Since everyone is still bummed about yesterday’s loss, here’s a distraction.

For the most part, I haven’t given much thought to our erstwhile Backyard Brawl brethren. Still certain stories catch the eye.

Turns out those travel burdens in the Big 12 are as onerous as expected. If not more so. To the point where the Big 12 may have to help.

West Virginia University’s athletic department and the Big 12 Conference have agreed to attempt to make some travel changes to accommodate the problems the Mountaineers faced during their first season in the league.

Athletic Director Oliver Luck says the league offered no guarantees because “scheduling is always a challenge” but the league has agreed to attempt to make life on the road easier in a number of areas when it can.

WVU geographically is out of place in the Big 12, with every trip not only being of 1,700 miles round trip or more but fighting a time zone change which costs them an hour returning to Morgantown.

Football did not present as much of a problem as basketball, with weekly trips and mostly weekend games, but, according to Luck, the league was agreeable to trying to arrange it so the Mountaineers do not have to travel on back-to-back weeks for conference games during the season.

The Big 12 has to be as helpful as possible to the Hoopies. Oh, they aren’t going anywhere, but if the Big 12 ever hopes to snag a school from the ACC — as WV message boarders often predict to be imminent — then they need to make it appear as if the travel problems are not insurmountable and screwing teams in the Eastern timezone that happen to be over 1700 miles from the rest of the conference members.

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I sat down to watch the game around 10 pm last night. It’s been that kind of a week. So I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Where to begin.

First, it has to be recognized just how on James Southerland was in this game. Perfect from outside. Yes, the defense — especially in the first half — was a step slow. But he was knocking everything down regardless. He was 6-9 the day before against Seton Hall. It was infectious. Syracuse finished the game shooting 12-19 on 3s. Everywhere else they were 10-28.

The three point shooting made the difference, that could not quite be overcome. The effects of the double-bye were once more readily apparent in the first half. Pitt was just not as ready at the start of the game. Syracuse had more energy. They were getting rebounds and extra chances. They outrebounded Pitt 18-14 in the first half. Something that might be simply explained as having more chances at defensive rebounds since Pitt shot  35% to their 53%. That wasn’t it.

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