For Pittsburgh to finish past the Sweet 16, it will need more than Fields’ grit. No other No. 1 seed had as difficult a time getting out of its pod than the Panthers.

Well, yes, no excusing the performance against ETSU. Otherwise, though, aside from maybe LSU, there was no No. 8 as underseeded and playing as well as Oklahoma State has been playing. (To say nothing of being a horrible match-up nightmare for Pitt as we have been saying since the brackets were announced.)

The Panthers looked dreadful doing it, and on the heels of their first-round flameout in the Big East tournament against West Virginia — a 74-60 loss — Pittsburgh’s legitimacy as a No. 1 seed was under some scrutiny.

Not after this game.

Oklahoma State didn’t play like a No. 8 seed. Oklahoma State didn’t look like a No. 8 seed. And in reality, the Cowboys should’ve been seeded higher. Their RPI (No. 19) and strength of schedule (fifth nationally) and 8-2 record in 10 games leading to Selection Sunday all suggested the Cowboys were better than a No. 8 seed. And they were.

And they got Pittsburgh’s respect.

And now Pittsburgh has mine.

Big relief to you Pittsburgh fans, I know. Hey, great, Pittsburgh has a sportswriter’s respect. Let’s throw a party.

Good point. But after pointing out just how unimpressive Pittsburgh was Friday against ETSU, I must point out how impressive it was Sunday. And to do that, it must be made clear just how good Oklahoma State was for most of this game. The Cowboys played a nearly perfect first half, shooting 63.6 percent on two-pointers and 62.5 percent on 3-pointers and 100 percent on free throws. The Cowboys had 15 assists and four turnovers. They couldn’t have played any better.

And they were tied at 49 at the half.

That’s how good Pittsburgh was. Pittsburgh was as good as Oklahoma State, and Oklahoma State was damn near perfect.
…
Dixon tore into his team at halftime — “Man, he’s a motivator,” said DeJuan Blair — and after that, this game was Pittsburgh’s. The Panthers tightened up their defense and controlled the backboard, outrebounding Oklahoma State 41-21 for the game.

Not that Coach Dixon even admitted ripping into his team at the half.

Jamie Dixon’s locker-room message at halftime Sunday was a mixture of realism and optimism.

“I just said, ‘They’re not going to shoot it that well in the second half,’ ” the Pitt basketball coach said. “Maybe that was wishful thinking, but it did turn out that way.”

It hasn’t been pretty. The team knows they haven’t been as good.

“Right now, we’re not playing on all cylinders,” Fields said. “We’ve got to do better when we have leads. We took our foot off their throat today and they made plays. The thing that stands out for me is the turnovers. We had 18 in the first game, 14 today. We average about 10. But we did exactly what we needed to win, cut down on the turnovers, and outrebounded them by 20.”

Pitt outrebounded Oklahoma State 41-21 and collected 21 points on second-chance baskets. “Our guys were scrapping and clawing and doing everything possible. It’s just that we would go up 10 feet and DeJuan Blair and Sam Young would go up 11,” Cowboys coach Travis Ford said.

Young led Pitt with 32 points and eight rebounds. Blair, a 6-7, 265-pound sophomore, had 10 points and 12 rebounds, but scored just one point in the first half and was never the overwhelming factor he was against East Tennessee State, when he had 27 points and 16 rebounds.

At least Blair was in one piece after Oklahoma State point guard Bryon Eaton stumbled on a drive in the first half and crashed his shoulder into Blair’s leg. “It was a little stinger,” Blair said. “It was hurting. I was scared for a minute. But I had to jump up so everybody wouldn’t be worried. Then, I went to the back and I was aching. It was hurting. But I got stretched back there and it was all right. I’m just going to ice it and hopefully it will be better.”

Over on the Oklahoma State side of this, it was that they did not keep shooting 63% on threes in the second half.

Before Sunday, the school record for 3-pointers in an NCAA Tournament game was 10, set in a 2005 Sweet Sixteen loss to Arizona.

OSU matched the record by making 10 in the first half against a Pitt team that prides itself on defense.

But the season is over because Cowboy shooters committed the sin of cooling off.

OSU, which was 17-of-27 from the field and 10-of-16 from 3-point range in the first half, shot 9-of-27 from the field and 2-of-12 from 3-point range after halftime.

“I wish we could have kept hitting like we were in the first half,” OSU senior guard Terrel Harris said.

Maybe it was a bad omen for the Cowboys that the score was tied at halftime, never mind that they couldn’t miss and never mind that Pitt center DeJuan Blair had only one point.

We all make the comments of living by the three and dying by the three with a team like OSU. Beyond simply the Cowboys regressing towards their averages, the three by Levance Fields to tie the game before the half was as big a dagger 3 as anything.

You want cheap symbolism? I got your cheap symbolism right here.

Like most of the games played here this weekend, the Panthers and Cowboys filled 40 minutes with collisions, drama and swings of momentum and emotion.

Point guard Levance Fields sealed Pitt’s victory with a step-back 3-pointer from the right corner, a shot after which he stepped back too far and stumbled into a table.

The shot and stumble epitomized the Panthers’ play here this past weekend. It was neither graceful nor dominating, but it was effective enough for the Panthers to advance. After beating Oklahoma State, 84-76, top-seeded Pitt will face No. 4 seed Xavier on Thursday.

Fields acknowledged the obvious when he was asked if the Panthers were clicking in all aspects of their game. “Right now, we’re not,” he said. “But it’s about finding ways to win. We had two tough games, but we found a way to win.”

The lack of winning pretty is a theme.

Here’s the positive spin on that. When Pitt has had the letdowns this year, it seems to come right after big dominating wins. Where they totally dominated and everyone was singing the teams praises. That is not happening. Pitt is doing enough. There are still plenty of doubts and questions.

That makes it that much harder to start buying the press clippings and hopefully will make the team keep pushing.

More later

Thank goodness Pitt and Xavier played on Sunday and get to play at 7:27 on Thursday night. It means only a few days of the most obvious storyline between all the Sweet 16 teams.

You may have heard something about it. Apparently Sean Miller used to be a point guard at Pitt in the late 8os. He was pretty good and played on some pretty good teams that underachieved like no body’s business — though still fondly remembered. Oh, and he’s a Western PA native and the son of a longtime, successful high school coach in the area. At least that’s what I’ve heard.

Of course, these days Sean Miller is one of the top “young” coaches. Actually what he is is one of the better coaches not coaching at a BCS program. And therefore, atop the list of speculation every year when openings come. Last year it was Indiana and Oklahoma State in the rumor mill for him.

This year it’s Alabama, Virginia, Georgia, Arizona and maybe Kentucky.

Of course, Pitt coach Jamie Dixon has often been the subject of rumors for other programs coming after him — this year it is Arizona. That always fuels the speculation that Pitt would “bring Sean Miller home.”

That, and the always annoying segment of the Pitt fanbase, that feels it is most important that Pitt have a “Pitt guy” and a guy from Pittsburgh who “gets it.” The ones that have that touch of xenophobia.

So, yeah, for the last several years the two coaches have been interwtined in coaching speculation.

Now, they finally face each other in the Sweet Sixteen game.

Where Pitt is trying to do what no Pitt team has ever done.

Yeah, good thing there’s a relative short turn-around this week.

One of those days. The laptop abruptly has decided it might want to die on me. Now my satellite is in reset mode.

Clearly my mistake is that I haven’t been drinking enough.

It’s a good thing I don’t believe in omens or anything.

So we’ll see if I can get everthing up and running in time.

UPDATE:

Okay. Things are looking up. The laptop fired back up, shortly after halftime of the Syracuse-ASU game. Satellite is fine. All is well. At least as long as nothing goes wrong with the Mega March Madness feed.

Let’s do a liveblog. The fun will start around 2:45 pm.

You can find the link by Clicking Here.

That game. When I got up this morning, I really had trouble believing the game went that way. That perhaps all the basketball I’ve been watching for the last couple days, and indeed the past couple weeks, had thrown me off in short term memory. Then I had my morning coffee and it all came flooding back.

In something that should surprise no one, Coach Dixon refused to publicly say anything negative. Even saying the sort of things that are patently ridiculous.

Dixon spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to put a positive spin on the win, bragging up East Tennessee State as if it were UCLA of the ’70s. “There’s no way this team is a 16 seed.” He took it to such an absurd level that he actually said, “This game went exactly how I thought it would.”

Honest to goodness, Dixon said that.

I guess it beats telling the truth and saying, “You know, we really stunk today.”

Anyone who has followed Pitt basketball and paid attention to Coach Dixon over the years can only shrug. It is always more of a stunner when he says anything that remotely looks like a public criticism of his team. That has never been his approach and anyone who expects otherwise is deluded.

That’s not to say he won’t be all over the team behind closed doors and in practice for that effort. It’s just that Dixon is not going to kill his players to the media. He’ll defend them. Protect them and take the hits for saying the insane things.

He won’t ignore some things that they did wrong.

“We just came in looking to hit the glass hard,” senior forward Greg Hamlin said. “We heard they weren’t a very good defensive rebounding team, so we just tried to attack the glass and get second chances.”

Pitt only had nine offensive rebounds, seven by Blair. All 13 of Sam Young’s rebounds came on the defensive end.

Dixon said Pitt’s effort — which comes one game after WVU outrebounded Pitt in the Big East quarterfinals — was unacceptable.

“The rebounding concerns me,” he said. “That’s our strength. We’ve got to get that done.”

The one thing Dixon did acknowledge — sort of — is that Levance Fields still is not right.

To be blunt, Fields hasn’t been the same player since injuring his groin against Connecticut in the final regular season game. After recording 10 points and 12 assists with two turnovers against UConn, Fields has totaled 12 points and 12 assists with eight turnovers in his past two games.

“Obviously, we’d like Levance to have been healthy the last couple of weeks, but that’s not the case,” Dixon said. “We’re trying to play through it. But the longer we go, the better he’ll feel. He felt better (yesterday) than he did last week.”

Right now, Fields won’t say that there is a problem. With his groin or anything.

“No [team] is a pushover in the tournament,” Fields said. “Unfortunately, we happened to be the No. 1 seed that had a scare. People will say this and that, but Pitt will be playing on Sunday. It’s the tournament. We have to play better as a collective group, but our stars stepped up today, and that’s what you need in games like that. We survived. That’s the biggest thing.”

Actually, it was really only one star that stepped up yesterday. DeJuan Blair carried the team for major stretches.

“I’m hungry,” he said. “Feed me.”

It wasn’t his stomach that was growling. It was his pride. His team looked sloppy and disinterested, and East Tennessee State wasn’t going away.

So, the Grizzly Blair ate.

Blair, playing in his third NCAA Tournament game, lifted top-seeded Pitt past a first-round scare, beating ETSU, 72-62, on Friday afternoon in an East Region game at UD Arena.

The first-team All-America sophomore center finished with 27 points and 16 rebounds, outmuscling the Atlantic Sun Conference champion.

“Either you ride or you get run over,” Blair said. “I’m not getting run over.”

Blair tied the most points by a Pitt player in an NCAA Tournament game in the past 21 years. Only one Pitt player — Jerome Lane — has ever had more rebounds in a tournament game.

Ashton Gibbs came up with timely plays off the bench.

Gibbs scored 10 points, including some clutch shots down the stretch when the game was still in doubt. Gibbs boosted the lead to eight with a 3-pointer with 1:14 remaining and 21 seconds later sank two free throws after East Tennessee State cut the lead to six.

“It feels good,” Gibbs said. “Last year I was trying to skip class just to watch the tournament. It’s a great feeling to contribute in a positive way.”

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon played Gibbs 18 minutes because starting shooting guard Jermaine Dixon was in foul trouble and ineffective for most of the game. Gibbs was 2 for 2 from the field — both 3-pointers — and 4 for 4 from the free-throw line.

“He played very well,” Jamie Dixon said. “I think it was a couple of things. First of all, Jermaine was in some foul trouble and was a little banged up. Gilbert [Brown] has been a little banged up. We went with [Gibbs]. He’s a very good freshman, a very good player, and he made big plays throughout. We have a lot of confidence in Ashton Gibbs.”

At least a couple players acknowledged the poor effort.

At least until the final few minutes, the Panthers lacked the necessary will and wont to win a national title. On offense, they stood still instead or working for shots. On defense, they idly watched East Tennessee State, a team which couldn’t compete with Pitt’s size, get 20 offensive rebounds.

Clearly, this game was about the size of the player’s hearts. And the Panthers’ hearts didn’t appear to be in this one.

“They definitely out-hustled us,” Pitt guard Jermaine Dixon said. “We did more watching than we did boxing out. They got their hands on every ball.”

“They wanted it more than us,” teammate Brad Wanamaker said.

The Panthers weren’t the first No. 1 seed to overlook their first-round opponent, and they won’t be the last. But with the margin of their lead an eyelash away from being a single point at halftime _ a bucket by ETSU’s Mike Smith at halftime was reviewed and nullified _ one would have expected more urgency in the second half.

That is probably the thing that has most fans frustrated. The continued lack of effort in the second half.

It’s one thing for it to happen in the first half. That is almost understandable. It happens a lot, and Pitt has played more than a few games where the full effort seemed lacking in the first half. But then, Pitt would come storming out to sieze control of the game in the second half.

That didn’t happen in this game and that, more than anything else, fuels Pitt fan frustration and punditry letting loose with this sort of thing.

We’re going to go ahead and call this the worst any top seed has played in a first-round game, ever. Feel free to challenge that assertion, but the East Tennessee State Bucs shot 30.7 percent from the field, made just 4-of-22 from 3-point range, missed half of their free throws and still nearly became the first No. 16 seed to knock off a No. 1.

Others have come closer: Western Carolina against Purdue in 1996, Princeton against Georgetown in 1989. This game will not become part of NCAA folklore. Pitt wound up beating ETSU by double digits, 72-62. Folks arriving home from work Friday afternoon might have done no more than lift an eyebrow at that margin, but those watching on television – and especially those filling UD Arena – know just what they saw.

And of course, fuels the general feeling that someday a No. 16 will beat a No. 1. Thankfully it was not yesterday.

Hopefully what they read after the ETSU game will have an impact. Frankly, if I’m Coach Dixon, I scatter these throughout their locker room. I slip them under their doors tonight. Let them read some of this.

Your bracket is screwed. Yes, you. Because you picked Pittsburgh to win the East Regional, and maybe even to beat someone in the Final Four. Hell, maybe you got really ambitious and picked the Panthers, who did after all look so dominant in the almighty Big East this season, to win the whole 2009 NCAA tournament.

Well, you’re screwed. Your bracket is screwed. Because this Pittsburgh team was lucky to beat 16th-seeded East Tennessee State in the first round on Friday. Pittsburgh won 72-62, but the margin was that comfortable only in the final seconds. It was a one-possession game in the final 2½ minutes, and if ETSU could shoot at all — a weakness I highlighted Thursday after watching its dreadful shooting in practice — the Bucs would have beaten Pittsburgh.

By 20.

Pittsburgh was that bad Friday, which means your bracket is that screwed. Don’t be mad at me. Be mad at Pittsburgh, which was constructed by Jamie Scheyer-Face, er, Jamie Dixon, who coached Friday with more intensity than any of his players showed. Or any two of his players showed. Or any five of them.

Let them know the doubts aren’t just back for one game. They are questioning Pitt’s heart. They are questioning the team’s fire and if they can show up for more than one big game. Make them get that chip be about sustained quality. Not just one game.

Whether Pitt is actually favored on Sunday against Oklahoma State, it will become a trendy “upset” pick.

In describing the ETSU game, Pitt center DeJuan Blair described his team’s offense as one that’s not going to blow anyone out. They average 78 points per game. “We’re the type of team that likes to slow the game down and let the game come to us.” How well that plays against OSU remains to be seen. The Cowboys proved earlier in the day in Dayton that they can run with just about anyone, taking their up-tempo game against a more rigid offense, Tennessee’s, with a solid center presence. OSU, on the season, drops an average of 81.

The Cowboys will go right at Blair, attacking him with backdoors and pick-and-rolls to the basket, as they did against Tennessee. With any luck, they’ll lure him into foul trouble. But even if Blair keeps out of trouble (as he did against ETSU) and repeats his solid first-round effort (16 boards; 27 points on 10 of 17 shooting), he’ll need some serious assistance from his guards, who weren’t up to the task today. Fields and Jermaine Dixon combined for just six points.

“We know how good we are, but we didn’t show it today,” Fields said. “We weren’t rattled by [ETSU] or anything. We just have to execute much better next game.” Or else.

Sure.

There’s no way this is a No. 16 seed,” Dixon said of ETSU. “I watched them play.”

Fine, maybe ETSU is not a #16 seed. Even if they are a #13 seed, Pitt should not have struggled like this.  We’ve seen this Pitt team play all season. They are capable of so much more — if they want to.