Okay, not much left.

You don’t eff with a streak. Pitt hasn’t lost since Gilbert Brown came back — and came off the bench. No reason to mess with that.

Plus Gilbert Brown doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. Instead giving love to Nasir Robinson as a gritty/glue guy.

“Nas brings all the intangibles,” Brown said. “He’ll scrap every minute of the game that he’s in there. He boxes out. He rebounds. He makes tough plays. When he checked into the game we said, ‘Make something happen.’ And he went out there and made a play. He makes that play every day in practice. He’s great around the basket, and he made a big-time play for us.”

In addition to the earlier mentioned “out-toughing” UConn, both sides acknowledged that Pitt wanted it more.

Pitt outscored Connecticut, 19-8, in the final 5:48 of the game.

“We wanted it more down the stretch,” Pitt junior guard Brad Wanamaker said.

Pitt has beaten Connecticut (11-5, 2-3) three in a row and four out of five meetings, including last season’s sweep of the then-No. 1 Huskies. It is Pitt’s first three-game winning streak against Connecticut since 1996-97.

“They wanted to win,” UConn coach Jim Calhoun said. “They didn’t talk about it. They showed it with great effort.”

UConn is trying to figure out why they are so inconsistent. Speculation is growing that because Calhoun has no faith in his bench, the starters are wearing down in the game.

In the second half Wednesday night, Calhoun used one bench player, Ater Majok, for six minutes. All other minutes went to Jerome Dyson, Stanley Robinson, Kemba Walker, Alex Oriakhi and Gavin Edwards, as has been the case most of the season. Before Wednesday’s game, they had played 81.3 percent of all the team’s minutes. They played between 32 and 39 minutes Wednesday, numbers that will keep Robinson, Dyson and Walker among the Big East’s top 10 players in minutes played.

I worry about Dixon and Gibbs — especially Gibbs — playing too many minutes each game, but compared to UConn, Pitt is in good shape.

Continuing the media recapping from Pitt’s 67-57 win over UConn.

Even Bob Smizik acknowledges that he was so wrong about this team.

Neither graduation, nor eligibility expiration nor NBA defection has managed to stop this bunch, which might be longer on determination than ability but which has far more ability than most of us believed.

…

When the Panthers were outscored, 14-3, midway through the second half and lost what had been a 10-point lead, I was positive they were done. It was a nice run, but there would be no stopping this Connecticut onslaught.

I had forgotten the enormous heart that these Pitt teams have. This is trite, I know, but Jamie Dixon teams do not walk away. When adversity is at its greatest is when they seem to most step it up the most.

He lavishes some much-earned and deserved praise on how well McGhee played. Something with which I agree. McGhee played an outstanding game where he handled their big guys without help. Some of that comes from the passivity with which the UConn big men played. Gavin Edwards is UConn’s own “serviceable” center and McGhee handled him. The other UConn bigs did little other than follow their training to stay straight-up for blocks but offer little else on offense or defense.

This is not to diminish the work by McGhee. He helped keep them one-dimensional and clogged the inside to make it hard for Dyson and Walker to do much in the way of penetration. He would not let himself be bodied or pushed out of position — which he has often shown a propensity to allow.

Ray Mernagh compliments himself for offering a safe hedge in the preseason.

So I looked for something I had written back in September and sure enough, found the following thoughts from my Around the Big East post on 9/1/09: One national columnist — the excellent Jeff Goodman at Fox — recently opined that this was a rebuilding year for Pitt no matter what…Maybe. I know Jamie Dixon hasn’t experienced a rebuilding year yet (read NIT berth). Check back in mid-January. Before then is way too soon to count out Dixon and the kids he targets to play for him. It would not shock me to see Pitt in the hunt once again come the third or fourth week of the conference season. It’s what they do.

So there you go. Let the record show that I had some initial faith in this Pitt group — especially Jamie Dixon…

Not exactly Kreskin, but better than a lot of others I suppose.

If you can get past the cliched, trite, and downright crappy “this Pitt team is a reflection of the hard-working, blue-collar, tough, gritty city in which the university resides” opening from Dana O’Neil– tough, I know — but it’s a good piece on the game and how Pitt is blowing expectations out of the water.

The Pittsburgh Panthers aren’t just tough. They are the classic underdogs, annually counted out to comical proportions.

Jamie Dixon’s band of misfit toys all were very good players in high school, but none were quite the great ones.

Jermaine Dixon? He needed to go to junior college.

Gilbert Brown? He was in the mix for McDonald’s All-American status, but didn’t quite make the cut.

Ashton Gibbs? He was an all-stater, not an All-American.

And yet here they are again.

Gene Collier acknowledges the need to revise expectations of this team.

These Panthers, following in the fresh footprints of Dixon’s best team ever, a 31-5 unit that came within a whisper of the Final Four, either want to be awfully good or are at least willing to throw themselves on the floor trying to be.

That was both the literal and metaphoric reason they were only the fourth team to win at Connecticut in the past 44 games.

“I think it was just an example of what coach Dixon always emphasizes, which is being tough,” said Gilbert Brown in 26 minutes of Pitt’s seventh consecutive win. “You see how Ashton [Gibbs] almost turned the ball over and then gave up his body? I think this game tonight is where all that toughness really came out.”

When I was watching the game I paused and rewound that moment a few times. Maybe it was the opponent. Maybe the montage before the game made it fresher in the mind. Gibbs dive to recover the ball after it was poked free and call the time out. Before any UConn player had a chance to react made me think of Brandin Knight in the BET Championship game against UConn diving for the loose ball and calling TO while Huskies stood around.

John Gasaway at Basketball Prospectus is still trying to figure out how Pitt is doing it. Looking at returning possession minutes for this years team comepared to last year, shows that Pitt simply more than any other BE team that went to the NCAA last year has less experience by a wide margin. He notes that Pitt should be playing more at the level of 2008 Ohio State — NIT. Gasaway tries to figure out why. Primary reasons he finds is that Pitt is playing defense far better than they have the past couple of years, Ashton Gibbs’ emergence and surprisingly that McGhee and Taylor have been more effective than expected in filling DeJuan Blair’s shoes.

Of course, if there is one thing that sets Gasaway to burning it is use of rebound differentical — he sees it as a relatively meaningless stat. Of course, we all know that Coach Jamie Dixon is passionate about having Pitt outrebound opponents.

UConn held a four-rebound edge on the Panthers at the half at the XL Center. Dixon urged his team to outrebound the Huskies by eight in the second half. The Panthers nearly doubled that, outrebounding the Huskies by 13 in the second half.

It was a major factor in Pitt’s 67-57 victory.

“We had to get that changed,” Dixon said of the rebounding advantage UConn held at the half. “We had to get that turned around and we did. Clearly that was the difference. We just battled.”

I happen to agree that rebounding differential is not a big deal. Too many factors can skew it — bad shooting or good shooting being the primaries. That said, UConn’s front court — despite their size advantage — was pathetic.

UConn’s starting frontcourt of Ater Majok, Alex Oriakhi and Stanley Robinson combined for just 12 rebounds. Oriakhi had all nine of his rebounds in the first half while Robinson had a season-low two.

“For Stanley Robinson to get two rebounds in a game is almost bewildering to me,” Calhoun said.

Not to me. Stanley Robinson looked impressive in the first half — as long as you only looked at the offense. He has this talent, but no effort on defense. His big solo slam came because he was loafing on defense.

Pitt had gotten a steal and raced the other way. Kemba Walker made a tremendous interception of a bounce pass and was able to get it right back down to Robinson who was all alone for an easy slam.

Only, when you watched the replays, you saw that when Pitt took off after the turnover, and most of the UConn players were hustling to prevent an easy transition bucket, Robinson barely moved. He slowly turned up-court and lightly jogged after the play. He made no effort to get down there. Only when he saw Walker get the steal did he move. He raced to his basket.

Should it surprise anyone that when the game got tight and plays had to be made in the final 10 minutes, Robinson was non-existent?

Jerome Dyson was the second half impact. He suffers most in UConn’s offense with their inability to play half-court offense. He can run, but he is most dangerous when given a chance to attack the basket on plays. He did that in the second half, but all too often he had to do it without his teammates helping.

Believe it or not, still a couple more stories to work into a media recap. Later.

Not sure how many times already this season that DeJuan Blair has been highlighted by NBA hoop heads. Here’s a YouTube from his 28 point, 21 rebound night against the Thunder. Not a highlight reel, so much as an instructional on his game (Hattip to True Hoop).

After the win over Cinci, one of the themes from the losing side was that Cinci was closer than they had been but were still not there as a team putting things together. Unlike Pitt.

That theme repeats itself with UConn.

They are everything UConn isn’t right now. They are tough, physically and mentally. They are patient. They are specific in purpose. They are high energy and low panic. They play as a team. They are learning to finish what they start.

Not quite…

UConn has become an almost team.

Yet again the Huskies showed Wednesday that they’re almost good enough to win a tight game against a ranked team.

They’re almost talented enough to overcome their mistakes.

Almost isn’t good enough. Not in the fiercely competitive Big East Conference.

No. 15 UConn’s shortcomings sent it to a damaging 67-57 loss to No. 16 Pittsburgh at the XL Center. It was the Huskies’ first home defeat this season and third loss in five games overall.

“We aren’t putting the package together right now the way we should,” coach Jim Calhoun said. “Obviously, I have great concerns like any coach would. … Everybody is playing pretty well against us, it seems. We’re responding almost enough.

“Almost enough doesn’t get you anything.”

Seems to be the impact of a team that not only exceeds expectations but exposes what the other team isn’t doing.

“I have a problem with 40 and 35 … 40 full minutes and 35 seconds (of offense),” Calhoun said. “I’m not used to games coming down to an end and seeing the other team grab control the way Georgetown and Pittsburgh has these last two games. Very disappointing.”

Why this continues to be a problem for the Huskies almost halfway into the season not only has Calhoun scratching his head in wonder, but also apparently has him so frustrated that he can’t even explode. Maybe it would have been better if the coach had come into the post-game full of emotion, screaming that you’ll never see that type of lethargy from one of his teams again, and that practice was going to be a living hell.

But he didn’t. It’s almost as if he can’t believe what’s happening himself.

“It all goes back to executing our offense, even versus Harvard and some of those other teams, we didn’t execute our offense and make them play defense,” Calhoun said. “We haven’t done that except for maybe one or two games all season.”

I think the Connecticut media is just as befuddled. Calhoun has been — calm isn’t the right word — subdued after these losses. He is likely frustrated, but not actively sparring with the media, implying that the refs cost UConn.

He seems genuinely disappointed with his team, and dare I suggest that he is realizing that he has made some mistakes with the coaching and teaching.

The Huskies inability to adjust to anything other than playing up-tempo, transition game is making a lot of games tougher than they should and costing them against some of the better teams that either play slower or can change tempo.

Lots of problems.

So what’s wrong with the Huskies?

Just about everything.

Their half-court offense is predictable and ineffective.

Their rebounding is an ongoing issue.

Their free throw shooting is shaky (6-for-13 Wednesday).

Their defense is solid but suffers breakdowns at the worst time.

Their desire and toughness came into question against Pittsburgh.

Here’s an interesting quote from senior Stanley Robinson: “They basically out-toughed us and out-played us.”

That’s a bad sign.

And Brad Wanamaker said as much.

“That’s what the Big East is about, out-toughing the other team,” said Wanamaker. “In the second half, I think we did that.”

After being out-rebounded by four in the first half, the Panthers easily won the battle of the boards over the final 20 minutes, 26-13. Pitt (14-2, 4-0 Big East) finished with 19 offensive rebounds – 12 of them in the latter half – as it spoiled some strong UConn defensive stances with second-chance points.

“We’re not playing with a sense of toughness,” said UConn head coach Jim Calhoun. “At times, we stopped them stone, cold dead … and then we’d give them a second chance.”

The near misses has the fans and media wondering if UConn is more than simply a little overrated.

And has nothing to show for it. It all boils down to primarily one thing: horrible half-court offense. The Huskies simply have no idea how to score in the half-court set. It usually devolves into Jerome Dyson or Kemba Walker getting to the basket and then hoping. The same happened again Wednesday night.

It is so unlike Jim Calhoun’s teams that this one is almost unrecognizable. The only conclusion that can be made right now is that the Huskies aren’t that good. They are likely headed toward a major battle to make the NCAA tournament.

Overstatement? Not likely. The eyes don’t lie.

Media recapping will continue in a bit.

“Prime numbers, Virgo and the Calendar Girl… I can say it now… I had my doubts.” — Kevin Kline (2:30 mark) as Det. Nick Starkey in The January Man.

That’s how I’m feeling. Wins at Syracuse, at Cinci and at UConn. Come on. In eleven previous tries Pitt has never won three straight conference road games. Heck only once in the past 5 years has it happened in the Big East, period.

Add in UConn coming off blowing a big lead at Georgetown and knowing they would have to play the half-court. Pitt having won the last two and … and.. just everything.  I admit, I didn’t think Pitt could get this game. It just seemed like the kind of game UConn had to and would get.

Happily, I am dead wrong. A 67-57 win. A win where Pitt only shot 4-12 on 3s. Jermaine Dixon was a horrid 3-14 shooting. Ashton Gibbs missed the front-end of a 1-and-1 in the final minute of a tight game.

Instead, Brad Wanamaker went for 19 points — including 9-10 at the FT line because his driving and penetration had the Huskies beat. Gibbs, despite being well defended all game still hit 3-5 on 3s and scored 19 points as well. Gilbert Brown takes his moments and makes teams pay. Gary McGhee finished his shots and even sank both FTs.

The story, though, was the defense. McGhee, especially, deserves praise. He held his ground so well. He played straight-up on defense. Keeping Edwards, Oriakhi and Majok in check.

Robinson in the first half and Dyson in the second were both looking like they would kill Pitt. Yet, Pitt was able to use their supposed disadvantage in size to their own advantage. Forcing Robinson and the other big men outside to defend Gilbert Brown.

Unlike the first two road games, Pitt came out with some energy and hitting shots. It was UConn that looked sluggish and the fans in Hartford seemed very muted. The Husky fans really didn’t get into the game until roughly midway through the second half. When UConn had finally spent more than a couple minutes playing defense and taken their first lead. I’m not saying UConn fans are frontrunners, but they sure seemed like a spoiled bunch that sat on their hands until the UConn team got their very brief lead.

I loved having John Saunders and Fran Fraschilla do the game. Saunders is a solid play-by-play guy and Fraschilla brings some good knowledge. He is the first analyst to make the point about how the U-19 game worked for Pitt because Kemba Walker backed out — granted he went with the positive aspect with Gibbs learning and getting confident — but this game really drove home to me that Walker cost himself by passing on being able to learn to play half-court.

Two Fraschilla quotes on Pitt: “They don’t just run plays, they execute them.”

“There is a legacy of success built under Jamie Dixon.”

The latter really struck me because there was no qualifier of Howland and Dixon or even “started by Ben Howland.” This is Coach Dixon’s program. He has done more than maintain from Howland. He has exceeded and made this era of Pitt basketball his.

It may seem like a small thing, but it is significant to me. It says that nationally, there is an acknowledgment that Pitt is past rebuilding/resurrection. They are a program under Dixon.

Pitt is now 4-0 in the Big East and 14-2 overall. 15 games (14 BE plus Robert Morris) remaining in the season, with 9 of those games coming at home. Barring a catostrophe and a slew of injuries, the expectations for Pitt is now looking to win at least 21-23 games and go at least 11-7 in the Big East.

From where the expectations were — even at the start of conference play — just is astounding.

Okay. Couldn’t get out of obligations that will keep me out until about 7:30. I’ll be on DVR delay. Hoping for a win. Posting later one way or another.

There will probably be a liveblog tonight. I’m hedging a bit because of some things I’m trying to clear away (the kids) might force me to DVR delay.

Jim Calhoun says nice things about Pitt and Coach Jamie Dixon. That’s fine. Get him to say those things right after a UConn-Pitt game he loses and I’ll be more impressed.

I’m not letting Calhoun’s words do anything to diminish some good hate.

“Pitt and Connecticut,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said, “is a rivalry of the highest order.”

Curtis Aiken, who played at Pitt in the mid-1980s, said the rivalry has evolved.

“The big rivalries when I played were Villanova and Georgetown,” he said. “Now, you would have to put Connecticut in there — maybe at the top.”

The rivalry includes Pitt’s first-ever game on ESPN; a game played during a blizzard that shut down the Northeast; three consecutive meetings in the Big East championship game; the largest on-campus crowd to ever see a basketball game at Pitt; and DeJuan Blair flipping Hasheem Thabeet like a rag doll while battling for a rebound last season.

From Ben Gordon and Chevy Troutman to Ray Allen and Jaron Brown, the top players at both programs turned Pitt vs. Connecticut into something special.

“If you ask any other school, they all think that we’re their rival,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “But the history (with Connecticut), especially the recent history, is obvious.”

Ah, lots of memories.

And now for some exaggerations.

The lightning-quick Dyson leads a transition attack that is the top defensive priority for surging No. 16 Pitt heading into the 7 p.m. tipoff with No. 15 Connecticut in their heated Big East rivarly.

“That’s our emphasis,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “This team might be as good as any they’ve had as far as transition.”

Pitt (13-2, 3-0 Big East), which has won six in a row and trails first-place Villanova by one-half game, limited Syracuse’s vaunted transition attack to 10 fast-break points in an 82-72 victory over the Orange on Jan. 2.

The challenge will be even greater against Connecticut (11-4, 2-2), where Dyson, speedy sophomore guard Kemba Walker and high-flying 6-foot-9 senior forward Stanley Robinson turn just about every long rebound and turnover into a dead sprint the other way.

“UConn is probably the best transition team we’ve played this year,” junior Brad Wanamaker said. “Keeping them out of transition and making them execute in half-court is our plus.”

Actually, by virtue of what they have done, stats and all those objective standards, Syracuse is the best transition team in the Big East and therefore the best Pitt will have faced. Don’t get me wrong, UConn is good and it goes without saying that stopping them from getting out in transition will be very important.

“Before we played Syracuse I told them that was the best transition team we’d play,” Dixon said, “but after watching Connecticut, um, this is the best transition team we’ve played. They were in a tied game against Seton Hall when they scored 10 straight transition points, five baskets. The thing is, their big guys probably run better than Syracuse’s.”

That said, Dixon is hardly The Boy Who Cried Transition.

Transition defense is not something Pitt’s gifted head coach puts on the menu when the potential ingredients dictate as much. It’s part of Pitt’s bedrock preparation.

“We do a defensive transition drill every day, every practice, before every game,” Dixon said. “It’s always an emphasis and it’s probably why we’re pretty good at it. Because we do it no matter what. From the first practice until we’re done.”

Maybe UConn’s bigs run out better than Syracuse, but they haven’t been the key. The Huskies, can and have been taken out of their transition offense. When that happens they struggle. In no small part because sophomore point guard Kemba Walker still does not handle it well.

“He’s got to find open people and stop just trying to challenge everybody in the world,” Calhoun said. “It’s not working out. It hasn’t worked out. … We have to find the right people the ball. And it’s not just Kemba. I don’t think that Kemba is playing as well as he should.”

Calhoun added that Walker is very talented. Walker also is confident in his abilities, maybe a little too much judging from some of his decisions. Sometimes he forces action, leading to turnovers.

In the last seven games, the erratic Walker has 30 turnovers, or 4.3 per game. He also has 46 assists, or 6.7 per game.

Just an aside, but Walker was one of the late scratches from joining the U-19 team — opening the door for Ashton Gibbs. Instead Walker opted to go to the LeBron Skills camp and stay at UConn for the summer. Scary to consider that he might have actually learned more about operating the half-court better under Caoch Dixon and Purdue’s Painter if he went.

You can bet that shutting Walker down will fall to Jermaine Dixon.

God-damn that Jim Calhoun. How dare he? Actually making clear that UConn needs this game.

“It’s not a critical game for us,” said UConn coach Jim Calhoun, downplaying the importance only slightly. “It’s an incredibly important game for us, as every single game is.”

…

“We have some good players back. They have some good players back,” Calhoun said. “But they’ve been able to avoid a couple of the losses that we haven’t been able to avoid.”

Okay, so that seems a little downplayed. The key is in what he said to his players and how they are talking.

“For us, it’s a must win,” point guard Kemba Walker said. “We need a win for right now. Pittsburgh is playing well right now. They’re 3-0, so it’s going to be a very important game for us.”

UConn, on the other hand, is 2-2 in the conference. More disturbing for them is that they are 0-3 against teams that were ranked when playing the Huskies. That’s part of why they need this game.

“We’ve played great the first or second half [against ranked teams] but we just haven’t put two halves together,” Jerome Dyson said. “Sometimes we get caught up in running up and down the floor too much. When we had the lead [at Georgetown], we really didn’t run offense late in the game. We made it easy for them to come back because we missed some shots and they made shots.”

Admittedly blowing big leads on the road or at home seem to have been a common thing in the Big East over the weekend. Notre Dame nearly blew a 20+ point home lead on WVU before hanging on for 2-point win. The obvious UConn blowing things at Georgetown. Then there was Villanova coming back from 17 down on the road to beat Louisville on Big Monday.

I will admit, though, I would feel better about Pitt’s chances if the Huskies had held on to the win at G-town. Now it’s about bouncing back at home and knowing they can’t let up after the way they blew the game.

“Any time you lose a game, something happens to you, and you’re never really sure until you play again,” Calhoun said Tuesday. “Every time you win a game, something happens to you, and you’re never sure if you think it’s going to be easy now. … It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to win the next game because you’ve won. And it doesn’t automatically mean you’ve lost your confidence if you lose a game.”

Sorry, I have trouble believing that loss broke the spirit of UConn — and I just don’t think Calhoun would let it happen.

It freaked them out a bit. Calhoun was completely out of sorts after the loss.

Then, before walking away from the podium, he mentioned that Wednesday’s home game against Cincinnati now takes on added importance.

That might have been a good indication that this disheartening loss to the Hoyas could be difficult for UConn to immediately move beyond. The Huskies actually face Pittsburgh Wednesday, not Cincinnati.

…

Calhoun? Well, he’s never at a loss for words, and he spoke in great detail during his press conference. He wasn’t the ball of fire you might expect. His temper was in check. He didn’t have overly sharp criticism for a particular player. Part of that is probably because there is more than half a season remaining and one loss, no matter the type, doesn’t define a season.

Calhoun gave the team Sunday off — not always the case after a loss.

“It’s the most heartbreaking loss this year,” Calhoun said. “It’s not even close.”

Calhoun doesn’t think the practices have told him much about how his team will respond to the loss.

On the opposite side, Coach Dixon has had to contend with the long layoff — before Pitt plays 3 games in a week’s time — so practice has some meaning even as they battle history.

One of the highlights of the week was Saturday’s live scrimmage, which featured a pair of 12-minute halves with game officials. Guard Travon Woodall hit a 30-footer at the buzzer to give his team a one-point win.

“It was good,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “It was lively. It was productive. It was good for them, and we played well. I feel pretty good where we are at.”

Pitt will have to make a little history to earn its third consecutive road win. All told, the Big East has scheduled Pitt to play back-to-back-to-back road games 11 times since 1985, with every trip marred by at least one loss.

This is only Pitt’s second such trip in the past nine years.

In mid-January 2006, the Panthers won at Louisville and at Rutgers to improve to 15-0 before losing at St. John’s, 55-50, as a top-10 team.

Few Big East teams are able to survive such a rugged stretch without a hiccup. Since 2004-05, only one Big East team in 17 tries — Connecticut in 2008-09 — won three successive conference road games without a home game in between.

Oh, and something else to consider. Neither team has won more than 2 straight against the other since UConn won 6 straight between 1998 and 2002. Pitt has won the last two meetings, so, *gulp*.

An extended lay-off after Pitt starts the conference play 3-0. Naturally, the players really don’t mind.

“The consistent practice time we put in, getting up and down the court, scrimmaging each other, just getting to know each other more than we did was important,” said Brown, who scored a career-high 17 points against Cincinnati. “I only played four games and Jermaine seven, so it’s really helped us get together as a team.”

Brown and Dixon have changed the team dramatically. In the four games Brown and Dixon have played together, Pitt is averaging 73.8 points per game, shooting 48.8 percent from the field and 47.1 percent from 3-point range. In the 11 games when they were not in the lineup together, Pitt only averaged 65.6 points, shot 43.9 percent from the field and 33 percent from 3-point range.

Brown and Dixon are two of the better defenders on the team, and there has been a noticeable difference at the defensive end as well. Teams are shooting a lower percentage from the field. And although teams are scoring more, the caliber of competition is much different from what the Panthers faced earlier in the season.

Those statistics figure to improve as they get used to playing together more.

“You can say [the break in the schedule] came at a good time,” junior guard Brad Wanamaker said. “[Brown and Dixon] have been looking good the last couple of games. It gave us more time to get better as a team, getting more comfortable playing with those two guys.”

Not to mention allowing Coach Dixon time to work on the rotation. Figure out playing time and starters. The speculation remains that Gary McGhee and maybe Nasir Robinson’s days as starters are numbered. Of course, that speculation has been there since mid-December.

To say nothing of working on the occasional zone defense to throw teams off and protect the frontcourt.

One of the solid things about having continuity with coaches, not just having the same coach here for 7 years but it being the continuation from an assistant to the head coach, is that the past players really feel the connection to the program and to the present players. At the beginning of the season, the players talked of how the past players emphasized to them how they needed to keep things going at Pitt. One of those things to keep going — defense.

“Jaron told me, ‘You have to be able to stop the other teams from scoring and be tougher than your opponents in order to win in the Big East,’ ” Dixon said. “That’s the same thing Levance Fields talked to me about when I was a freshman, and Carl Krauser was at the game the other day, and even he was talking about taking pride in playing defense and always being tougher than your opponents.

“That’s just who we are at Pitt.”

…

“When you come in as a young guy, you have to learn that everybody here takes pride in being able to defend and nobody is going to take it easy,” Jermaine Dixon said. “This is a physical conference and you must be mentally tough enough to survive in it. But the way we look at it, that starts every day at practice.”

Finally, Chris Dokish takes a look at the possible rotations for the next couple years based on recruiting and development.

Woodall has elite speed and has had some nice moments, but some nice moments is not enough in the Big East. He will have to make major improvement if he wants to continue to see the floor because Epps is a talented player who the staff expects will be at least a solid contributor as a freshman.

At the other guard spot, if Gibbs is not playing the point, he will obviously be positioned here. The fact that he has made such huge strides so quickly is a huge event for the program. Don’t forget that he was almost an afterthought as a recruit, and the staff actually had to get Woodall’s blessing to bring Gibbs in. It was Woodall who they thought was going to be making a major contribution by this point. To Gibbs’ credit he has turned himself into a legitimate all-conference player in just his second season. To say he is a pleasant surprise is an understatement, especially since he has proven that he is more than just a standstill shooter.

I recall last year, the issue with Gibbs to many was his shooting technique. He was effective, but they were not the pretty looking shots expected from a perimeter shooter. More like line-drives that just seemed to find the bottom of the basket. Certainly not the aesthetically pleasing look of Ronald Ramon’s 3s.

I hesitate to make this comparison, because it is not fair to Gibbs, but his development does strike me a bit like Brandin Knight’s. Not particularly heavily recruited from New Jersey, from basketball families, and each with a brother that was/is more highly regarded. Both, though, seem to have that spark to make themselves better players. To minimize their weaknesses and a drive to improve.

Pitt picked up a couple off-season Fulmer Cup points for Jonathan Baldwin being charged with indecent assault, harrassment and disorderly conduct. After a long and winding delay, and an eventual non-jury trial, the judge found Baldwin not-guilty on all charges.

“It should have never been there (in court), to be honest with you,” said Baldwin’s attorney Craig Lee. “The only reason it was there was because it was Jon. There was no evidence whatsoever, other than it was meant to be a playful gesture — not an insult — although Jonathan felt bad about it and wanted to apologize for it but never was presented the opportunity.”

Apparently the judge agreed about the charges.

“At best, you have a simple assault — and that’s not charged,” Judge Kevin Sasinoski said Monday, as he dismissed the charges after hearing witness testimony in Baldwin’s non-jury trial.

Clearly dumb, there was no reason to slap a girl on her rear. Especially one he did not know. The mother of the girl was still upset that Baldwin had all charges dismissed.

She should be more upset that the prosecutor’s office tried to stick to over-the-top charges.

Rankings and power polls are as much about how teams are viewed as they are on how they are playing. Kansas struggled at home against (a good) Cornell, then lossed to an undermanned Tennessee team. They fell to #3. Not because they played like the #3 team, but because up this past week they had played like a #1 team, all teams no matter how good hit a rough/complacent patch and the pure NBA level talent along with excellent college players on the squad.

Pitt had to overcome the perception that it has lost too much talent to be very good this year, and the “confirmation” of that perception with the loss to Indiana at MSG.

In the latest polls, Pitt is #16 in the AP and #20 in the Coaches.

ESPN.com placed them at #20 in the power rankings. Fran Fraschilla and Doug Gottlieb both had Pitt at #11 at the high end while Pat Forde inexplicably left Pitt off his ballot. Vitale had Pitt down at #24.\

Luke Winn’s power rankings at SI.com puts Pitt at #13.

Back in November (and even early December) this seemed like a season in which Panthers fans would have to tolerate a mediocre present and reminisce about the past — to last year’s Elite Eight run, or even all the way back to Jerome Lane‘s days, when the team had better jerseys and Bill Raftery was in his prime. Then Jamie Dixon‘s boys went and beat Syracuse and Cincinnati in back-to-back away games, giving them more quality true road wins than most of the teams in the Power Rankings, and making it clear that they need to be taken seriously. With a healthy backcourt of Jermaine Dixon, breakout star Ashton Gibbs and Gilbert Brown, the Panthers’ offense is no longer atrocious, and they look like a team headed for an above-.500 finish in the Big East.

FoxSports.com has Pitt debuting at #14. Garry Parrish continues his mea culpa by putting Pitt #12.

And now a word about the mid-way point favorite for Mosti Improved Big East Player, from Jay Bilas.

My vote for the most improved player in the Big East, and maybe the nation, is Pittsburgh’s Ashton Gibbs. The sophomore guard is averaging 17 points per game and scored 19 points at Cincinnati on just six shot attempts. That came against a defense which was geared to stop him. Pitt is still methodically running its half-court sets, but the emphasis of the sets has changed dramatically. Instead of looking for post duck-ins and pounding you in the lane, Pitt is looking for Gibbs coming off screens and setting up drives for Brad Wanamaker. Having Jermaine Dixon and Gilbert Brown back to help space the floor and provide options clearly has helped, but Gibbs makes the whole thing work. He makes great reads, and when chased off the 3-point line, he curls hard and really creates a lot of problems for defenses. Gibbs is very good, but he is also very smart and sees the game very well. No guard in the Big East has improved more.

Still, keeping perspective, Seth Davis at SI.com updates his teams as stock to include Pitt, and puts them at a “Hold.”

The Panthers have shot their way onto the national radar with road wins at Syracuse and Cincinnati. So now what? Well, it’s hard to say, considering they have only been at full strength for four games. Senior guard Jermaine Dixon (21 points vs. Syracuse) missed the first eight games because of a broken bone in his right foot, and junior forward Gilbert Brown (17 points off the bench against Cincy) missed the first 11 while serving a suspension for academics. I’d love to tell you the Panthers are on their way to great things, but check out what they have coming up: at UConn, home versus Louisville, at Georgetown, at Seton Hall, home versus St. John’s, then road dates at South Florida and West Virginia. Will Pitt’s lack of inside scoring be exposed in the next few weeks? Or will they continue to shoot lights out and take a ton of foul shots? Time will tell, but while I grant that this team is better than I thought, given all they lost from last season I have a hard time envisioning them moving into the top 15 and staying there.

Staying there? That will be tough. Getting there? Win the next 2, and it might be top-ten.

I haven’t touched on any football stuff for a while, so time to just see what’s out there.

Pitt ended the season in both polls ranked #15. Best ranking since ’82. First time with 10 wins since ’82. Seems like a trend.

With the season over, that means it is time to project way-too-early-top-25 lists. Pitt gets placed at the same spot by ESPN.com.

15. Pittsburgh Panthers

Pitt finally got over the hump under coach Dave Wannstedt, who led his alma mater to its first 10-win season since 1981. The Panthers will have to replace quarterback Bill Stull and three starting offensive linemen, but they’ll have two of the country’s best playmakers in tailback Dion Lewis and receiver Jonathan Baldwin. At least five starters will have to be replaced on defense, too, including All-Big East defensive tackle Mick Williams, linebacker Adam Gunn, and cornerbacks Aaron Berry and Jovani Chappel. Wannstedt hopes junior defensive end Greg Romeus is coming back for his senior season. Pitt plays an aggressive nonconference schedule, with road contests at Utah and Notre Dame and a home game against Miami. The Panthers will play Big East road games at Connecticut and Cincinnati and will play Rutgers and West Virginia at home.

I expect Pitt will be ranked pre-season anywhere from 13-24 in most of the polls. Pitt will likely be picked to win the conference. I would hesitate to make the early suggestion that Rutgers might be a darkhorse after they failed miserably in the role of sleeper/darkhorse Big East favorite. That said, they have done very well in recruiting and have a very good QB in place with Savage.

Speaking of talented freshman, Dion Lewis earned Freshman All-American status. In Paul Zeise’s ranging and interesting off-season posts on the football team (dare we say Gorman-esque), he touches on Lewis already back at work.

But Lewis is special for so many reasons and here is yet another one – he is reportedly already hitting the winter conditioning program with a vengeance because he understands how hard it is going to be for him to repeat what he did this past season now that he’ll be a marked man. He’s as serious of a player as I’ve ever been around in terms of, being great matters to him and he is more than willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that.

How do you come close to matching a season like that? Few players are lucky enough to have one season like that, and he did it as a freshman. Well, more pressure on the O-line to help match the job done last year.

The issue of DC Phil Bennett’s seemingly imminent departure back to Texas remains oddly minor. We do know he isn’t going to work at Texas A&M.

That doesn’t mean he will necessarily be back – he and Dave Wannstedt are set to sit down face to face tomorrow for the first time since the bowl game and they will no doubt discuss his future. When Phil was hired two years ago it was thought to be a short-term kind of hire so it will be interesting to see how this ultimately plays out. There are still a number of jobs out there and his family is still in Texas with no plans to move here to Pittsburgh, so Bennett could still be moving on as he had told a few people was his plan during the season, but it seems fairly clear that if he is leaving, he isn’t going to Texas A&M as defensive coordinator.

The angst is relatively low because his reasons for leaving are mainly family — so it isn’t personal or job performance related. Also, there is the fact that Greg Gattuso will likely take over in what seems like a no-brainer. Finally, and probably most important, Coach Wannstedt is a defensive coach. The defense has his fingerprints all-over it and so the presumption is the DC is less vital than a good OC. In that respect, it is much like the lack of angst from Cal fans when OC Cignetti left Cal for Pitt last year.

And as I hoped/suspected, the Dave Walker to ‘Cuse rumor looks like bunk.

The David Walker to Syracuse stuff is another thing flying in internet land but in doing some digging, that thing just doesn’t have many legs or much to it. The only way that would happen is if Walker were going to be hired as the offensive coordinator and that isn’t the case. He has been here now since 2005, has made a life here for his family and isn’t likely going to make a lateral move, especially to another Big East school.

Looking at recruiting news, well not so much news as what the kids are doing. The Big 33 roster for Pennsylvania was announced. Six Pitt recruits were on the roster: Aaron Donald, Kevin Weatherspoon, Andrew Carswell, Khaynin Mosley-Smith, Salath Williams and Anthony Gonzalez. Or 6 out of the 10 HS senior Pitt commits from Pennsylvania.

Minor surprise when looking over the verbal commit list. Of the 24 verbals, only 11 (including Todd Thomas) come from Pennsylvania. Yes, there is a lot to do with trying to expand the recruiting base and losing out on some of the best players to Penn State and Ohio State, but it also has something to do with this being something of a down year for Pennsylvania talent.

Mark Meyers, the St. Ignatius (OH) QB commit that seems to have captured more than a few fans’ fancy as to the possibility of competing right away for the starting job, has been named to the USA Football team.

…Myers has been selected to play in USA Football’s Team USA vs. The World game Jan. 30 in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

The game, which will be televised live by NFL Network, matches USA Football’s 2010 Junior National team — 45 of the country’s top high school seniors — against a world team composed of 45 of the best players aged 19 and under from eight other countries.

So there is that.

Sorry about late to post anything. I was running late on the Saturday viewing guide.

You will excuse me if I don’t get too worked up over anything published first and only on FootballScoop.com. They are willing to publish just about any rumor. The fact that a newspaper blog is going with the report only tells me how afraid newspapers are of being scooped and bypassed now.

Former Akron head football coach J.D. Brookhart, who was fired after the season, has spoken to Syracuse head coach Doug Marrone about one of the Orange staff vacancies, according to FootballScoop.com. The web site reported yesterday that Marrone had also spoken to Akron quarterbacks coach Walt Harris and hoped to talk with former SU running back David Walker. The curious connection or coicidence here is that Harris is a former Pitt head coach; Brookhart is a former Pitt assistant and Walker is currently on the Pitt staff coaching the running backs.

So here’s what amuses me. Syracuse needs a new offensive coordinator, receivers coach and running back coach. Yesterday the rumor surfaced about Marrone wanting to talk to Dave Walker and that he may have spoken to Walt Harris.

I’ve made no secret how highly I think of Dave Walker, and any rumors of his departure bug me. So a couple of Syracuse bloggers and I exchanged tweets over this sudden interest in Pitt related coaches leading to this from me:

@HoyaSuxa @NunesMagician Here’s the deal. You can have Harris and we’ll even toss in ex-Akron coach Brookhart, but we keep Walker.

Now the next day a rumor site says that Brookhart and Marrone talked. Hmm.

I’m not saying someone passed along Brookhart as a fake tip for their own amusement. But, um, it has happened before.

The Coach Dixon Radio Show kicks off tonight. I really wish they would put them out as podcasts — then I might actually listen. I am guessing that it will be streamed — either via the flagship 970 or one of the affiliates (listed in the press release). The show, though, airs from 6-7 and there is little chance at that time to go sit by the computer to listen. I suppose I could use a stream-ripper but that would mean remembering and still having to be home to start the recording. Seems like way too much work. If anyone has a good suggestion to time-shift that is free or if there are podcasts, let me know.

Bob Smizik is now declaring Coach Dixon the best coach in the ‘Burgh, while taking swipes at the talent levels and recuiting. Really, do you think there would be a Smizik column/post without the glass at least somewhat half-empty?

That’s what sets Dixon apart. He can win with lesser talent. Some might call that a knock on his recruiting ability, and there’s an element of truth to that. But the fact remains: Dixon regularly wins with less talent.

That is the mark of a great coach.

Nobody gets their players to play harder, no one gets a greater commitment to defense and team.

He takes the ordinary and makes them excellent. There’s no better example of that on the current team than Ashton Gibbs, the leading scorer. He was an mid-level recruit who is turning into an outstanding player. That’s a typical Dixon story. Gibbs is playing at an all-Big East level. No one had the right to expect that. But Dixon, with plenty of help from Gibbs, got him to that point.

Gibbs finally snapped his consecutive FTs made streak at 46. He has missed only 4 FTs all season. As if in counterpoint, Nasir Robinson has missed 13 straight going back to the beginning of December.

As usual, though, free throw shooting remains a consistent worry. Last year, Pitt shot 67.6% on free throws. Presently they aren’t too far away at 66.4%. Wanamaker is shooting 67% down from nearly 75% last year, though Dixon is hitting 76% which is up from 66%. Woodall is under 62%. Dante Taylor is tolerable at 62.5%. Gilbert Brown’s sample size is still too small to judge fairly. I don’t think I want to even discuss Gary McGhee (51.3), Nasir Robinson (30) and even Lamar Patterson (54.5).

Still, a 3-0 start in the Big East has raised expectations. Seriously, though, Elite Eight — based on this plan? That would only happen if there was a confluence of incredible leaps in development, several souls being sold and flat-out freaky luck.

Gilbert Brown has come out of his suspension looking like he has played most of the season. This despite not practicing or conditioning with the team or coaches since his suspension. Despite playing more of a power forward than a small forward. And still coming off the bench. He did have time to learn the last couple years what Sam Young was doing and prepared for it after last season ended.

“I’ve talked to Gilbert about it,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “We kind of want to use him similar to Sam. We ran a lot of sets for him that we ran for Sam. He finished strong, and he made some plays.”

Brown, who missed the first 11 games while on academic suspension, scored a career-high 17 points — 13 in the second half — in a 74-71 victory at Cincinnati. The redshirt junior forward scored nine consecutive points for No. 23 Pitt in a critical second-half surge, capped by a soaring, attack-the-rim, baseline dunk that harkened some of Young’s memorable slams.

The complaint about Coach Dixon’s approach has been that he is playing too many guys out of position. That he is not taking advantage of their natural ability at the right spot.

The flip side to that is how much it increases the versatility of the players and gives the team much more flexibility. It is part of the reason for the long-term success at Pitt under Dixon. The team can survive injuries better and not have to change the system as much.

To take the Sam Young example. Young fought and pouted about being forced into playing power forward when his size and ability suggested keeping him exclusively at the small forward spot. Instead, he learned to play inside better, play more defense and develop a more rounded game. It not only helped Pitt better when Blair had foul trouble. It helped his overall development as a player.

Brown returning clearly helped by increasing the team’s ability to score and improved their intensity. It also takes some pressure off of other players to produce and minutes needed. The other factor was in terms of practicing. With playing defense and immediately buying into what Dixon has taught about playing out of position. The team has more energy and intensity as it gets through to them.

While the addition of his two veterans has been a big part of the team’s improvement the rest of the players deserve a lot of credit, as well, the coach said. For one thing, some players lost some minutes they were getting early in the season to make room in the lineup for Jermaine Dixon and Brown; for another, the other players have all improved and most because they have responded to the challenges given to them by the coaching staff.

“We’ve challenged these guys to improve. They’re taking the responsibility,” Jamie Dixon said. “And I think they’re enjoying improving. Some guys don’t want to change, they want to stay the same. But these guys want to get better and they are. I think there’s a real understanding our mentality was we’re not going to be the same team in January as we were in November.

“[Brown] is getting better defensively and he’s getting more comfortable, especially on defense. Even though he’s been here three years, it really is like starting over for him, but he is continuing to improve — as they all are.”

Welcome to the meme. It’s about not doubting Coach Dixon and Pitt. It’s about proving the doubters wrong. No doubt.

Gary Parrish at CBS offered up his mea culpa.

Basically, it taught me to keep my big mouth shut, and that Jamie Dixon is now worthy of earning The Bo Ryan Treatment. What’s The Bo Ryan Treatment, you ask? It’s when you resist the urge to doubt a team with a questionable roster for no other reason than the man coaching the team has proved capable of winning with any kind of roster. Ryan is the first member I put in that club, and I wrote about it last month.

Over the past three days, it’s become obvious that Dixon should join him because the 44-year-old California native just backed Saturday’s win at Syracuse with a win at Cincinnati, otherwise known as a place Connecticut recently lost.

For those of you who don’t follow Parrish, he has an amusing weekly feature on his blog where he rips questionable poll voting. He spent several ripping an AP voter from Georgia who kept ranking Pitt — even after the Indiana loss. I think it is a worthy feature, since I hate bad voting. Of course, others take it personally when their team is singled out. He even conceded to wanting a do-over on his top-25 from Monday.

Moving on to more doubting themes, Adam Zagoria at SNY caught up with Ashton Gibbs after Pitt’s bus ride back from Cinci.

“We’ve been having a lot of doubters from the beginning since we lost a lost of big-time players,” Gibbs said. “But everyone in that locker room knows what they can do and we all have confidence in each other and it’s really starting to show.”

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon says he plans to use the 6-6, 210-pound Brown in ways he utilized Young, now with the Memphis Grizzlies.

“We ran some sets for [Brown], and we want to use him similar to Sam. He finished strong and made some plays,” Dixon said after the Cincinnati game.

Both Jermaine Dixon and Brown add experience to a young team that features six freshmen and two sophomores. With Dixon back, former St. Anthony star Travon Woodall, a redshirt freshman, now comes off the bench

“They can play multiple positions and they really work hard and they’re leaders on our team,” Gibbs said. “It starts from the defensive end with those guys and it’s really carrying over to the offensive end as well.”

The numbers back up the defensive emphasis.

Speaking of that 2009 team, I spent the balance of last year yelling and waving my arms in an effort to convince people that the old Pitt stereotypes (rugged D, points scored with more brute force than skill) no longer applied and that this was one incredible offense. Indeed it was, but this year it might be time to move one step back toward the good old Panther preconceptions of yore.

You could make a case that this 2010 team is comprised of a strong defense that for the past three games has been momentarily joined by an offense that is hitting shots like crazy (e.g., sinking 45 percent of their threes in conference play). Sophomore Ashton Gibbs has said thank you very much for the available minutes and rather quietly emerged as one of the more impressive pure shooters you’ll find anywhere. For the year Gibbs is hitting 94 percent of his free throws (against the Bearcats last night he went 10-of-11) and 41 percent of his threes while taking the bulk of the shots for this offense. Pitt’s not as good as they were last year, but right now they’re much better than expected.

Coach Dixon of course, is not buying into the surprise (publicly, anyways).

I’m shocked that Pittsburgh has put together consecutive road wins against previously unbeaten Syracuse and Cincinnati.

Panthers coach Jamie Dixon? Not surprised at all.

“It can’t happen if you don’t believe it can happen,” Dixon said on Tuesday morning, shortly after his team knocked off Cincinnati on the road the night before.

Pitt is part of the group of teams that have beaten expectations already.