Okay, just to get this out of the way, there will be an attempt at a liveblog tomorrow evening. I say attempt, because the system has changed. For the past several years, I have used Cover-it-Live for liveblogs. This spring, CiL moved to a pay system. And boy do they want you to pay. If I have the numbers roughed out, it would cost somewhere north of $750 a year to run it with the present readership.

So, I’m going to give a new service a go, called Cbox. I’ll have it posted tomorrow afternoon.

I keep telling myself there is no time to dwell on the YSU game, then I start thinking about how slow the team looked on Saturday. I hope the slowness is because the players were hesitating. Still getting acclimated to the new system, the verbiage, their assignments, etc. Coach Chryst is all about the hesitancy view.

On the major issues he saw with the defensive performance Saturday night:

“I thought tackling. We tackled quite a bit in fall camp and I thought guys played a little bit hesitant. Also I really do think Youngstown State executed their offense pretty well. Their running back, I loved how he runs and knew that on film. I think the tackling…we had some opportunities that could have changed the sticks. Not hitting clean and one pressure, we don’t impact that, so there are certain areas. That’s the great thing, it really was, that at the end of that game we all could take ownership in it (the loss) and that there are areas we all can get better at. That’s good, that’s tangible, it’s on film. This is something we can do better at here. You hope to make the most improvement from game one to two and we certainly need to. There are things that we can focus on.”

Yes, and the tackling. I kept muttering, “Tackle, don’t hit,” during the game that I started having Paul Rhoads flashbacks. Apparently that is now part of the “back to basics” of practice this week.

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Finally. Finally. Finally.

As expected, the press release wants to emphasize the Big East portion of the schedule. Especially to sell season tickets. The Pre-Season NIT Kickoff thing, is going to be where Pitt will sink or swim with RPI.

As we all knew, the home non-con slate is horrid. The best Pitt could land to replace what it had assumed was a SEC team was Detroit on December 1. The season opener is November 9 with Mount St. Mary’s. Then Pitt jumps right into the Pre-Season NIT with Lehigh, Robert Morris and/or Fordham in the next two games.

The Big East schedule is going to be heavily nationally televised. Fourteen of the first fifteen Big East games are going to be televised on ESPN channels (real ones, not ESPN3) and CBS. Only a home game with DePaul gets excluded from TV for the first 15 Big East games. The remaining 3 Big East games will be on ESPN3 or the syndicated Big East Network.

But that non-con. Ugh. Howard, North Florida, Kennesaw St., Delaware St., Bethune-Cookman, Oakland are on the home slate. It’s not pretty for November and December.

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Is the negative experience of Saturday night starting to dissipate yet?  No? Well tomorrow’s another day as they say in show business and they also say the show must go on.  So even if we’d prefer the 2012 season to end right now as some PITT fans might, there will be more games.  Its not me threatening you with this – blame Steve Pederson.

Tomorrow night PITT goes into Cincinnati coming off what can easily be termed the worst pure loss in its history because of the conference level of the YSU team being D-II quality.  I say ‘pure loss’ because the 48-14 loss to Penn State when we had a shot at the NC game and the more recent come from behind loss to Cincy with a Big East championship BCS game on the line affected PITT’s season’s standings more than this YSU loss can.  In reality the YSU loss means nothing in relation to the BE conference play.  Psychologically though it was devastating.

So, the first and foremost thing PITT fans will want to see is how we’ll bounce back from something like that.  I’m not calling for a win, you may have to be insane to do that, but I believe we’ll acquit ourselves better than we did last week.  Put it this way, as disappointed as I was in the last game’s result I wasn’t shocked as I talked about it before the kickoff.  Just as with that, I won’t be shocked if PITT wins tomorrow night either.  I’d just never bet on it or publicly predict it.

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Oh, come on. First it was the Pre-season NIT. But that finally seems resolved.

According to a source with direct knowledge, the four pods will look like this for the 16-team even that will end with semifinals and finals in New York over Thanksgiving: Host – Kansas State (North Texas, Lamar, D-2 TBD); Host — Pitt (Fordham, Robert Morris, Lehigh); Host — Michigan (Bowling Green, Cleveland State, IUPUI); Host — Virginia (Penn, Fairfield, Delaware). Michigan and Virginia should be the two locks to get to New York based on the pods. Pitt will have a legitimately tall task getting past Lehigh, but should prevail at home…

[Emphasis added].

That should mean Pitt could finally release the schedule for the basketball team. Wait. Now it’s the Big East?

The Big East has sent its conference schedule twice to the conference teams. The league office has run into one issue that has slowed up the full release of the schedule. The 15 Big East schools have seen the schedule, but can’t put it out until this “issue” — likely with a game or site — is cleared up.

There’s going to be a lot of rush orders sent to printers in the Big East this month.

UPDATE (9:18): And just like that, the Big East tweets that the conference schedule will be posted at noon.