The Big East announced the 18 game conference schedule. Every team in the conference plays each other once, and 3 home-and-homes. How do they decide those?

The conference said that the opponents a school plays twice were based on “natural interest, geography, rivalries and television contractual obligations.”

Well,  for Pitt obviously WVU is one of them. In basketball, Marquette-Pitt has been well on its way to being a “rivalry” as the games have been heated and tough in every meeting. So, naturally Marquette and Pitt only meet once. These are Pitt’s 3 home-and-homes.

Pittsburgh: Cincinnati, Villanova, West Virginia

WVU and ‘Nova make sense. But Cinci? WVU should have the home-and-home with Cinci but they end up with Providence and St. John’s as their other two? Huh? Yes, there’s things that make sense. Private, small, East Coast schools are a natural fit to play WVU.

As for the the other 12 conference games for Pitt.

• Away: UConn, Marquette, Notre Dame, St. John’s, USF, Syracuse
• Home: DePaul, Georgetown, Louisville, Providence, Rutgers, Seton Hall

I’m still trying to accept playing Cinci twice.

Deep breath everyone. It may be a lousy logo replacing a lousy logo, but it is only a secondary logo. For example, that needed replacement of the 1997-era “Pittsburgh” logo and panther head in the Pete that was in the paper today. It’s not like it’s going to be with the new dino-cat. They will just have the block “PITT.” Right?

That’s because a giant tile logo that reads “Pittsburgh,” built at a cost of more than $100,000 into the main lobby floor of the Petersen Events Center, will be torn up and modified under an effort to put the “PITT” back in Pitt athletics.

Jeff Long, the school’s athletic director, yesterday confirmed the planned work this summer inside the 12,500-seat arena, which opened in 2002 and is home to the school’s basketball teams.

He said the Panther head inside the logo also will be updated to a newer, sleeker version announced last month.

Oh, wait. Crap.

It would have been fine with just the big block lettered logo. Clean, simple and uncomplicated. On the bright side, when you go into the Pete, you will at least be able to stomp on that dino-cat to get some of the frustration out of your system.

While Pitt isn’t officially commenting, the Big East has confirmed the Pitt-Duke game at Madison Square Garden.

Pitt is scheduled to play the Blue Devils on Dec. 20 at Madison Square Garden in a nationally televised men’s basketball game.

“It’s happening,” Big East associate commissioner Tom Odjakjian said. “That’s been confirmed.”

Duke had a standing deal with ESPN for a game at MSG on that day. Thankfully, Pitt was able to make it work.

Non-con known now includes Duke, St. Louis, at Dayton, at Washington, Oklahoma St., Duquesne, Buffalo, Lafayette, Houston Baptist and NC A&T. With 18 Big East games, that brings the schedule to 29 games. That means maybe one more game on the non-con that we don’t know at this point. Nice.