…and we’ll play two very tough games and one moderately tough game to finish out the Big East regular season.
Here’s what we’re looking at before the Big East Tournament:
Date — Opponent
2/24 — Georgetown
2/27 — West Virginia
3/3 — at Marquette
So let’s take a look at what’s on the schedule. The beginning of the end starts with a Georgetown team that is streaking and knocked Pitt off from the top of the B.E. Power Poll for the first time all year. The winner of Saturday’s game will not only be atop the power poll but will also likely be the #1 seed in the Big East Tournament.
To be honest, I don’t want Pitt to be the top seed because it means a noon tipoff up in NYC. In order for that to happen, we’d need to lose another game though; not a big fan of that option. A lose-lose situation — damn.
Back to this game though. A loss to Georgetown would make a ton of people uneasy. Actually, a sloppy game that we win will still make people a bit shifty. We need a solid game from every single player soon enough so that we can all calm down a bit. I’m not freaking out, just a little uneasy.
Then we host the Mountaineers and will avoid seeing this guy. Losing to them would be a big downer for a few reasons. First off, it’s WVU. West F#%&in Virginia. I hate losing to them and I’m sure you feel the same way. Losing to a team with an RPI below 50 doesn’t look too great and right now they sit at 53 according to ESPN but that could/will certainly change by next Tuesday. By the way, they aren’t a great team at home and the Zoo should have some fun with them.
Oh yeah, did I mention we really don’t want to lose just because they’re WVU?
To close out the regular season are the Marquette Dominic James’. They live and die by his shot which means depending on how the 2 1/2 weeks leading up to the game work out will determine this game’s importance. By that time we might have already wrapped up the reg. season title…or we could be fighting for the 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th spot. Either way, both teams will want to go into the conference tournament on a good note.
It should be a fun stretch before the greatest time of the year (gotta love filling out your brackets, don’t ya?). If I had to predict, I’d say we beat WVU and split with Georgetown/Marquette. After watching this Pitt team though it would be no surprise to see us run the table or go 1-2 (because we’re not losing to West Virginia).
with that said, we can beat them…we already have, and it can happen again….we need the 3’s to fall though…its been 4 games since we hit some shots……….
and dennis – you’re definitely right about the mixed emotions with the gametimes…most of me wants the title, but theres a small selfish part of me that wants the 9PM game on thursday…….
