Last week, I pointed out how Grant Wahl at SI.com thought Pitt had the potential to be make a deep run in the NCAA (the story came out the same day that Pitt lost to WVU). In his mailbag this week, he talks about Pitt once more. Essentially, he feels our confusion.

What is Pittsburgh’s problem against RPI teams ranked between 50 and 100? The Panthers were supposed to be better than this.

No team in the nation has left me more flummoxed than Pittsburgh. There’s obviously a ton of talent there, and winning on the road at UConn, Syracuse and Boston College (by 22!) is a remarkable achievement. So too, in a negative way, is losing at home to West Virginia, Georgetown and Bucknell. It may be nothing more complicated than a motivation issue, which appears to be what has kept Chris Taft from meeting high expectations all season long. Bottom line: If I were a team seeded anywhere from 10 to 12 in the NCAA tournament, I wouldn’t mind seeing the Panthers in a first-round matchup. But if they can make it to the second weekend, you never know what might happen.

Picking Pitt in the brackets is always a tough thing to separate my natural biases from rational thought. This time it could be even worse. Speaking of the RPI, it was known that the RPI formula would be tweaked to encourage more road games. The extent of the tweaking, though, was astounding. Most think they went a little too far Consider what Pitt’s RPI would look like if it had been under last year’s formula.

Present RPI ——– Old RPI Formula
46 ———————- 29

At least Pitt is still going. There is a table with other teams that are in much deeper trouble.

Meanwhile, we aren’t even to the conference tournaments, and you can’t stop people from continually looking to next year in the Big East.

Bottom line: some big-name schools (and their big-name coaches) are probably going to be dealing with worse records than they’re accustomed to. They’ll simply have to hope that the 2006 NCAA Tournament selection committee keeps that in mind, and is prepared to offer an unprecedented number of bids to what could be a league of unprecedented power.

“I think nine teams definitely would be a possibility,” said Louisville coach Rick Pitino. “It changes from year to year, but Connecticut is still going to be great next year, Cincinnati will be very good, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Villanova — you can keep going down the list.”

The list is long enough that you can forgive the current Big East coaches for not wanting to even go there right now.

“Everyone keeps talking about the Big East next year,” said Pittsburgh’s Jamie Dixon. “The names are great, but I don’t know how it’s going to be better than this year. We don’t have any easy games.”

There will be even fewer next season. Which is why all 16 coaches are curious about how the league schedule will unfold.

The plan calls for each team to have three home-and-home opponents — one likely a long-standing or geographic rival. Television will play a big part in selecting the other two.
…
In addition to those six home-and-home games, teams will then play 10 league opponents once, and will not play two teams at all each year.

It’s far from an ideal setup, but no scheduling is going to be ideal in a 16-team conference. Associate commissioner John Paquette said the Big East is committed to that scheduling format for two more years, until the league’s television contracts with ESPN and CBS are up.

“No question, how the schedule is set up will determine how the league unfolds,” Dixon said.

Coaches and athletic directors hoping for a break can send cases of fine wine and offers of free rounds of golf to commissioner Mike Tranghese, care of the Big East office in Providence. Let the lobbying commence.

The unbalanced scheduling, and the fact that the big names in BE basketball are disproportionately also football schools is going to be yet another reason that the BE is heading for a split before 2010.

A good piece on the difficulties in evaluating where Pitt will be seeded in the NCAA Tournament.

“They’re obviously better on the court than their [RPI] number suggests,” Lunardi said. “When they’re at their best they’re a top 15 team. When they’re not, they’re not one of the top 30 teams. When most top teams have an off night, on a scale on 1-10, they drop from a 10 to an 8. When Pitt has an off night, they’re a 3.”
…
In a best-case scenario, Lunardi said Pitt can climb to as high as a No. 3 or No. 4 seed if it wins out. In a worst-case scenario, if the Panthers lose at Notre Dame and then drop their first Big East tournament game, they could drop to a No. 7 or No. 8 seed.

“I don’t see them dropping out of the top half of the bracket,” Lunardi said. “Pitt can beat anybody on any given night except for maybe Illinois and one or two of the other top teams. If they bring their A-game, they match up well with the B-games of a lot of the other top teams. But what are Pitt’s chances of having their A-game for three or four games in a row in the NCAA tournament?”

Pitt can bring a top-level game for that kind of stretch. They have done it this season. It is more the question of match-ups and staying controlled. To me, the best thing about the win over BC was absolute containment on Jared Dudley on offense. He has an inside-out game that had killed Pitt against WVU and Villanova.

Read the whole thing. Especially the part about Pitt’s non-con and the selection committee. It might seem familiar to some with my rantings on the matter.

The warm-fuzzy story (or alternatively, Joe Starkey writing like Rick Reilly) is for the walk-ons Marcus Bowman and Charles Small.

At 5-foot-7, Small is one of the shortest players in Division I. He and Bowman often share the same thought during games, expressed by Bowman this way:

“Just let me go out there.”

It doesn’t happen very often, though Petersen Events Center crowds implore coach Jamie Dixon to insert Small at the end of every blowout victory.

“We want Small!” the chant goes.

Small and Bowman have played only 10 minutes combined this season, haven’t played since Dec. 18 and have scored only two points. Each made a free throw.

Neither has scored a basket in his college career.

Both are top flight students. Bowman came on a full academic scholarship and wants to get into coaching someday. As walk-ons, they don’t get to eat at the training table unless they pay for it. There was a good piece back in August focusing on what walk-on football players have to go through. The same principles apply. You give up a lot for the love of the game.

Then there is a piece lauding Coach Dixon handling of players. Particularly DeGroat. Keeping him upbeat and ready to contribute, despite a season of minimal playing time. Dixon does deserve praise for the way he’s handled things. Especially at that small forward/third guard position, where no one has been able to really play steady.

Of course, to counter the argument, you can point to Dante Milligan deciding to transfer for lack of playing time. DeGroat is a special case since he is a JUCO transfer. He only has 1 year of eligibility after this season. Transferring wasn’t really much of an option.