Have to run out the door to do a few things tonight, but a couple items.

1) ESPN.com will have their NCAA Tournament bracket contest, where you can set up your own groups. Is there sufficient interest if I set up a PSB group?

2) We are going to be hitting more news lulls in the next couple of weeks. If there are topics you would like to see posts regarding or thoughts and opinions just e-mail me and I’ll see what I can do.

Part of me thinks I should wait until the end of the regular season for this, but there is some time now. When the season schedule was announced I was very upset with the non-con. I noted the RPI from Pitt’s opponents averaged out to about 184.91. Time to look at how the RPI of the non-con teams looks. This is based on the RPI configured on Feb. 13, and so games (like South Carolina over Kentucky) are not factored into it.

Opponent — 2005 RPI – 2004 RPI
Howard ——- 314 ——– 321
Robt. Morris — 206 ——– 217
Loyola-MD —- 308 ——- 322
St. Francis-PA – 174 ——- 249
Duquesne —— 287 ——- 162
Memphis ——- 109 ——- 32
Penn St. ——– 225 ——- 189
Coppin St. —— 117 ——– 234
Richmond —— 120 ——— 47
S. Carolina —— 76 ———- 45
Bucknell ——– 70 ——— 216
—————————————–
AVG. RPI —- 182.36 —– 184.91

While the Average RPI is slightly better than projected from last year, the overall meaning of the numbers is worse. Unless South Carolina gets exceptionally hot and makes a run in the SEC Tournament, Pitt will have a non-con schedule where they did not face a single top-50 RPI opponent. And barring some upsets in the conference tournaments, Pitt will at best have only South Carolina to point to in the NCAA tournament as a non-con team they played and beat.

You can make the counter argument that no one knew that Memphis and Richmond would tumble so far. Or that PSU or Duquesne would be that much worse, but that just further exposed the problems with this non-con strategy. There was no wiggle room on the schedule for the few “name” opponents to be that bad.

Why go on about it? After all, Pitt is clearly going to the NCAA Tournament, and barring an absolute collapse should finish with no more than 5 conference losses heading into the BE Tournament. It’s the seeding. Pitt will once more take a big hit when the selection committee starts seeding teams. They will look at the non-con schedule and penalize Pitt for it. Unless Pitt wins the BE Tournament, Pitt will be a #4 seed with some luck. More likely, they will end up a #5 or even a #6 seed.

The excuse — “well we had a not of new players to work in” — just doesn’t wash and is self-perpetuating. A good program is always going to have that. Last year, it was replacing Brandon Knight and Ontario Lett. This year, Page and Brown. Next year, it will be Troutman and Taft. Krauser, the year after that, and so on.

Pitt’s RPI is now at #51. It will obviously be heading north when the Syracuse win is factored into it, and hopefully at least 3 more after that. Including the ‘Cuse game, the RPI of Pitt’s last 6 opponents is 29. Very necessary to win the majority of these games. Especially when you consider that the RPI of Pitt’s first 10 BE games averaged out to 93.3.

If AD Jeff Long and Coach Dixon aren’t already working on next year’s non-con schedule and opponents, they should be.

Off until Sunday. Way too early to discuss the game. So articles about Pitt will be down to a trickle for the rest of the week. Likely some player puff pieces. Perhaps one on Coach Dixon or a member of the coaching staff. And of course, the pieces looking at how the team is right now. Those, in fact are the main pieces in the Pittsburgh papers.

The P-G has a piece that goes in so many different directions that it goes no where. It starts out going one direction:

There’s good news and bad news about the five remaining regular-season games on Pitt’s schedule.

First, the good news: Three of those games are against ranked teams.

The bad news: The other two opponents are currently unranked.

Playing to the level of its competition has been a curse and blessing for Pitt, which raised its record to 3-0 against Top 25 teams after beating No. 9 Syracuse, 68-64, Monday night at the Carrier Dome.

All three victories have come against higher-ranked opponents and in the span of 22 days. Two were on the road against the past two NCAA champions — Syracuse and Connecticut.

The piece never goes back to the issue of playing up or down to the level of competition. It then shifts to speculating on how Pitt could end up winning the Big East once more, and then shifts yet again to the cliched “team story” of how the team continued to believe in itself and each other even through the rough patch. Makes for a very disjointed read.

For contrast, you can look to this Trib. story. It sticks with one theme, how the players believed in themselves, and never let themselves panic or give up on the season. Now, having said that, there are parts of the story, that need to be examined a little more.

Turn back the clock to Jan. 18. The scene was Madison Square Garden, and the Pitt basketball team was seen walking off the court, heads down, shaken by a three-point loss to Big East bottom-feeder St. John’s.

It was the third defeat in five games for the Panthers, and some believed it was time to hit the panic button. Talk-show callers questioned the abilities of second-year coach Jamie Dixon, they chided point guard Carl Krauser and they exclaimed that this version of the Panthers was inferior to the previous three squads, all of which went 13-3 in the Big East and reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.

Panic? Who panicked?

I’m not a big fan of revisionism. There were some damn good reasons to worry about this team. Heck, there still are. Even before the bad stuff, Pitt’s non-con schedule meant that the fans had no clear idea about this team. What it was, how far it could go, and really what its character was. Then Pitt really stumbled at the end of the non-con/beginning of the conference. The back-to-back home losses to Bucknell and then Georgetown (who no one knew was going to play this well all season); the struggling wins against bad Seton Hall and even worse Rutgers; and then to lose to a very thin and depleted St. John’s team?

The rest of the article has some quotes from Chevon Troutman wondering why people doubted this team. Love Troutman. Love his game, his story, everything. Borders on man-crush, even. Glad he has such confidence in this program and his teammates. Still, 2 of the 3 early losses were not “tough” losses. They were “bad” losses. And while he may think Pitt has been winning “year after year in the Big East,” some of us have a long painful recall of Pitt not doing much in the Big East.

Speaking of Troutman, a Syracuse writer, in his Big East notebook, sends a promise Troutman’s way:

Ride a Chevy:Big East coaches’ preseason all-conference first and second teams included 13 players. Not one was named Chevon Troutman.

It’s not that Pittsburgh’s 6-foot-7 senior workhorse snuck up on the league; he’d averaged double figures in conference play the previous two seasons, one as a sixth man. Doubt there’ll be a similar postseason faux pas; certainly not around here, where he just dropped 20 (16 free throws) and 10 on SU.

Career-wise, sure-handed Chevy – immovable on the low block and blue collar as the Steel City – slam dunks Patrick Ewing’s field goal percentage record in Big East play (.608). Troutman’s at .665, but his 225 made FGs in 53 games doesn’t qualify him for the mark.

He’ll fall short of the required five made FGs per game.
…
Stat stuffer:Troutman has made and attempted more free throws in 22 games (660 minutes) than he did playing 35 games (1,022 minutes) in ’03-04 or either of his first two years.

I don’t see how Troutman isn’t first-team All-Big East, unless they just choose to give it based on big numbers. In which case Gomes will get named ahead of Troutman. Really, though, the 1st team all-Big East forwards, should be Warrick and Troutman.

As for Villanova, Pitt’s opponent on Sunday. They won a late season, non-con game at home last night. Crushing Bucknell 89-51. (And just to overkill that point) We all can remember Bucknell, right?