The Selection Show came and went without much surprise regarding Pitt. They fell in the 4/5 range that was expected and the biggest gripe right now is the location — our first (and second) round games are all the way out in Denver. The full bracket can be found here.

The top four seeds in our region, the South:

1. Memphis
2. Texas
3. Stanford
4. Pitt

Compared to the other regions, ours is not the hardest (East) nor the easiest (West).

The first game will be on Thursday, and game time is expected to be released tomorrow. Oral Roberts is the opponent — one of the most obscure and least-known teams in the field this year. Potential match ups down the road (should we win, of course) are interesting to look at:

1. The the second round we would face the (5)Michigan State vs (12)Temple winner. The quick thought is a Pitt-MSU meeting, but don’t put it past the Spartans to lose to Temple. If they can lose to Penn State, why not to a team that actually wins a few games?

2. Top seeded Memphis will likely await the winner of the Denver pod. So much has been made of “Calapari is a better coach than Dixon, we should have hired him” so how about settling it on the court. Memphis runs up and down the floor as fast as anyone, opposite of Pitt’s methodical and slower paced style.

Don’t get me wrong though, I haven’t forgot about Bradley and Pacific. Let’s get past Oral Roberts first.

The brackets are set so we might as well fill them ASAP. Like last year, the Pitt Blather bracket group will be on Yahoo. To join:

1) If you don’t already have a Yahoo account, sign up for one (easy and free)

2) Go here: http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/men/register/joingroup

3) Click join private group

The group ID is 67835 and the password is gopitt

If you somehow manage to crank out a perfect bracket, Yahoo will give you $5 million.

Interesting facts on filling out a perfect bracket:

— Because there are 64 games played in the tourney (including the play-in) and each game has two possible outcomes, there are 2⁶⁴ possible outcomes. That equals 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 (18.4 quintillion!) brackets you’d need to fill out to guarantee you get one perfectly correct.

— If every one of the 6.5 billion people on Earth filled out a bracket, the odds of someone (anyone!) achieving perfection are still slim to none.

So at 6pm on CBS the 2008 bracket will be unveiled. Prior to the Big East Tournament, Pitt was sitting around the 8/9 line. Four wins in four days has skyrocketed us up towards the 3/4/5/6 area. Some questions:

Who would you like to see in the first round?

Who do you think we should root against being matched up against?

Which #1 seed would you want to be in a region with?

Fans from around the country have been waiting for this night for a few months — now it’s here.

Sure I just stole a line from Dick Vitale that I just heard during the ACC semifinal, but last night was just awesome. I told my friends that against Louisville, we’d lose. Uh, way to go there Dennis. Then I told them we’d lose to Marquette just to keep the karma going strong. So I’ll say it again — Georgetown will beat us tonight. (wink, wink)

Levance Fields, who should have Madison Square Garden named after him, had to come through on something said before the game.

Levance Fields had his own end of the bargain to hold.

When top-seeded Georgetown went into its locker room at Madison Square Garden up 33-21 on West Virginia before Pitt’s semifinal game against Marquette last night, Hoyas guard Jessie Sapp, Fields’ friend, saw the Brooklyn-native point guard in the stands as he ran off.

“He gave me a high five and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Fields said.

Fields played a great. So did Ramon. So did Sam Young, Keith Benjamin, Tyrell Biggs, and Gil Brown. How many Marquette players played a great game? You could say Jerel McNeal, who led his team in points and steals, but he was in foul trouble for much of the game and turned the ball over so many times that his good numbers are outweighed by the bad. A leader is no good on the bench or handing the ball over to the other team.

“Obviously, [McNeal]’s a great player,” Dixon said. “I liked the way that we got him. We took some charges, and that was something that we emphasized going into this game, and that was big.”

The 16-4 run to start the game really set the tone from the beginning. Our starters played well and Marquette’s didn’t even bother to show up until the second half. Sam Young has pleasantly surprised me with his play during the BET. His head seems to always be in the game and he’s playing offense and defense.

I think coming into New York City we were somewhere around the 8/9 seed. The last two wins have probably shot us into the 6/7 range and a win over Georgetown tonight could get us as high as a fifth seed. The committee likes to look at how a team has played in recent games leading up to the tournament, and a win tonight would put us under a great light in the committee’s eyes.

Thanks to Don, editor of Mondesi’s House, for passing along Jim Colony’s Pitt-centric “Extra Point”.

This isn’t an actual “Extra Point”, since the already recorded Friday one was about Bob Knight being the latest guy who used to hate the media to join the media (see Parcells, B. and Sharpe, S.- Sterling, not Shannon). And Knight is really good, as you knew he would be. It’s impossible to not stop and listen to him because Knight is one of the – if not the – most compelling sports figures of our time.

But as a basketball afficionado who is consistently frustrated by Pitt (annually the worst “really good” team in America), I come before you now to not bury the Panthers, but to praise them. That was a huge win against Louisville.

While Pitt’s familiar 5th and 6th grade-level problems persisted early on – inability to beat the press by failing to keep a guy behind the ball and missing free throws – they made up for it by finally playing some defense. The swarming double-teams in the post clearly disrupted Louisville’s offense and was the kind of defense that has landed the Panthers in the Big East Championship Game more often than not in recent years.

There is a school of thought that making a run to that conference title game can be counterproductive come NCAA time…and that may have been true when Pitt was an obvious top-4 seed. But with the Panthers projected as an 8-seed by ESPN’s Joe Lunardi (even though he had them as a 7 before they beat DePaul), it’s important to get away from that 8-9 line, since I think somehow they’d draw North Carolina.

Pitt has been slighted in the past, but even before the two Big East Tournament wins, the Panthers were 24th in the RPI…which by the book translates to a 6-seed (but Pitt fans know how that goes). Since they just beat Louisville (projected as a 3 across the board), that has to help. Plus, not to sound like Jamie Dixon, but Pitt has now won 5 of 6 (and they also know all about Edgar Sosa because they recruited him).

One more win secures a 7-seed and probably a 6, which is where the Duke and Georgetown wins could come in handy, but as we’ve seen, you never know. Then again, it may not matter that much. Among the top 1-2 seeds, whom do you fear?

Pitt can’t play UCLA in the second round (since the Panthers played them last year) and they can’t play Georgetown or Duke (which is probably too bad)…which leaves North Carolina, Memphis, Tennessee, Kansas, and Texas.

I don’t like the Panthers chances against Carolina or Texas…but anyone else? All of a sudden, they could be back.

Sorry to have taken a few unannounced days off. Things have been crazy with a lot of family travel and other work issues that completely took me away from the computer. Time I thought I would have was completely occupied with other things. It likely won’t get cleared up for another week, so I’m not going to say I’m fully back yet. There will likely be spurts and starts, but nothing consistent.

Something I did read that was almost too painful. At SI.com, Luke Winn had a list of the top impact transfers in basketball since 2000 — or at least those who helped their team to the Final Four.  Two squads with impact transfers included the teams that knocked out Pitt in 2003 and 2004.

Oklahoma State’s quartet: Joey Graham, PF (from Central Florida) Stephen Graham, SF (from Central Florida) John Lucas III, PG (from Baylor) Daniel Bobik, SG (from BYU)

…

Robert Jackson, PF, Marquette (from Mississippi State)

Against Pitt, Jackson went for 16 points on 6-8 shooting.

Someday, I won’t wince when I see these sort of things.

If you thought it was early for top 25 basketball polls, then this is going to seem like talking about something way too early. Almost as bad as playing holiday music in early November.

Joe Lunardi, ESPN’s “expert” bracketologist, has Pitt in the #7 seed slot.

Nope, it’s not to early for this garbage at all.

Don’t think I forgot about our Pitt Blather bracket poll. With Florida winning last night’s National Championship game (ughhh…would’ve rather seen the Buckeyes win), our final results have become…well, they’ve become finalized.

This year’s winner is Jamie H. Woo!

Second place goes to JoePa’s Assassin, who is also up for the “bracket name of the year” award.

And rounding out the top five (actually it’s six) are Send it In Jerome, steeltrace, PITT fan (now that’s a clever name!), and Lee in State College.

Congrats to Jamie H. and the rest of our top five. I wish I had some sort of prize for you.

I’m out of here for Spring Break, back next Monday in time for the Pirates’ home opener. Hopefully by the time I’m back, Billy Donovan and John Beilien (but especially Donovan) make their decisions so I won’t need to hear any more about it.

I’m coming back slowly. Actually, it feels like withdrawal at the moment. Not just with the end to Pitt’s season, but the entire Saturday of nothing until nearly 5 pm. Since September, there hasn’t been a Saturday with me either at a college game or planted in front of a TV watching college football or basketball all day. Now, nothing. I mean, I seriously debated putting on one of the women’s games. Instead, I just drifted around the house making half-hearted efforts at some of the house chores. This is going to take some getting used to.

Well, I’ll talk a little bit about the game. Gene Collier’s column on Friday about summed it up.

No, the painful part of this for Pitt was that these Bruins were virtually dying to get beat, and Pitt simply refused. Rejected the death wish Ben Howland’s team expressed with shrieking clarity in the opening moments of the second half by going nearly six minutes without a field goal.

Pitt’s response? A morbid little blizzard of missed shots, most no longer than the length of Aaron Gray, who missed a bunch of ’em along with Mike Cook and Sam Young.

“A couple of those layups and easy shots go down, the momentum probably shifts right there,” said sophomore Levance Fields. “When we started missing those chip-away layups, eventually they’re going to get the rebounds and then we’re frustrated and start fouling, so they convert the foul shots and just hold us off.”

Pitt never led on the night its season ended at 29-8, never had so much as the sense that it might at long last venture to the prohibited Elite Eight and still never looked very much different from a UCLA team that’ll meet Kansas tomorrow afternoon for a ticket to Atlanta and the Final Four.

It was part of what was so frustrating. Pitt was never out of it. No matter when Pitt was down by 12 in the second half. Scoring was coming so haltingly for both teams, just one little flurry…

Instead, Pitt never found its shot. The whole team struggled and as the game went longer, you could see them press and be more frustrated at the miss. Knowing they weren’t far. But never getting close enough.

Credit has to be given to UCLA’s defense. No matter how much we may wish otherwise. They did a great job of hounding the guards and not letting them get too many open looks. They were exceptional at irritating Gray inside and being well positioned. Even on some of the seemingly easy lay-ins, they were at least there trying and possibly distracting the Pitt players. It was a fair point from Nestor at Bruins Nation.

As usual after watching a classic defensive Ben Ball game, lot of us are seeing the same type of comments from Pitt fans and players about how it was a matter of them not finishing their shots or failing to make layups, like we have heard from opposing fans and players throughout last two years. Once again some of our opponent’s fans are having a hard time accepting the fact that it was the focused, fundamental defensive effort put forth by our team, that resulted in total disruption in the rhythm of Pitt’s offense leading them to take harried shots, and keeping them from executing in offense in general.

Yes and no. I accept it to a point, and as he observes it isn’t the most uncommon lament after playing UCLA. Plus, there is simply the scoreboard and that is the final arbiter — and the winners write the history. That said, the number of open misses starting early in the game was not simply the stingy defense of UCLA. It’s not like Pitt hasn’t shot this way before, even this season.

It’s never all from one team. It’s nice to think so, and I’ve read plenty of it in the comments this year (and almost certainly written it myself plenty of times). When Pitt wins, it’s because of what Pitt did on both sides of the ball. When Pitt loses it’s because of the mistakes made by the players and/or the coach. We rarely credit the other side for what they did or didn’t do because it is all about our team.
Antonio Graves seemed especially crushed with the loss. He tried to be positive, but it seemed he was feeling too upset about not getting past UCLA — about letting the fans and everyone down.

“It’s been a great year,” said the senior guard. “We accomplished a lot of things, but to me, that gets old after a little bit. We have to be able to win the big games. I hope in the future Pitt can win the big games.”

I hope no one ever doubted how much the players wanted to win. You know they wanted to be the ones to bust through at Pitt. Antonio Graves is a great story for Pitt. Another player who worked so hard on and off the court and became the key defender this season.

Part of what has me bummed out about this is knowing some fans that will never forgive Graves, Gray and Kendall for not winning this game. For not winning enough. Everything else gets erased and they become permanent bums. They will hope for Gray’s failure in the NBA as further proof of how bad he was.

I’m disappointed, frustrated and I’ve been upset for the last couple days.

Still, they are Pitt players and they are or will be graduates of the University of Pittsburgh. The way they have played, represented the team and the school these last years have been things to be proud.  They have provided plenty of good memories and moments.

Man, I hate having to be the positive one.

Let me start by saying this is nowhere near a full recap. It’s just some random thoughts. Some of them from before the game, some from after. I just got home and haven’t read what the Pittsburgh papers and UCLA blogs have said.

The end of the season kills me. The cause of all of this might be the fact that the end of basketball season is a bit harder than football. The end of football means the beginning of another year at the Pete. The end of hoops leads to a few months of nothingness.

The Sweet Sixteen is the exact type of talent this team has. We’re certainly not a top 5 team (and how can you be without an amazing recruit?) but we are a top 25 team. I didn’t expect a national championship out of these guys. I do, however, expect players on a top 25 team to make layups. Point blank shots. Tip ins. They lost at least 10 points through missing those type of shots and along with losing those points, it probably end up costing the game too.

Gray (as well as much of the rest of the team) is careless with the ball. He needs to treat it like gold and doesn’t. When you get double teamed, you dish it back outside quickly. Instead, he held it for a while, let the defender get physical with his, and then toss it across the court.

There are all kinds of stats that I could look up for you that involve UCLA really overcoming their season averages. The most obvious one seemed to be free throw shooting. Coming in, the UCLA folks said they weren’t great foul shooters and Pitt fans know that we certainly aren’t. UCLA was 23-26 from the line. Good teams find odd ways to win sometimes — scoring a third of your points from the line is one of those.
Finally, the Dixon-Howland handshake, if you even want to call it that, was incredibly quick. Not sure about what went down.

Expect more breakdown on the ins and outs of Thursday’s game coming over the next few days.

Well, that genuinely hurt. I spent a couple hours after the game just trying to put the images of the game out of my head. Not drinking. Not writing. Nothing. Just trying to get to the point where I wouldn’t think.

The good news, was that I reached that point. It led to a complete shut down. It’s a good thing I work from home. Mind and body seemed to be of the same opinion that consciousness was overrated. Dimly aware of the wife muttering some curses at me since I’m supposed to get her up in the morning to go to work.

I’m still not to the point where I’m really ready to write anything about the game yet. I haven’t even read anything yet.

Kansas gets barely past SIU with a 61-58 win and now awaits the winner of Pitt-UCLA. One thing is certain, SIU HC Lowery is about to make more money. Either because he will get a nice raise from his alma mater or he will be snatched by another school.

9:53: Here we go.

10:02: Pitt down 8-4, 15:52 in the half. As expected, banging and tight. Mbah a Moute already forced to sit with 2 fouls. The Bruins are now bringing at least 2 guys at Gray with MaM out.

10:08: Good timeout by Graves. That was a good trap, and he didn’t try to do anything stupid.

10:20: Man, Pitt is not hitting shots, still only down 3.

10:35: Not making shots is starting to catch up with Pitt as halftime nears. UCLA is now bringing at least two — even three men — on Gray and daring Pitt to make an open jumper. It’s not happening right now. There won’t be any way for Gray to get chances if the shots aren’t being knocked down.

10:47: Pitt down 32-26. Hate to say it, but that’s good. Pitt shot horribly and only encouraged UCLA to gamble more on defense and make it harder on Pitt.

I think Young will have to play more in the second half, even if Kendall is better on defense. Pitt needs Young’s scoring more at the moment. They need penetrators and anyone else to help take the defense off of Gray. Fields and Ramon are at least taking care of the ball even if they aren’t providing much on offense.

UCLA is shooting better then Pitt and even out-rebounding them. The startling thing is that UCLA is turning the ball over more and fouled more.

Naturally, UCLA is hitting all of their FT shots.

11:12: AUUGGHHH!! How is Pitt making it that much harder by missing some of these shots? I’m trying to remain calm but that’s at least 2 lay-ins to start the second half that Pitt has managed to mangle.

11:25: Grife! I don’t know what to say. Pitt has shots. They are getting looks. They are simply missing them. I had hoped that the shots would start falling, but they still aren’t. Now you can see some of the players getting tighter when they have to shoot. Some players hesitating and others thinking they have to shoot right away. They are frustrated because they know the shots are there.

11:30: 5 points in almost 9 minutes?

11:52: Small run and then that was it. 3:27 UCLA up 54-42.

Nothing. I can’t believe the poor shooting. Pitt’s shooting has somehow managed to be worse in the second half then in the first.

12:09: 64-55 UCLA wins.  Credit UCLA. They did it without getting the turnovers. They shot incredibly well on free throws. They out rebounded Pitt (it helps when Pitt misses that many shots on the defensive rebounds) and converted more open shots.

What can you say? Pitt got nothing inside. Gray only had 10 points and Kendall — while he had 3 assists — had 0 points. Young provided a brief spark with 9 points but on only 3-10 shooting. Cook hit 3-4 to start then was 0-5 the rest of the way.

Right now I’m very disappointed in the way they shot. The defense was sound. Good god, did they get open looks. They just shot like absolute crap.

It’s not just the guys inside. They had no chance to get free when most of the game the perimeter wasn’t doing much to help them loosen double teams.

The games have gotten underway. A couple hours or so until tip. I’m not ready to start the open thread, but here are just a few more stories — quick hitter — to read if you need to pass the time.

Seth Davis at SI.com went with UCLA. I’m not shocked. Look, Pitt hasn’t won in this round. It’s a generally safe bet to go with that trend. Add in that it’s against UCLA, and there is no reason for most pundits to pick Pitt.

The whole getting past the Sweet 16 issue.

UCLA will try to get Aaron Afflalo going early. He’s struggled lately, but isn’t concerned. Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News, however, is.

Oh, you bet it’s missing. It’s missing almost three-fourths of the time lately. A 39.5 percent 3-point shooter heading into the final weekend of the regular season, he is at 27.6 percent over the past five games. He does not look as confident in his shot, and this has had a devastating effect on the Bruins’ offense. They had a 3-2 record in that stretch, and, perhaps even more foreboding, averaged 59.4 points.

The Bruins’ attack depends on Afflalo being a force. The Bruins are not making it out of California if he struggles in these next two games. Presuming there are two more games. It’ll be hard for UCLA to beat Pittsburgh without a significant Afflalo contribution.

It would be nice to keep him down and struggling.

Some are disappointed with the second year output of Luc Richard Mbah a Moute.
Washington Post story on Dixon-Howland.

Nebraska (and former Pitt) AD Steve Pederson will be pulling for Pitt and recalls the recruiting of Jamie Dixon to come on as an assistant.

Former Stanford and Golden State Warrior HC Mike Montgomery picks UCLA for the game (shocking, I know).

The question is, can you get it all worked out in four days of preparation? If people don’t have the skills to make those kinds of plays against a defense as intense as UCLA’s, you’re not going to learn it in a week.

Now, I would guess that same game plan is also what Pitt runs. I think the key for UCLA is Collison. He creates off the dribble. If Pitt controls Collison, and Afflalo and Shipp don’t have good games, then UCLA is in trouble. They’re not going to score enough points to win.

But I’m going to pick UCLA because, if nothing else, they might do what they do better. Also, the Bruins are at home, so to speak. Every UCLA alum I know is trying to get tickets.

No kidding. It’s in the state and under 350 miles from LA.

There are plenty of similarities and differences between UCLA and Pitt. So stories declaring one or the other should be taken lightly. There are basic similarites.

Brandin Knight is Pittsburgh’s video coordinator. When he began splicing the UCLA tapes, he was in his home theater.

“They’d run a play and I’d say, ‘We used to run that,”’ Knight said Wednesday. “And we run the same stuff they do. The play calls are the same, too. The two teams are mirror images. We’re not going to suddenly become this full-court pressing team, and they’re not going to start playing different defenses. It’s just going to come down to who makes shots.”

How few shots will it take?

“Anybody who thinks this is going to be a high-scoring game,” Knight said, “is a fool.”

Yes, the practices, the drills the basics in how the teams run things are similar. The key is the players.

“We have different personnel,” UCLA wing Josh Shipp said. “They emphasize defense just like we do. I can see where people get the similarities from, but it’s different personnel that is used differently.”

Pittsburgh point guard Levance Fields said he often watched UCLA on television and said “you can call out the plays,” but rarely does a Bruins’ possession end with its center scoring on a low-post move.

“We are striving to become a better inside team, but our guards have really dominated our scoring,” Afflalo said. “We are a little different.”

I’d also hesitate to say they are so different simply because of the superficial things of the teams different histories and players.

Both teams are man-to-man defense. Pitt will throw out the zone when it seems necessary, while UCLA just won’t. Because of the strength of the team at the guard position, UCLA will play much tighter on the perimeter and be aggressive at trying to force steals. They don’t do it by employing full-court, but by the quickness of their players and being tight.

If you look at the Pomeroy Scouting Reports for both Pitt and UCLA,  you will see that they are very close in tempo/pace. Pitt has a bit of an edge in the offensive efficiency while UCLA is stronger in defensive efficiency. A lot of the defensive efficiency difference comes from the fact that UCLA creates more turnovers on defense then Pitt.

Bruin Basketball Report has a nice scouting report on the game, and expects a UCLA win. Bruins Nation expects a tough, physical defensive game.

If Pitt is going to win this game, obviously the defense will have to be there. Just as important — probably more so because I have little doubt about the defensive effort — Pitt is going to have to shoot very well. I fully expect Pitt will get forced into more turnovers. Just looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the teams, UCLA will get some more turnovers than Pitt. This is no knock on Pitt, they do well on controlling the ball, but against quick, aggressive guards like UCLA, Pitt does struggle with turnovers. You almost have to expect it.
That means, Pitt needs to be more efficient in scoring opportunities. Pitt will need to have the higher shooting percentage. If both teams struggle with shooting and scoring, the advantage goes to UCLA because of their ability to generate more opportunities off of turnovers.

UCLA’s decided advantage is on the perimeter with Point Guard Darren Collison and Shooting Guard Aaron Afflalo. The pieces focus on only one of them, but the problem is really that they are on the same team. While Pitt and especially Antonio Graves have helped shut down the stud guard on the last two opponents, the key was there was only one guard. In this case, UCLA presents the difficulty of having two stud guards. Either of whom would be a star player for another team. This is the part of the Pitt-UCLA match-up that presents the greatest difficulty.

Allflalo is the leading scorer for the Bruins, but Collison is their speediest player and the point guard that sets things up. It would appear that Graves will be on Afflalo — at least initially.

The Panthers might own the edge in size, but UCLA has a decided edge in quickness. Levance Fields likely will draw the defensive assignment on Collison, because Antonio Graves will be busy will the Bruins’ leading scorer, Arron Afflalo.

“It’s definitely a challenge,” Fields said. “But he’s going to lace his sneakers up like I do, so I’m not really worried about it. I’m just going to guard him like I normally guard anybody.”

Fields hasn’t guarded anybody this fast. Collison’s mother, June, competed in the 400 meters at the 1984 Olympics for Guyana. His father, Dennis, competed for Guyana in the Pan American Games in the 200-meter sprint.

Collison prefers the 94-foot sprint — think Tyus Edney — but he’s good in the slow-down game, too.

“The thing with Collison, he has a little height (6 feet) and has those long arms,” Pitt forward Mike Cook said. “So, I mean, he’s fast with an athletic body, probably something we haven’t seen from the point guard spot this year.”

I’m very torn on this.  Collison is listed at 6′ 3″ and Afflalo is at 6′ 5″.

It would be problematic size-wise for Fields or Ramon to have to guard Afflalo too often with the height advantage they’d be given up. Afflalo is fully capable of driving and pulling up. He could be shooting over them all night. Graves would only be giving up a couple inches and could stay with Afflalo rather well.
On the other hand, Collison is great at driving to the basket. He can also dish and get past slower players like Fields and Ramon. Graves is probably the best defender from the perimeter and could keep Collison in front of him on drives. Creating more problems and denying the dribble-drive.

I think Graves is going to be switching up on them throughout the night. He won’t be keyed on just one player. I suspect Dixon will use him on both at various points in the game to hopefully frustrate and keep UCLA from getting too comfortable on offense.