We’ve got ourselves a nooner.

Let’s get this out of the way quickly. Obviously it’s ESPN3.com or ESPN Full Court’s package. But there are plenty of other outlet options for this one. Root Sports Pittsburgh, Sports Time Ohio, YES, NESN, CSN Fox Sports South and others.

It’s been a decade since Pitt faced the Hokies in basketball, but it seems like nothing has changed. In the Big East they were a bottom feeder with rare spurts of slightly below average performances. In the ACC, more of the same.

Because of the basketball only morons of  Big East history, VT only played basketball in the Big East for four years. They finished last in the conference/division three times. This year in the ACC, VT is dead last with only one conference win (Miami). But on the plus side, they did beat the Hoopies.

Their head coach was hired on the cheap and out of desperation. The new VT AD is all but being forced to declare the guy a dead coach walking for the few VT fans that actually notice they have a basketball team and not pining for Seth Greenberg.

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The other side of the coin on signing day is that within days afterwards you see assistant and especially position coaches fired or move on to another job. Those that stay through signing day are the ones that have key relationships with recruits and the head coach doesn’t want to have anything change at the last minute.

But after signing day…

Rumors about WR Coach Bobby Engram swirled on signing day. That he was one of three candidates for the WR Coach with the Baltimore Ravens. Naturally Head Coach Paul Chryst claimed not to know anything about it when asked at the signing day press conference. The question had to be asked, even if the non-denial was fully expected.

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Lots of gallows humor with last night’s Pitt-Miami game. Miami plays an even slower tempo than Virginia. And it was a slog.

Pitt escaped with the win. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t good basketball. It still counts as a win.

Pitt is struggling. The reasons are obvious. Zanna is clearly hobbled with the ankle sprain he suffered on Sunday, but he is still the best option for Pitt so Coach Jamie Dixon is playing him the same minutes.

“We fought through, obviously Talib is not 100 percent,” Dixon said. “There is no doubt about that, and we had foul trouble from a number of our guys and we had to put some guys at different spots. We had to win fight through some things to win a game against the reigning ACC champion.

“It is a win on the road, another road win and there aren’t a lot of those in conference play, and we have four of them and there aren’t too many teams that have four road wins.”

Teams are now keying on Lamar Patterson. He came up big at the end of the first half and late in the game, but he is getting no room on the court.

Part of that lack of space for Patterson is no one else stepping up. Well, Cam Wright is doing all he can. He kept Pitt going in the first half.

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2 game losing streak. Road game. Another slow-paced defensive-minded opponent.

Miami is off to a 2-6 start in the ACC. In no small part because their schedule has been brutal for what should be a middle to lower middle team in the ACC — Syracuse (twice), Duke, FSU, at Maryland.

The team plays a matchup zone defense.

“Theirs is a matchup zone, we haven’t seen a lot of that matchup zone this year. We’ve seen more of it in other years, but not so much this year,” Dixon said. “They also play a little bit of the Syracuse zone, a type of 2-3, but we saw it a little more in the Big East. It is something that coach Larranaga hasn’t played a lot of [in the past], but is this year because he feels it matches his personnel.

“They match up more with their three perimeter guys, they play more man-to-man on the ball than say a 2-3 zone.”

Dixon said the key to Miami’s zone is it slows teams down on offense. That meshes with the Hurricanes’ philosophy of keeping the possessions low and scoring down.

He said the only way to attack it successfully is to be patient. Dixon thought the Panthers were pretty good at that Sunday in the loss against Virginia but noted they were not good at making shots.

“I think we are good against a zone,” Dixon said. “The matchup zone is something that we prepare for, but we are also built to have success against zones because we pass it well and shoot it well. But it is something that we are going to have to be patient with and adjust [to] as they adjust as the game goes on.

The Canes have some length on the perimeter which is why they play the zone.

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Last year, there was a wide variance on Pitt’s recruiting class in terms of where it ranked against other programs. From 20 to greater than 40.

This year, the consensus is far less spread out. ESPN.com once more has Pitt outside their top-40 (and 9th overall in the ACC). Scout.com says #42. Rivals.com #43 and 247 at #44.

The loss of Wade Freebeck probably dropped Pitt anywhere from 1 to 3 spots in the rankings.

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Morning everyone. Got some coffee? Good. Did you add something to it other than a dairy product or sweetener? I’m not judging.

As expected the snow in the Cleveland area is closing schools, so I am homebound for at least the morning with the kids. The wife is still deciding whether to drive in to work. Either way, the National Signing Day open thread is ready for business.

The whole thing is so much more twitter driven, that this feels a little archaic, but it serves its purpose.

Pitt’s website goes live with signing day chatter at 8 am.

The key twitter accounts to follow are naturally from PantherLair (Rivals.com), PantherDigest (Scout.com) and Panther 247. Along with the Pitt football twitter account and local beat writers Sam Werner and Jerry DiPaola.

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Long. Extra long day of work. Put in the extra hours in no small part because the snow that is falling — yet again — will almost certainly cancel school  — yet again — for my kids. So, get the extra stuff done ahead of time so that taking most of Wednesday off is not a hassle. That it would just happen to land on signing day and let me stay home and watch tweets of a confirmations of recruits was just an extra bonus. Not an extra bonus — not being able to post/comment on a last minute flip of a recruit.

Just remember, Pitt. It’s not you, it’s him.

Quarterback Wade Freebeck said choosing Vanderbilt over Pitt wasn’t easy.

“It was very stressful,” he said Tuesday night. “I’m stressed out.”

Freebeck said he chose an opportunity to get a degree from Vanderbilt, one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the U.S., more than he passed on Pitt.

Freebeck said Vanderbilt’s “pedigree” — it was 17th in U.S. News & World Report’s 2013 university rankings — was the deciding factor.

“Football is football,” said Freebeck, who said he carries a 4.7 grade-point average at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “For me, if I can utilize it to get the best education, that’s what I want to do.”

He said giving Pitt coach Paul Chryst the bad news — after he had committed June 30 — was difficult.

“It was nothing Pitt lacked. They are definitely on the right track,” Freebeck said. “I was disappointed to have to tell him something like that. He was very understanding, a good person.”

I doubt that Chryst will give an answer, but at the presser this afternoon I would really like someone to ask him if Freebeck told him directly when he was at Pitt over this past weekend.

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This is not a this team sucks post. Nor is it a, this team is so close post.

Pitt has a good basketball team. In any conference, they would be in the upper half. I honestly see them as a top-30 team. Just a top-30 team.

It’s been something strange. Usually a team like this would have a bad loss and a good win mixed in. Instead, Pitt has no bad losses and no really good win. There are nice wins like Clemson and Stanford. Heck, even the sweep of Maryland is decent. But they aren’t big wins.

Conversely, the losses are not killers. All four losses are to teams presently in the top-25. Virginia, Duke and Syracuse are all in the KenPom.com top-10. All four losses are to teams in the RPI top-20.

I don’t know if that reality makes things better or worse.

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Hello, again. Offline world completely overwhelmed everything else this week. Hate to go to blaming the weather, but it was the major reason. Kids off for 3 days because of the weather. Wife in a fender-bender. Constantly moving, shifting and adjusting the work schedule to make everything work.

And now, after a Saturday when a drizzly, gray day was welcomed gratefully simply because it wasn’t bitterly cold and piling up more snow; it’s been snowing all morning. So after this post, it’s outside for shoveling.

Pitt’s had all week to stew over the Duke game. Now comes the Virginia team that is playing a lot like the Virginia team that was predicted to be a top ACC team and preseason top-25 team. They destroyed ND in South Bend — UVa had the Irish down 24 points with 7 minutes left before easing up to make it “only” a 15-point loss. Aside from their 4-point road loss to Duke, they have beaten all ACC opponents by at least 12 points.

Like Pitt, they are looking for quality wins. While they played a good non-con, they came away without any wins in those good games.

They have a stout defense and play at a deliberately slow pace. They value offensive efficiency. It all seems very familiar.

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