It is about the only interesting twist on the CBI. When it comes time for the championship match-up it is not a one-game set where you can never be be sure who gets hot once. A best of three makes it a little more interesting. At least, that is what I’m telling myself.

10 pm Eastern for a game on the West Coast. The Washington State Cougars are possibly to probably down a key player tonight. Given the overall remoteness of Pullman Washington, the Cougars don’t get many visitors from the East Coast — especially the Big East.

After all, Pitt is about to become just the second current member of the Big East to play a game in Pullman, and the first since that conference was formed in 1979.

DePaul is the only current Big East team that has played a game here, losing 83-69 to WSU on Dec. 11, 1974.

“Pullman’s not a fun place to play,” for a visiting team, senior forward Abe Lodwick said. “It’s not an easy place to get to, either, so I understand why a lot of programs don’t come. It’ll be fun having a team with a big name on their chest coming in. We definitely want to represent ourselves and our school as best we can against them.”

“Playing Pitt here, it’s a big-name school coming in and giving us some publicity over on the East Coast for recruits and stuff,” said freshman guard DaVonte Lacy. “I think it’s a real good opportunity for us and hopefully we take advantage of it.”

The latter may be difficult without [forward Brock] Motum, who leads the team in scoring at 18 points per game. Coach Ken Bone said the junior forward has a “very slim chance” to play after spraining his right ankle early in WSU’s 72-55 semifinal win over Oregon State last week.

It’s on HDNet. Just going with the open thread and some life on Twitter for this.

There’s closer to 3 than 2 weeks of spring practices left, but Sunday was the 7th practice and there are only 15 practice days permitted for the spring. There’s going to be some more spacing between practices as scrimmages will take place and more recovery — and time for coaches to review the film — occurs. Time to catch-up after sparing some family time in between the NCAA Tournament watching over the weekend.

The beat writers are taking extra note of the amount of high school coaches in the area that are attending Pitt practices — not to mention ex-PSU DC Tom Bradley — along with a fair amount of recruits and kids who will be here in the fall.

One thing that is clear about Paul Chryst – he is being embraced by the high school coaches in Western Pennsyvlania and the reason is – he is open to them and he wants them to know he values them and values what they mean to Pitt. I’ve seen more high school coaches at these few spring practices than I did all of last year and all of them have said the same thing – they really like and respect Chryst because as one guy put it “he’s a football coach, not a publicity hound” That should help Pitt recruiting locally, though, ultimately Chryst has to win for Pitt to have a chance to win some of these local battles.

That will help, especially given Chryst is not exactly a recruiting dynamo that overwhelms recruits, and everyone else with his personality and sales job. Obviously the hiring of Haering from the local HS ranks helps, but Chryst’s willingness to talk and meet with them is the bigger part. Talking shop with them and treating them as equals goes a long way.

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