Breaking with usually waiting until Friday for the chat round-up for a special.

He had his chat today on ESPN.com (Insider Subs.). I can’t post the whole thing, because that’s going beyond mere fair use. There were some bold-ass questions coming from some keyboards that I can’t even imagine any sane person asking Gray to his face “… do you blame yourself for the loss on Saturday night?” Geez.

brian, pittsburgh, PA: who is the toughest player you’ve ever played against?

Aaron Gray: Oh man. Good question. As far as the low blocks and in the paint … Outside of our team, Taft and Troutman, I’d have to say the strongest is definitely Craig Smith of BC. The most skilled is probably Warrick of Syracuse.
…
Steve: (State College): Aaron, I go to school at Penn State and all these kids from Allentown, PA said you could of lead PSU to the NCAA tournament. Did you ever consider PSU?

Aaron Gray: Yeah, they did. PSU was one of the first school’s to recruit me hard. I took my visit there when JoePa broke the all-time wins record. They got a commitment from another player and took their final scholarship spot and they stopped recruiting me.

Todd (Carlsbad, CA): Aaron, how does it feel to see yourself and your teammates improving on the basketball court and developing relationships with the people of Pittsburgh?

Aaron Gray: It’s amazing. We have such great team chemistry this year. We all get along on the court and off. When we’re not on the court, we’re usually hanging out off the court. People of Pittsburgh see that and they want to be a part of that. People had such low expectations of our season, we didn’t but others did. Now that we’re having success, people want to be a part of that. Especially after the Steelers just won the Super Bowl, they want to see us do the same thing.
…
Terrence (Albany NY): Who is the #1 Pitt player you enjoy watching

Aaron Gray: It would have to be, before I got here, Chevy Troutman. The first time I remember seriously watching Pitt play, when Pitt beat UConn in the championship. Everyone was saying how good Knight and Page was. Troutman was basically playing on a broken ankle and he was going against the best college center in the nation in Emeka Okafor.

Other questions he fielded including a couple from his hometown area including reminding him about shattering a backboard — glass to the face — and not being able to dunk. Good times.

Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News looks at college basketball individual awards.

Most Improved Player

Front-runner: Aaron Gray, Pittsburgh. Gray averaged 4.3 points and 2.8 rebounds as a sophomore, playing behind Chris Taft. With Taft in the NBA, Gray is averaging a double double and has become the foundation of Pitt’s fifth straight 20-win season.

The field: Je’Kel Foster, Ohio State; Thomas Gardner, Missouri; Chris Lofton, Tennessee; Kevin Pittsnogle, West Virginia; Al Thornton, Florida State.

The race: This isn’t an official award, though it is in the NBA. Gray is a terrific player, but his enhanced production has a lot to do with opportunity. He was good last season but played behind another future pro.

The best choice is Foster, now a better ballhandler and defender. His shooting has improved from 43.5 percent last season to 55.1 percent, and he nearly has doubled his scoring average.

Now, DeCourcy isn’t dissing Gray. He’s been a fan of his since the end of last season.

Once again there are some early entrants who won’t be sorely missed next season.
…
Chris Taft, C, Pittsburgh. The Panthers can replace the 13.3 points and 7.5 rebounds per game Taft produced as a sophomore. It’ll be tougher to find someone who can manage more than 11 field-goal attempts for every one assist. Pitt’s concerns mostly are on the perimeter. It will be just fine with 7-0 Aaron Gray in the middle. Gray has better post moves than Taft and is unselfish. Gray does not move as well, but Taft was so unsound defensively that his athleticism rarely made a difference.

He called that one.

Okay, by now I’m sure most of you have read through Paul Zeise’s belated post-signing day Pitt football Q&A. Since there’s just a wee bit of space-filling going on in the blog this week, I’ll now get to some thoughts.

Looking ahead — spring should be very interesting because the Panthers are going to be extremely young in a number of key areas and a lot of guys on the team that are veterans are going to have to really push hard in order to win jobs at open positions. Even so, this is one year that the real competition for jobs won’t begin until the fall when this class arrives.

There are 26 recruits and I expect about 19 of them to have a legitimate chance to make the two-deep and maybe about half of that number to have a legitimate shot at a starting job. So this team is going to be an extremely fun offseason because the team that lines up to play Virginia may be completely different than it is right now.

It’s exciting and scary at the same time when you start thinking about each part of the team. Just how many new starters, and how wide open many of the positions will be. Running game, receivers, O-line, secondary, D-line. The lines especially. Zeise states that Juco Jeff Otah and incoming freshman Joe Thomas are expected to start this season on the offensive line.

You have to figure the spring practice will be crucial at wide receiver and tailback.

Derek Kinder and Joe DelSardo are the default nos. 1 and 2 receivers, but both know they will get pushed very hard come the fall. As for the rest, players like Pestano and Chandler need to show some consistency and real improvement if they don’t want to end up limited to special teams.

Tailback is more interesting. While there will be a lot of expectations that Collier will grab the job come the fall, Stephens-Howling will want to try and show he can carry at least half the load. Then there is Conredge Collins at fullback.

Lots and lots of questions. Zeise almost seems ready to dismiss the sophomore and junior classes as lost. I don’t know. While there is a lot of potential and higher-ceiling talent coming in — and that makes things very exciting as for the future and potential — they are still unknown and they have to learn the system.

Expectations for Pitt are going to be wild and varied. People will point to Penn State and wonder why not Pitt?

For starters, Penn State already had a defense that was top-notch and just needed to get the offense better. Pitt has issues on both sides of the ball on the lines I don’t think it is as easy at a skill position to plug in a freshman. I think the lines are going to be a real concern for at least a couple more years.

I’m not sure what to expect from Pitt this season, but the Blue-Gold Scrimmage at Heinz Field should be a curious event.

So Pitt’s offense is ahead of the defense at this point.

Pitt is giving up a respectable 63.1 points per game, but that number is not indicative of the type of defense the Panthers have been playing lately. They are yielding 69.5 points per game in Big East Conference play, which is 10th out of 16 teams in the league.

In the past six games, Pitt is giving up 71 points per game, and three opponents have scored 77 or more points in that span.

The offense, meanwhile, is playing better than at any other time in the Jamie Dixon-Ben Howland era. The Panthers are averaging 74.3 points per game. The only team that fared better in the past six seasons was the ’02-03 squad that averaged 0.6 points per game more than this one. But that team only averaged 72.2 in Big East games.

In the past few weeks, the offense has been soaring. Pitt has scored 76 points or more six of its past eight games. To put that in perspective, Pitt scored 76 points or more eight times in 36 Big East games the previous two seasons.

“Every team is different,” Dixon said yesterday after practice. “We don’t have a Jaron Brown or a Julius Page defensively. We just don’t. Those were senior guys, fourth- and fifth-year guys. We need to get better in a lot of areas, and defense is one of the areas.”

Dixon said this season has been strange because many of Pitt’s games have been low-scoring, then morph into high-scoring affairs at the end. He pointed to the 100-97 double-overtime victory against Notre Dame as an example.

Dixon also noted that the defense has been inconsistent. Great games have been followed by subpar ones. He said that comes from inexperience.

Looking at the schedule, it seems worth mentioning that only in the UConn game did Pitt give up a lot of points to a team not shooting a lot of 3s. Coach Dixon points out that the changes to the conference in terms of teams and style is a major factor.

“Right now, we’re shooting the ball better,” Dixon said. “That’s been obvious. Oftentimes, it’s the teams you’re playing against and the style, too. I think our conference has changed over the years. West Virginia has completely changed their style of play. Georgetown has changed their style of play. And you have five new teams this year. The diversity of the teams has definitely changed things. That has something to do with it.”

Aside from Pitt and UConn, most of the teams in the Big East don’t exactly have dominating front courts. More of their offensive system is being run from the wings or guards. Where in the previous few years you had BC, Syracuse, G-town, ND, Providence and Pitt playing with strong frontcourts. Happy to slug it out inside and battle. Now things have changed.

Villanova, Marquette, Louisville, WVU, Rutgers, Seton Hall, ND, DePaul, G-town, Providence and Syracuse all attack from the perimeter. Either with guards taking 3s, screens and motion offense, or with forwards on the wings taking guys off the dribble to go inside or pull-up. Only Pitt and UConn will play with guys posting up right around the basket with any regularity (and success). That’s going to have an impact on scoring and the number of possessions in the game.

To honor the Pitt basketball Centennial and all-Centennial team, Pitt will be going old school against Providence.

Pitt will honor more than 80 former men’s basketball players, when the Panthers wear blue throwback uniforms for their Big East Conference game Saturday against Providence at Petersen Events Center.

The 1960s replica uniforms will feature gold block lettering with gold piping around the sleeves, neck and shorts.

The unis are supposed to be made available on Pitt’s online auction and at team stores as well — go figure. Nothing was there at this time.

Then, there is a piece on “bracketolgy.” As we all are aware, Pitt is expected to be a 3 seed, though 2 or 4 are not out of the question.

*Sigh*

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there will be no resumption of the Pitt-Penn State football series until the old man is dead and buried.

Usually, we have to wait until the end of summer when the coaches do media events for the annual topic to be raised. I really prefer to wait until then, when I can say I don’t want to bother with the dead end subject and then find myself wasting many posts on it anyways because I can’t help myself.

Not this time. Neil Rudel decides to start in with it early — it’s not like a long time Penn State writer would know anything about basketball — with this article. Long story short, he proposes a 10-year deal with 6 in State College and 4 in Pittsburgh. I ignored the article after I read it on Saturday, because it’s just more of the same noise.

Now you have this response, which is also the same noise.

It’s all irrelevant. It’s not going to happen at this time. Paterno is too old, too stubborn, too vindictive and too powerful for there to be any change in the present situation. Pitt could capitulate (not that it should), and he’d still find a new reason for it not to happen.

So, yeah, we can rail about it. Vent. All the stuff. You can talk to friends and family who will not really argue too hard against it because they too want a rivalry game back. But, we all know it’s not going to happen.

Best thing is to just let the ADs keep talking and communicating quietly and when Paterno is 6 feet under and the year long mourning at PSU is over let the series resume.