It’s been a while since I’ve been to a basketball game. Even longer since I made it to a season finale. I’m excited. Big thanks to Jeff in CPa. for the invite. The liveblog today will be in the always capable hands of Luke. I’ll be tweeting in from the game. Win and the Big East title is Pitt’s without any sharing (though, I admit that I still want ND to lose to UConn in the earlier game — just to play it safe).

Pitt players have been saying they wish to avoid the slow start in games. Still working on that. Same with free throws. Some of that may have to do with seeing zones thrown at them recently. It has caught them off-guard even though they said they expect it.

The one thing I noticed during the first half of the USF game was not simply Pitt missing shots. It was the poor rebounding. The Bulls are actually good at rebounding. It’s one of their few strengths, but Pitt was just poor — especially on the offensive glass. Pitt only had 5 offensive rebounds despite the volume of missed shots.

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Tomorrow the season ends. Oh, there’s still the Big East Tournament and of of course the NCAA Tournament. It’s the end of the regular season. The conference and non-con games come to an end.  It seems too soon.

“You like to sit there and think it is never going to come to an end, but it really is this Saturday,” he said.

Pitt seniors Brown, Gary McGhee and Brad Wanamaker will play their final game at 4 p.m. Saturday at Petersen Events Center, when the Panthers (26-4, 14-3) play Villanova.

On the line: A chance to clinch only the school’s third outright Big East regular-season championship in 29 seasons and enter the conference tournament next week as the No. 1 seed.

A loss would mean Pitt may have to settle for co-champion status with Notre Dame.

“We don’t want to share anything,” Brown said.

Brown wants this weekend to be special, something only to share with his teammates.

And of course the fans.

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As a rule, I’m not a fan of “zero tolerance” policies. I don’t think its’ the ex-lawyer in me, I’ve never been a big supporter of them. Too many overreactions, and no shades of gray. Everyone wants the bright-line rule, but life isn’t that neat and tidy. And all too often they are reactionary not to actual problems but to the glaring spotlight of attention and scare reports.

/climbs down from soapbox

Pitt made no such announcement yesterday when Coach Todd Graham and AD Steve Pederson met with the media in light of the SI.com story that featured Pitt as the #1 team in terms of arrests in college football. The implications are there, but then they were already in place when Graham (and Haywood for that matter) was hired.

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If I had to do the same again

I would, my friend, Fernando…

If I have to have that miserable effing Abba song running through my head, you’re all going down with me.

Some deep recess of my mind dredged that song from the depths after Fernando M. Diaz, made sure that he was never coming back to the Pitt football team.

Diaz, who grew up in New York City, participated in preseason drills in August before leaving the team for personal reasons. He had wanted to return for spring drills, but Pitt coach Todd Graham said Wednesday he is no longer welcome.

“He will no longer be a part of our program,” Graham said.

Honestly, I know I should be aghast at the details and it reflecting on Pitt, yada, yada, yada. But, if this happened somewhere else I would be laughing and snickering quite a bit, so what the hell.

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Stuck working all afternoon, and no where near a computer. This is why I was really ticked about the SI.com story. It meant no chance to do any basketball stuff before the game.

So, I have to set this up now, and set it to go out a little later.

This is one of the can’t lose games. USF is really bad. Pitt, though, didn’t give a good effort last time. They had about 15 minutes and that was enough. They need to do more this time.

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Crud. I wanted to focus on basketball today and for a little while. That went out the window with the SI/CBS News freakout piece on Criminal Records in College Football. I still would have ignored it as being yet another piece without a lot of context, but plenty of scary numbers and implied accusations.

But there’s a problem. Pitt got to be the poster-boy for this.

Few football programs had a more difficult season in 2010 than the University of Pittsburgh. Led by running back Dion Lewis, a Doak Walker candidate, the Panthers were the preseason pick to win the Big East and go to a BCS bowl. But things quickly began unraveling — on and off the field.

In a span between mid-July and late September, four players were arrested for four separate, violent crimes.

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Before this rash of arrests, Pitt had no procedure for screening football recruits for past trouble with the law. But after Knox’s arrest Pitt’s athletic department implemented a new policy requiring coaches to seek more detailed background information on potential recruits.

“This evaluation is not a legal criminal background check,” the school said in a statement. “Rather, it is a checklist of questions that attempts to gain greater knowledge of the behavior and citizenship of an individual prospect from a variety of people.”

It’s a good first step, but doesn’t go far enough. An unprecedented six-month investigation by Sports Illustrated and CBS News found that Pittsburgh had more players in trouble with the law (22) than any other school among SI’s 2010 preseason Top 25. The joint investigation involved conducting criminal background checks on every player — 2,837 in all — on the preseason rosters of those 25 teams. Players’ names, dates of birth and other vital information were checked at 31 courthouses and through 25 law enforcement agencies in 17 states. Players were also checked through one or more online databases that track criminal records. In all, 7,030 individual record checks were performed.

Pitt chancellor Mark Nordenberg and athletic director Steve Pederson declined requests for comment, but the school issued another statement, which said, “We have publicly acknowledged the unacceptable number of off-the-field incidents involving members of our football program during the past season. We have addressed these with the appropriate sanctions and spoke out against such behavior.”

And if you believe the undercurrents of rumors/message boards with the subtext of AD Pederson’s comments after Wannstedt’s firing, then you know part of the way it was addressed.

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I know, it’s March. Should be all about basketball. And for the most part it will be. Well, there will be spring practices starting in about 2 weeks. That will be a distraction.

Still, some links I’ve accumulated relating to football items, so I might as well clear the palate first.

Let’s start with the head man. Coach Todd Graham was back in Tulsa for a funeral and to take care of personal business as he makes the move to Pittsburgh (his wife Penni has been a Tweeting source of info). He spoke with a Tulsa World columnist to try and smooth over some hard feelings from his departure (and subsequently competing with Tulsa for some recruits).

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