Looks like with Pitt not playing until Saturday and most resources and interest being focused on the Steelers and the Super Bowl, Pitt will have a day or so of obscurity locally.

Just this story recapping Pitt’s rebound from the St. John’s loss to beating Syracuse. It essentially highlights the good (bench scoring, Keith Benjamin and Carl Krauser) and almost (rebounding improved). Kind of avoided the bad (Gray’s inconsistent foul troubles and missing easy buckets).

The biggest problem media coverage in college sports is that there are so many teams, that coverage is spotty, inconsistent and not terribly accurate. It’s hard, and college basketball is more brutal than college football with all of the mid-majors and basketball only schools. National media writers just can’t see it all to get a clear picture because they simply can’t spend enough time watching them — except for the prestige/name schools that have gotten the national following over extended time: Kentucky, UNC, Duke, UCLA, Kansas.

A couple examples come from CSTV.com articles in the last week. I will give the writers credit. They admit they had yet to see Pitt actually play prior to watching them at Rutgers and versus Syracuse. It’s a good thing, because they saw different things from Pitt.

Here’s the Rutgers game story:

But how has a team that struggled for consistency last season with all-conference frontcourt players — like the departed Chevy Troutman and Chris Taft — managed to resurge so brilliantly without them?

Blame Canada.

Or, more specifically, junior combo forward Levon Kendall, the native of Vancouver, B.C., who’s enjoying a breakout season for the unbeaten Panthers.

“Levon’s a very good player and his numbers sometimes don’t indicate how good he is,” Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon said. “His rebound totals have been very good for the minutes he’s played, with the rotation we’ve got. He’s a great defender — not a good defender, but a great defender. He gives us so many things.”

The 6-foot-9 Kendall is a smooth mover, an instinctive rebounder with the fundamentals to start his own instructional video series. He’s physical enough to make a living as an effective post player, but has the handling ability to play facing the basket. With his controlled demeanor — always remaining within his tempo — Kendall is the type of guy who routinely makes his opponents pay for their lapses in concentration.

In the Rutgers game, Kendall had one of his best all-around game with 14 points and 13 boards. We’ve seen this team all year long. And while I think Kendall has become a good player (more so than many of you think), this article gave me a laugh for being so far over the top.

Another one of the CSTV.com analysts saw Pitt for the first time against Syracuse — mainly to talk about how bad Syracuse looked. He also said this:

On the flip side, Pitt looked good. Not great, but good. Having seen Carl Krauser in person for the first time this year, I’m a believer. Not only did he score 32 points, but he passed the ball, played great defense and fired up his teammates and the crowd on multiple occasions. He genuinely looked like he was having fun. It has helped his game that he’s playing mostly at the two-guard spot, a step away from ball handling responsibilities.

What if his first viewing of Pitt had been at MSG versus St. John’s? Can you imagine what he would have thought of Krauser then?

On the plus side, he was accurate in this:

As a final aside, it was a great atmosphere for college hoops. I’ve seen and listened to some rabid student sections, but the “Zoo” was jumping, moving and screaming the whole game, so props to them.

This is often called “parachute journalism,” where it is more important to show that the media organization was reporting from the scene, then to actually know what is going on. It’s common in all types of reporting (not just sports). It’s part of how Jayson Blair from the NY Times got caught — he failed to parachute, instead reporting and making things up from his apartment.

Andy Katz in his ESPN.com blog (Insider Subs.) has a couple things worth noting. He included Carl Krauser on his Wooden Award watch list. Voters had to narrow their choices down to 30 for this round. Krauser probably doesn’t have a shot at the award, but hopefully he’ll make the cut-down.

Katz from a couple days ago pointed out a flaw in the Big East Tournament set-up:

If the season were to end today, there would be a three-way tie at the bottom of the Big East for the 12th and final spot in the conference tournament. Louisville, Notre Dame and Providence are all 1-4, with DePaul and South Florida at 1-5 and 0-5, respectively. The problem for the Big East will come if two teams tie for 12th and didn’t play each other this season. The league is figuring out that tiebreaking procedure.

Whoops.

Now for a continuing theme on Doug Gottlieb. In his Weekly Watch offers this bit of meaningless puff:

We will find out how tough-minded Pittsburgh is over the next five games. Any road conference game is difficult, and for the second straight year, St. John’s beat Pitt in the Garden, but upcoming games at home versus Syracuse (Big Monday) and Marquette, on the road against UConn and Georgetown, then back home for West Virginia (the Backyard Brawl is a phenomenal football rivalry) will show if Pitt is for real.

Uh, okay. What does that mean? Does Pitt just need to go 3-2 over the 5 games to show if they are “for real?” 4-1? A 5-0 sweep? He doesn’t say. That way, he can decide later what he wants to say about Pitt without having to show that he holds no opinion — other than the opposite one of others on the radio or camera.