The last time DeJuan Blair went up against a very good big man, he dominated Roy Hibbert in a Pitt win. Tomorrow against Notre Dame he gets the chance to do the same against Luke Harangody, who is being considered for Big East POTY honors.

“I like to step up to challenges,” Blair said after practice yesterday.

“I look [at] every game as a challenge, but this is a bigger challenge. It will be like Georgetown. It’s going to be fun. I love it.”

Blair practiced yesterday for the first time since spraining his left knee against Marquette but said he is definitely going to play against the Fighting Irish.

So he’s pumped up to play, but how well will he play?

The success or failure of Pitt in this game is going to be greatly determined by which DeJuan Blair shows up to play. Will the Blair who scored 15 on Georgetown’s Roy Hibbert show up? Or will it be the Blair who has missed lay-up after lay-up since? On defense, will it be the Blair who held Hibbert to only 7 field goal attempts and is 3rd in the Big East in steals? Or will it be the Blair who sits on the bench for most of the game because of freshmen fouls outside the three point arc?

When Blair went down with the knee injury on Friday, I immediately thought “aw crap, we we’re down to two starters”. Getting injured against probably his toughest head-to-head matchup of the year is not good. Expect Harangody to go at Blair even tougher if he is limping around. The obvious sign of weakness would certainly be exploited by Mike Brey. (Quickly: Brey is not in the same category as Calhoun or Boehiem, but do we hate him?)

Harangody is more dominant on the offensive side of the ball compared to Blair, but Blair is the better defender. That is not to say that either guy doesn’t play both sides of the ball well. Where Harangody averages nearly double the points/game that Blair does, DeJuan has more blocks and steals and they have similar averages on the boards. (Full and beautiful stat comparison here.)

I thought that Hibbert would be Blair’s biggest challenge this season. Instead, Harangody and the entire ND team have come from seemingly nowhere and performed high above expectations. Harangody’s improvement has been surprising, and he now looks like the guy who will give DeJuan the most trouble.

“He’s really an interesting player,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “He does some things that are unconventional in the post, the way he plays offensively and defensively. He can score facing the basket and on the block. He uses his quick feet. He’s similar to DeJuan in a lot of ways. He’s improved since he was a freshman, and we’ll see the same kind of improvements in DeJuan [next season]. He’s a guy to emulate because of his improvement.”

And if Blair improves even slightly (very likely since he’s only an 18-year-old who hasn’t reached his full potential yet…we hope) then watch out. For my money, he’s more valuable to the team that Aaron Gray ever was.

So, yes, at long last, Pitt fell out of the top-25 in both polls. A week of doom to be sure as it’s the first time in 43 consecutive weeks that Pitt wasn’t ranked. Oh, well.

In the Q&As Fittipaldo points out a good reason for struggles in February.

Q: Coach (Jamie) Dixon always talks about continually getting better, yet Pitt seems to hit a wall every February. I was hoping this year would be different because the freshmen would improve, but they seemed to have regressed over the past few weeks. Why does this continue to happen?

FITTIPALDO: Pitt is 2-2 this February. The Panthers were 5-2 last February, 4-3 in February of 2006, 4-4 in February of ’05 and 6-2 in ’04. The only year the Panthers might have regressed at the end of the season was ’05 when they lost four of their final six games and were knocked out in the first round of the Big East and NCAA tournaments.

You might be noticing that Pitt does not win as many games in February as January, but there is a reason for that. The top teams in the Big East are desired by the television networks for marquee games with other top teams. The TV networks begin to televise most of their better games in February and March, when more people are more inclined to tune in. CBS and ESPN do not want to compete with the NFL playoffs. If you noticed, the first half of Pitt’s schedule featured many of the bottom-rung teams in the league. The second half of the schedule features teams competing for NCAA tournament berths. That’s because the networks dictated which games they wanted to televise.

Good point, but it never stops sports writers from talking about how Pitt is struggling at the end of the season.

An article on Jermaine Dixon that is at least somewhat reassuring.

A Baltimore native, Dixon is one of the leading candidates for Player of the Year in the Panhandle Conference, regarded as one of the most competitive Juco conferences in the nation.

“Basically, Jermaine is a big, athletic guard who can go from A to Z very quick,” Tallahassee CC coach Eddie Barnes said. “He’s a good kid. He’s very coachable. He loves to compete. He’s going to compete at the highest level (in the Big East). He’s a dream guard. It’s going to be hard for me to replace him.”

The left-handed Dixon averages 21.0 points and about 7.0 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game.

His work ethic on the court doesn’t seem to be in question and he is apparently one of those high-motor players. Anyone familiar with what the Dixon boys have overcome should want to root for his success.

There’s more Pitt recruiting stuff here.