Quick basketball post before getting into tonight’s Backyard Brawl thread. Dejuan Blair arrived late at today’s game and ended up scoring 11 points and pulling down 11 rebounds in Pitt’s 78-52 win over Toledo. Why was he late?

Pitt freshman DeJuan Blair, facing a difficult decision, didn’t want to disappoint his family or his teammates. He was needed to serve as a pallbearer for a funeral, yet his team played a game at nearly the same time.

Blair finally made the only choice he felt he could make: Try to do both, and hope his sorrow and disappointment didn’t affect his play. And they didn’t.

“I was just coming straight from the funeral today and I was late,” said Blair, who attended military rites for great grandfather Eugene Nelson, a Korean War veteran, shortly before gametime. “I couldn’t even warm up with the rest of the team. I just tried not to think about it and just play, so I just played for him. It was difficult to play, but the coaches and the team and the fans made me feel comfortable.”

Definitely a tough game for Blair to play in, but he performed well and showed a lot of heart to do so. The game was fairly close through the end of the first half, but we came out in the second half and pulled away.

“We came out sluggish and they came out ready to play a ranked team and it showed in the first half,” Young said. “We weathered the storm and definitely came out in the second half ready to play.”

Against Duquesne on Wednesday, we’ll need to be ready to play all 40 minutes because they can score very quickly and an early lead might be the key to an upset for the Dukes.