Usual deal. Comment before, during and after.

HALFTIME UPDATE: Pitt tied 22-22.

And it feels like Pitt is losing.

12 frickin’ turnovers will kill.

Actually getting Gansey, Herber and Nichols in foul trouble — 2 apiece. Pittsnogle scoreless. WVU not shooting well.

This is bad. Pitt had 2 of the 3 starters for WVU on the bench with foul troubles in the final 4:32. Pitt musters 3 points and gives up 9.

Disgusting.

FINAL UPDATE: Pitt 57-53 win!

Ugly but I’ll take it. Horrible ball handling, but the perimeter defense was excellent.

I really believe Pittsnogle was trying to be a good new daddy and is just sleep deprived.

More later.

POSTGAME UPDATE: A little unusual I know, but I just caught the post-game interview on ESPNews with Coach Dixon. Asked about the game, his comment was appropriately, “We got through it.” Later said, that he felt the team, “got better,” through the game.

He did add that Pitt football assistant coach Bob Junko just had open heart surgery, and they dedicated the game to him.

As for defending Pittsnogle, he credited 3 days of practice and scouting. Said Gray did a fantastic job of covering him all over the court — and he did.

Joe Lunardi, ESPN’s “bracketologist” — part of a group heading for a severe backlash as people get sick of the whole seed projection stuff — wrote a column yesterday about the value of a good non-con schedule (hat tip to Joe T, Insider Sub.):

Why does it matter if Connecticut plays seven sub-150 teams? Or Florida? Or Pittsburgh? Or North Carolina State? All play in incredibly competitive conferences and have more than enough chances to face high-quality teams on a regular basis. In fact, we can document the effect that only half a conference schedule already has had on the respective SOS rankings for these four schools:

	NONCONF SOS	OVERALL SOS
Connecticut	No. 211	No. 57
Florida	No. 245	No. 120
Pitt	No. 244	No. 67
NC State	No. 231	No. 61

Now, that looks bad, and honestly Pitt’s non-con, and conference SOS has been sliding until last night. Wisconsin upset Indiana. Florida fell to South Carolina again. Auburn finally won a game. Heck, even ND managed to win a BE game. All teams Pitt had beaten, but because of their struggles up until last night were managing to bring Pitt down.

The result is that Pitt’s non-con SOS shot up 44 spots in one day to a still-embarrassing but not as bad 200. The overall SOS is now 59, and Pitt’s RPI is now #8.

As much as I am interested and find RPI and SOS information interesting and useful — and can get caught up in it, it is easily moved on any given night.

Anyways, back to the column. Lunardi then gets into the importance of non-con SOS.

Except it isn’t. The NCAA Tournament committee has demonstrated time and time again that “whom you choose to play” in nonconference games is a significant factor in terms of both selection and seeding. Who can forget 2004 committee chair Bob Bowlsby answering a question about how Pittsburgh — No. 5 in the RPI, No. 6 in the polls and 29-3 overall — could fall to the lowest No. 3 seed position?

Bowlsby pointed to Pitt’s nonconference schedule (No. 247) and 12 games that season against sub-150 teams (nonleague). …

Only UConn and Oklahoma State were even close to Pittsburgh that year in what I call “avoidance factor” — more explicitly stated as “games you cannot lose without an act of divine intervention” — but the Cowboys won the Big 12 tournament on Selection Sunday while the Panthers fell to UConn in the Big East final. Regardless, with what amounted to a 17-3 record for Pitt (subtracting all “avoidance” games), the NCAA sent the Panthers, and others, one sledgehammer of a scheduling message.
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The bottom line is that you can pile up all the quality wins in the world — as Pitt did in ’04 with a 9-3 record vs. Top 50 teams — but if you go too far with respect to “avoidance games,” the committee can’t help but seed you lower than comparable teams that don’t. It’s no different from scheduling non-Division I opponents; the committee has to consider the possibility of the team in question playing a “real game” and losing.

Avoidance games are ones that are against teams with sub-150 RPIs. That year, Pitt played 12 non-con games against teams with that kind of RPI. UConn and OK St. each played 7. This season, Pitt has played 6 “avoidance” games. Only Coppin St. looks to even have a chance to move to under 150 (presently at 178). The other 5 teams have RPIs of 205 or worse.

Lunardi is harsh on both UConn and Florida as well. He just used Pitt as the example, because it was the easiest and clearest occurrence in the NCAA seeding.

The interesting thing, and what pisses off most Pitt fans is Florida continuing to still be treated as a top-10 team while playing a worse non-con and losing as much in a weaker conference. I don’t really have an answer for the polls, other than the fact that the pollsters have “name” bias. They look at the non-con and see that Florida beat Syracuse and Wake Forest in a tournament, and regardless that neither team is that good this year (especially Wake) they get extra credit.

WVU Guard, Mike Gansey is from a Cleveland area suburb, so a Q&A interview with him.

Q. Do you miss St. Bonaventure at all?

A. Yeah, I miss the people there. But I don’t really miss the basketball that much.

Q. Several years removed, any regrets about you and your teammates truncating the season?

A. No.

Q. Why did it have to come to that?

A. We weren’t getting straight answers from the university. People think we bailed on the university, but that wasn’t the case. We were kept in the dark, and we were upset. We had a right to know more than they were telling us. I stand by my decision, and I’m sure my former teammates do, too.

Q. Biggest difference between West Virginia and Ohio?

A. The hills, and there’s a lot of ice on the roads in the winter. I’ve gotten into three minor car accidents because of the hills or hitting a sheet of ice. They don’t plow here quite like they do in Ohio.

It’s mainly the hills. People in NE Ohio are flatlanders. They have no clue how to handle hills or curves in the road — no matter what the weather.

Gansey is also saying that he looks forward to playing this road game.

But when the boos rain down in a monsoon of animosity, when his name is treated like the four-letter word that it is and when every stellar play produces sighs of exasperation — ah … that’s when Gansey really enjoys himself.

“I like to be in those situations,” said No. 9 West Virginia’s senior forward.

Tonight, Gansey is going to be in hog heaven.

That’s because no place on earth will be as hostile as No 14 Pittsburgh’s Petersen Events Center when the Mountaineers put their unblemished Big East record up against the Panthers (17-3, 6-3 Big East).

Game time for the ESPN-televised game is 9 p.m.

“Pitt (fans), they say things that no one says,” Gansey said. Then, with a smile creeping across his face, said: “It’s going to be fun.”

Big East Basketball blog has another fine preview for the game.

With seniors that can shoot the ball as well as West Virginia, you have to beleive they have a chance to beat anyone, anywhere. Relying on the 3-ball has its downfalls, because when it is not falling, they can look ugly. So far, they have gotten away with it in the games things weren’t falling in the conference. However, seeing that they can lose to Marshall in Charleston, but beat Villanova in the Pavilion shows how high or low they can go.

The Mountaineers seem to have been flirting with defeat a little more lately. Pittsburgh, at home, knows how big this game is and I expect them to be really charged up and ready to go, especially defensively and on the boards. Aaron Gray will cause Pittsnogle to work a little extra harder on the defensive end and on the boards and could cause him to wear down. Of course, Gray having to shadow Pittsnogle on the perimeter is an interesting dynamic in itself as that takes Pitt’s best rebounder away from the hoop and puts him in unfamiliar territory defensively. If Pitt can get 30 minutes, or in the neighborhood of, from Gray, that means they should have their game go they way they want it. If they have to adapt and go smaller to counter, I think that it will pull them out of their comfort zone and WVU will slowly carve them up.

I’m just hoping Pittsnogle is spending the last few nights not getting any sleep while tending to his new kid.

I was thinking a little more about Keith’s Neil’s question regarding Kevin Hughes and which recruiting class he actually belongs.

Hughes, as noted, is a 2-star recruit. He’s a diamond-in-the-rough type, that wouldn’t see much action in his freshman year. A quick archive search shows that Coach Wannstedt sold him on grayshirting last year at NLI time.

It allowed Pitt to do 2 things — offer more scholarships than the limits said it could, and gamble (correctly) that there would be some shake-out with transfers and non-qualifiers. Hughes now counts against last year’s scholarship count, had an extra year to work on his conditioning and skills, gets an extra semester to take classes and can participate in spring drills.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which class he gets lumped into. The guess is he will be given a good opportunity to get in the O-line considering graduations, the chance to do spring drills and learn, and just how bad the line was last year.

Noticed this on Bruce Feldman’s blog (ESPN Insider subs.):

Enigmatic Johnny Peyton, the poor man’s Fred Rouse, is gone from USF. The athletic 6-foot-5, 190-pound wideout, who caught two touchdowns in the season opener at Penn State, does have his redshirt year left to burn. My hunch is that he might end up at Akron with one-time Pitt assistant J.D. Brookhart.

Peyton, of course, was one of the many 2004 signing day defections that was a major blow to former Coach Harris. I’m not saying there’s a hex, karma or anything for those kids who changed their mind about Pitt, but it is interesting to watch those careers.

One other thing, I’m not totally sure how important it is but it might matter:

No longer can WVU and its Big East Conference brethren take recruits who do not meet the NCAA initial eligibility standards.

A lopsided November vote by Big East university presidents ended the acceptance of non-qualifiers.

“I don’t think they thought this out real well,” Rodriguez said. “The way it is, it goes too far, in my estimation.”

At the Big East presidents’ official league meeting next month in conjunction with the men’s basketball tournament, the policy language will be finalized.

Rodriguez doesn’t expect much tweaking, if any.

The original vote was 13-3, and WVU, which has had success with a limited number of non-qualifiers, was in the minority.

Commissioner Mike Tranghese has admitted previous discussions and at times emotional debate focused on academics and didn’t include consideration of the on-field ramifications of the nixing of non-qualifiers.
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The Big East is the fourth BCS league to eliminate non-qualifiers, joining the Atlantic Coast, Big XII and Pacific-10.

In football, the Southeastern Conference allows two non-qualifiers annually per school.

The Big Ten has no blanket prohibition, but some of its schools don’t allow NQs, as they are called.

However, if a Big Ten school takes a non-qualifier, although he cannot accept a grant-in-aid, he counts against the limits of 25 (annually) and 85 (total).

I don’t have the urge to look up what the difference is between a partial- and a non-qualifier. I’m guessing a partial has either the grades or the SATs, while a non has neither. Not sure that really cost Pitt anybody, but it is something to keep in mind for football and basketball recruiting.

WVU is trying to beat Pitt 3-times in a row. Something it hasn’t done in 15 years. It is also trying to be the first team to win twice at the Pete. Pitt is a 5.5 point favorite in the game.

As the game has two top-15 teams, ESPN has assigned Dick Vitale and Dan Shulman to call the game tonight. For those of us watching on TV (with the sound) that means hearing plenty of praise for the Oakland Zoo and fighting the urge to puncture your own eardrums with a pencil.

Honestly, what really bothers me about Vitale is how good he used to be, and now he’s a caricature of himself. I know I’ve said this before, but if you catch a college game on ESPN Classic from the late-80s/early-90s (not that ESPN Classic bothers with that anymore) you almost don’t realize it’s Vitale. He’s more reserved, provides more game insight and only rarely goes over the edge with the screaming. The enthusiasm for the game is there, but not the wild praising and heralding individuals as great guys.

[One other aside, ESPN Classic on Sunday night will be airing “The That Saved Pittsburgh.”]

The WVU players seem excited about the game and the coverage.

“I’m sure it’s going to be even more crazy with (Dick) Vitale being there,” said Patrick Beilein, a 6-foot-4 senior guard who is averaging 8.4 points and has converted 218 career 3-point shots.

“It’s a 9 o’clock game and the students are going to be all over us. We’re just going to have to be mentally prepared and not let them take us out of our game.”

Said teammate Mike Gansey, the Mountaineers’ second-leading scorer (18.5 ppg.): “Any time you play at Pitt on national TV, it’s exciting. I remember last year, the crowd, that zoo (the Oakland Zoo). The fans were loud and they were all on us the whole game. It’s just a great atmosphere for a college basketball game.”
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“We’ve got to beat them on the boards. We’ve got to get putbacks. We’ve got to take care of the ball,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “They’re going to make some threes, some tough threes. We’ve talked about making them all tough shots. We can’t give them any easy ones or open ones, where they get comfortable. We’ve got to avoid that situation.”

The game marks the first time that both teams are ranked at the same time.

“It adds to all the media and fans, I’m sure,” John Beilein said. “It’s great for both programs. For us, four years ago, and for Pitt, seven years ago, those were not highlights in their storied histories.

“And now, both teams have rebounded from low times in their basketball programs to probably as well as either team has been recognized.”

Added son Patrick: “Both schools are close and really don’t like each other. It’s a war the whole time. How can you not get up for this type of game?”

WVU Coach John Beilein reflects on how quickly he learned what the game means to the Hoopies.

The point is, if there’s anything a West Virginia fan hates more than Pitt it is losing badly to Pitt. And that seemed a certainty on that night.

But that was the night Beilein found out what the Pitt game means.

“I sensed that it was something special when in our first year here, when we were really struggling and [former] Coach [Ben] Howland and Jamie [Dixon, Howland’s successor] really had it going at Pitt,” Beilein said. “It was an 8 o’clock ESPN game and I came to the arena at 6 and the student section was already filled here.

“I had never experienced that before in my life at all these college levels, where the students were coming two hours early to make sure they got a seat. That’s the first thing I think of every time I think of this rivalry.”

He never experienced that at Richomond or Canisius? I’m stunned.

While Pitt is looking to end it’s two-game losing streak both in general and to WVU, the Hoopies start their rough stretch.

But while a few of those 15 wins in the past 16 games have come against some heady competition and a few have been on the road, there has been nothing like what the Mountaineers face now. In the last eight games of the regular season, West Virginia plays four times against Top 25 teams, all eight against teams that have either been ranked this season or beaten a ranked team on the road, five road games and a home game against the top-ranked team in the country.

For Pitt, there is a sense of not wanting a repeat of what happened last year against WVU.

Both times Pitt faced arch-rival West Virginia last season, they held seemingly comfortable halftime leads and wound up losing when the Mountaineers’ Kevin Pittnogle produced two of his famous catch-phrased shooting performances and “Pittsnogled” the Panthers.

On Feb. 5, 2005, Pitt led West Virginia at the break, 30-23, before the Mountaineers rode Pittsnogle’s 27 points, including eight in overtime, to a wild 83-78 victory at WVU Coliseum in Morgantown, W.Va.

Then, only a little more than two weeks later — on Feb. 23 — Pittsnogle struck again, scoring 20 of his game-high 22 points in the game’s final 9 minutes and 14 seconds, leading WVU to a 70-66 victory at Petersen Events Center.

Among the scoring spree was a 4-for-4 effort from behind the 3-point arc.

“You can’t simulate a quick release that Pittsnogle has,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said of the 6-foot-11, 255-pound West Virginia senior, who leads the Mountaineers in scoring (19.5 ppg.) and rebounding (6.3 rpg.). “We’ve tried to prepare for it and make our guys aware of it.”

The big thing for Pitt, is with WVU’s motion offense and the fact that all the players can shoot from anywhere, they have to stay close to their man.

“Basically, we can’t be overanxious,” Pitt sophomore guard Keith Benjamin said. “We know what guys they have who shoot the ball really well and we know what guys they have who penetrate and look to get other people open shots. We have to be more patient on our defense and not over-help, just close out all shooters and play with our hands up the whole time.”
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“What hurt us last year was giving up penetration and then giving up open shots,” Pitt junior forward Levon Kendall said. “That’s what they do really well. We know that. It’s something we’re aware of. It’s no secret. It’s just a matter of us being able to execute it in the game.”

One of Pitt’s strengths is playing help defense, but Kendall said the Panthers can’t do much of that against West Virginia because the Mountaineers have five outside shooters on the floor at almost all times. That means playing man-to-man defense will be one of the biggest keys to the game for the Panthers.

“They’re a pretty unique team because all five guys can shoot and space the floor,” Kendall said. “It comes down to individual defense because you can’t help too much, which is something we tend to do quite a bit. They can all shoot, so you can only help so much off penetration.”

It raises a tough decision about what to do with Aaron Gray. If you don’t put him on Pittsnogle, who do you have him defend? All the WVU players can and do shoot from outside. Drawing Gray out from the basket is not a good thing. You hate to lose a guy averaging a double-double, but Pitt can’t risk leaving WVU too open around the perimeter. The ‘Eers are too good a passing team not to find the open look. I could see Gray getting fewer minutes tonight in favor of a line-up that has more from Young, Benjamin and even DeGroat along with Kendall at the Forward and Center spots.

WVU is the hot team. Want extra proof. ESPN.com gorges on them in the days leading up to tonight’s game. Not that, they aren’t bad reads, but there’s plenty of fuel for the fire, er, let me couch phrase that differently. Lots of material to make Pitt feel like they are being disrespected or overlooked by the WWLS.

A very long piece detailing the happenstances that created this present WVU team from the coach hiring (and Dan Dakich turning tail for fear of sanctions at WVU), to how the players got there.

Andy Katz reports that the WVU athletic director is talking tough about Coach Beilein not leaving the ‘Eers.

West Virginia athletic director Ed Pastilong isn’t bothering with those rumors that John Beilein would be enticed to go to any of the potential ACC or Big 12 openings that could pop in March or April.

Why?

“He’s got a solid contract,” Pastilong said.
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“All these folks that talk about the dominoes fail to realize that John Beilein has a contract with West Virginia,” Pastilong said. “He and the school made a commitment, and we intend to fulfill it.”

Of course, because we all know how coaching contracts are virtually unbreakable.

The most interesting piece is from stats guru, Ken Pomeroy (and of course, Insider Subs.).

There are four basic building blocks of offensive efficiency: shooting, turnovers, offensive rebounding and free throws. The Mountaineers are among the worst in the country at two of those things: offensive rebounding and getting to the line. West Virginia ranks 329th and 330th, respectively, out of 334 Division I teams in those two categories. The only team that can claim a worse combined performance in those elements is Princeton, and its offense barely has a pulse, even by Ivy League standards.

But West Virginia’s offense is very difficult to defend, as evidenced by the Mountaineers’ 18th national ranking in adjusted offensive efficiency. And by torching quality defenses in road games at Oklahoma and Villanova along the way, WVU has proven its offense can succeed against just about anyone.

The simple explanation for this is that WVU succeeds by mastering the other two ingredients of efficiency. By committing turnovers on only 13.1 percent of its possessions, WVU takes care of the ball better than every team except Temple. In addition, the Mountaineers’ effective field-goal percentage of 54.3 percent ranks 24th in the nation.
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It turns out that the Mountaineers’ defense is just as unusual as the offense. In John Beilein’s trademark 1-3-1 zone, they rate poorly in two of the four factors, but are outstanding in the other two. Their strength is forcing turnovers and preventing free-throw attempts. The defense has improved from last season, mainly due to their increased dominance in these two categories.

Everyone has love for the Hoopies right now. Well, almost everybody.

Covers Expert Tony George feels in a rivalry such as this, intangibles will be a main factor.

“West Virginia is undefeated on the road this season (4-0) and Pitt is undefeated at home (13-0),” says George. “In games like this, especially with the extra time both teams have had, it will come down to who needs this game more.”

The Panthers haven’t played since Sunday, losing to Georgetown 61-58 as 4-point underdogs. George says giving a talented team such as Pitt time to reflect on back-to-back losses may be the deciding factor (they also lost 80-76 to Connecticut last Tuesday as 9-point underdogs).

“You have a team in Pittsburgh that’s lost its last two games on the road,” says George. “Now they come home — a place they average 17 more points than opponents — in a game they really need.”

Intangibles are nice, but I’d like to see solid defense, good passing and shooting.