Geez, Georgetown suddenly looks scary good. I want Pitt to win — badly — but it also feels like Pitt gets to play with house money at this point. Still, can’t have the newbies from C-USA feel that comfortable yet.

9:25: Just as Pitt gets off to a solid start and 5-0 lead, Blair commits a dumb foul way out on the perimeter. Marquette immediately scored after that.

9:30: Pitt up 14-4 with 15:44 to the half. Hot shooting start. Levance Fields feeling it early going to the basket. Shots that hadn’t fallen since his return are dropping right now. Sam Young is really, really active on the D. Marquette sloppy with the ball helps, too.

9:38: Marquette briefly stopped turning the ball over and closed. Then they got sloppy again and Pitt converts. Now 24-15 with the “and 1” for Brown coming after the commercial. Jerel McNeal has been carrying the Golden Eagles. That ran out for WVU with Alexander today. I’m just sayin’.

9:44: Damn. Blair with his second at about the 10 minute mark. Let’s see if Biggs can give Pitt some more minutes.

Marquette with now within 6.

9:55: Wow. McNeal with 2 fouls and over 6 minutes until halftime. Pitt is still attacking offensively and it is beautiful. Defense is tight to this point. Shots that Marquette is making are not exactly a lay-up line.

9:57: Things not heard very often. Size mismatch in favor of Benjamin.

9:58: With 4:17 left, McNeal commits 3d foul (2nd offensive) as Benjamin draws it. Huge.

10:02: Things all going Pitt’s way right now. It’s Marquette with foul issues — despite better depth. Pitt is just attacking, attacking, attacking.

35-21 with under 4, Benjamin heading to the line. Marquette is even bringing back in Hayward with his two fouls because he provides marginally better inside defense.

10:10: Well, unfortunately Pitt failed to score in the final minutes. Of course Marquette only had 2 points over 9:28.

The Golden Eagles are 0-16 on shooting right now. Eerily like a role-reversal from the first meeting. Pitt should be up more, but then in the first game, so should have Marquette at the end of the 1st half.

Not thrilled with the way Pitt rushed shots in the final few minutes, but I’ll let it slide.

Biggs has been solid in his minutes. This will be somewhat backhanded, but Marquette is precisely the kind of team that Biggs should be able to do well on both ends.

35-22 Pitt at the half.

10:27: Matthews commits 2 fouls in a few seconds. Ramon shooting 3 FTs. Goes 1-3. Huh?

10:30: Blair with his 3d foul just a minute and a half into the second half. Damn.

10:32: Ramon and Young are just getting after things for Pitt. Yippee (I know, trenchant observations here).

10:39: McNeal with foul #4 with 15:43 left in the game. Pitt up “only” 11.

10:46: Just as Marquette gets to 10, Pitt answers. Ramon for a corner 3, then Young steal and lay-in.

13:19 left, Pitt up 49-34.

10:51: Crean’s whining/bitching/complaining in a media TO, gets him a technical. Ramon only 1-2. What is up with his FT shooting tonight?

Biggs now shooting his FTs — and makes them both. 52-39, 11:50 left.

10:57: The Marquette 3s have been falling more. Now Blair gets his 4th foul with 9:01 left. Pitt’s lead down to 8.

11:01: Okay, I don’t know what has happened in this game to Pitt’s FT shooting. Between that and Marquette really getting a ton of second chances (even though they have missed a lot of them) that is really starting to offset good early shooting and Pitt forcing turnovers.

And Biggs off the feed from Young gives Pitt a needed basket with the “and 1” (not counting on it) after the commercial break. Pitt still up by 8, with under 8 to go.

11:06: If Young won’t even warn Ramon, they are going to keep running that screen to free James.

11:30: Marquette and their fans can take, um, solace in the moral victory. That their team didn’t quit. That they rallied and fought and clawed back into the game. All good things.

I’ll take the real thing. Plus the fact that even as Marquette made a comeback, Pitt never lost it. They did what was needed. They regained their composure.

Pitt doesn’t surrender the lead or the game. 68-61 for the win. Points scored in the first half, still counted in the second half.

Thanks to Don, editor of Mondesi’s House, for passing along Jim Colony’s Pitt-centric “Extra Point”.

This isn’t an actual “Extra Point”, since the already recorded Friday one was about Bob Knight being the latest guy who used to hate the media to join the media (see Parcells, B. and Sharpe, S.- Sterling, not Shannon). And Knight is really good, as you knew he would be. It’s impossible to not stop and listen to him because Knight is one of the – if not the – most compelling sports figures of our time.

But as a basketball afficionado who is consistently frustrated by Pitt (annually the worst “really good” team in America), I come before you now to not bury the Panthers, but to praise them. That was a huge win against Louisville.

While Pitt’s familiar 5th and 6th grade-level problems persisted early on – inability to beat the press by failing to keep a guy behind the ball and missing free throws – they made up for it by finally playing some defense. The swarming double-teams in the post clearly disrupted Louisville’s offense and was the kind of defense that has landed the Panthers in the Big East Championship Game more often than not in recent years.

There is a school of thought that making a run to that conference title game can be counterproductive come NCAA time…and that may have been true when Pitt was an obvious top-4 seed. But with the Panthers projected as an 8-seed by ESPN’s Joe Lunardi (even though he had them as a 7 before they beat DePaul), it’s important to get away from that 8-9 line, since I think somehow they’d draw North Carolina.

Pitt has been slighted in the past, but even before the two Big East Tournament wins, the Panthers were 24th in the RPI…which by the book translates to a 6-seed (but Pitt fans know how that goes). Since they just beat Louisville (projected as a 3 across the board), that has to help. Plus, not to sound like Jamie Dixon, but Pitt has now won 5 of 6 (and they also know all about Edgar Sosa because they recruited him).

One more win secures a 7-seed and probably a 6, which is where the Duke and Georgetown wins could come in handy, but as we’ve seen, you never know. Then again, it may not matter that much. Among the top 1-2 seeds, whom do you fear?

Pitt can’t play UCLA in the second round (since the Panthers played them last year) and they can’t play Georgetown or Duke (which is probably too bad)…which leaves North Carolina, Memphis, Tennessee, Kansas, and Texas.

I don’t like the Panthers chances against Carolina or Texas…but anyone else? All of a sudden, they could be back.

Funny how after a big win everyone has the glass half-full.

They entered a team near disarray on defense and on the glass. They’ve emerged as a punishing and pressuring group who fights for every carom and dives for every loose ball.

There must be some magic in Madison Square Garden for Pitt.

Thursday’s 76-69 victory over No. 13 Louisville in overtime marks the seventh time in eight seasons thePanthers (24-9) advanced to the semifinals of the Big East tournament. They’ve been to the finals six times.

One theme from the stories is that Pitt plays well at MSG.

Nothing that happens at Madison Square Garden should surprise anybody anymore.

It is the site of some of Pitt’s greatest victories, the place where Levance Fields shocked Duke.

“We always play pretty decent here,” Sam Young said. “We always have good games.”

Or simply that Pitt ups its play in the Big East Tournament. This link has Coach Dixon talking with Pete Thamel of the NYTimes about playing well at MSG — treating games there as home games, right down to the routines.

And so it goes.

The Panthers go to school in Pennsylvania but they clearly go to work in New York City.

Pittsburgh put on another stunning performance at the Big East tournament, where they have advanced to the championship game six of the last seven seasons. The seventh-seeded Panthers got another step closer Thursday night when they upset second-seeded Louisville 76-69 in overtime.

“This is our home away from home,” Young said.

Another theme concerned Louisville losing 3 straight to Pitt in the Big East Tournament.

Louisville’s athletic director, Tom Jurich, likes to consider Louisville the sixth borough of New York because of Coach Rick Pitino’s many ties to the city. The Pittsburgh team feels so at home in Madison Square Garden that it goes through home-game rituals when it plays here.

By knocking the Cardinals out of the Big East tournament for the third consecutive year, Pittsburgh showed Louisville, a relatively new Big East team, that it has a long way to go before it will be annexed by New York City.

That theme of course meant that the “relatively new Big East team” has media that hasn’t overused and abused those Pitt puns yet.

The Big East Tournament always ends in the pits for the University of Louisville men’s basketball team.

Pittsburgh, that is.

That’s a rib-splitter.

God, love the NYC media. They have no problems taking shots at Pitino.

Afterward, Pitino bristled when asked if he’s concerned about his two-game losing streak.

“Obviously, you don’t know basketball very well,” he told a reporter. “Because if you think it’s bad to lose to Georgetown at Georgetown and a hard-fought game to Pittsburgh in overtime, you don’t follow basketball very much. … If that’s a concern for you, it’s not a concern for me. You worry about it – I won’t. Go home and lose a lot of sleep over it. Promise?”

A bit sensitive, don’t you think?

It was nice, though, to read about some other local media complaining about guard play.

“I thought our frontcourt played well,” Pitino said. “Then they started taking away our frontcourt, and we threw it out and had difficulty scoring from that point on. Generally we don’t.”

Generally, Pitino has enough guys to throw out there that somebody will be on. One night Andre McGee, another Jerry Smith, maybe Edgar Sosa. Or maybe Terrence Williams will have a good perimeter night.

Last night nobody did. Sosa made ill-advised drives into traffic. Williams tried runners and leaners and bangers on his way to 2-for-10 shooting. After two particularly bad shots on back-to-back possessions in overtime allowed Pitt to get some distance, Pitino had seen enough and pulled Williams.

U of L doesn’t have a single perimeter threat who is a lock to deliver night after night. It relies a lot on hope — the hope that somebody in the crowd will be on.

Wait. You mean having superior athletes and height doesn’t guarantee consistency and reliability? Upside and potential is one thing, delivering on it is something else. Really, that’s been the hardest thing for Louisville fans. Outside of Padgett and maybe Palacios, the Cardinal players have been very inconsistent in effort and output for a couple years.

There’s stories with love for the young players.

This has to be at the top of that list: Freshmen DeJuan Blair and Gilbert Brown played under the Madison Square Garden lights — the brightest in college basketball — as if they’ve been doing it all their lives.

Freshmen? No way.

“What have we played? 33 games? We’re not freshmen anymore,” Blair said outside the happy Panthers’ locker room.

“We’re sophomores now … no, we’re froshmores.”

Whatever.

What they were for Pitt last night was terrific.

…

Which is what the kid does all the time when he’s ballin’, by the way. You would smile a lot, too, if you had his ability.

By the way, seeing Ron Cook use “ballin’ ” in a column was incredibly awkward to read. Visualizing the hefty, bearded, 50-something Cook saying anything like that inspired a slight giggle fit.

DeJuan Blair, especially had a solid bounce back performance after what happened the night before with Cinci.

“I had to keep my head up,” Blair said. “I had a tough game (Wednesday), but it was over. I had to worry about (Thursday).”

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon boldly predicted that Blair would have a big game Thursday, despite evidence that Blair’s production has been slipping other than a 22-point effort against DePaul and despite the opponent having Padgett and Derrick Caracter, two formidable post players.

Maybe it was motivation. Maybe it was complete faith. But Dixon saw his young star fulfill his responsibilities, set aside his previous faults and prove fatigue wasn’t the reason for his poor play Wednesday.

Dixon, though, had this warning for Blair after Thursday’s game: “He’s got in some foul trouble and he’s got double-teamed. There’s some things he’s going to get used to, and it’s happening more and more the better and better he gets.”

In other words, coach said there would be days like this. The key is how you overcome them and respond.

Dixon deserves a lot of credit for the way he managed the team in the Louisville game. From the way he carefully put Benjamin and Fields in the 1st half after both had 2 fouls very early. Then there was sticking with Gilbert Brown in the second half over Brown even in the OT. Starkey gives Dixon the love.

Dixon, who is 4-2 against Pitino, said he made several defensive adjustments from the first matchup. One was obvious: He ordered fast and aggressive double teams on Padgett, usually with Sam Young joining Blair.

Dixon also played on his players’ pride. He drilled into them how badly they’d been cut up in the first game against Louisville.

Last night, as he sat at the post-game podium with Blair, Ronald Ramon and Young – Dixon said, “We held them to 37 percent (shooting).” He then turned to his players and said, “What did they shoot last time, guys?”

Blair laughed and said, “57 percent.”

Levance Fields got lots of love from Digger Phelps on ESPN after the game, and got some in the rest of the media as well.

But it was neither. Panthers coach Jamie Dixon saw the change in his team a week ago, when junior point guard Levance Fields returned to practice. He’d missed 14 games with a broken foot, and it was only after Pitt’s regular-season finale that Fields could participate fully in workouts.

“I don’t think anybody really knew what to make of us, because of all the injuries,” said Dixon, who lost senior Mike Cook and freshman Austin Wallace to season-ending injuries before the new year began. “We’re finding ourselves.”

Fields especially. He picked up two fouls in the first 6:37 last night and missed most of the first half, leaving senior Ronald Ramon to try to break Louisville’s difficult full-court press. Fields contributions were varied: Six assists to just one turnover and 6-of-6 free throws in overtime, during which the Panthers (24-9) made all 10 of their foul shots.

Mike DeCourcy isn’t sold on Pitt getting too deep in the NCAA Tournament, but he likes the difference in the team with Fields healthy.

They will not get back small forward Mike Cook, who injured his knee at Madison Square Garden back in December. So they’ll never be quite the same. But Thursday night, in a 76-69 Big East quarterfinal victory over Louisville, they again began to play like Pitt.

That’s because the Panthers got back point guard Levance Fields. He had appeared in eight other games since returning from a 13-game absence because of a foot injury, and he’d produced some OK numbers, but his performance against the Cardinals served as a confirmation that he still could grab a basketball game by the collar and refuse to let go.

In a Big East notebook from the Hartford Courant, the focus was on Pitt and what they have done (and haven’t).

Howland put the program on the national scene, but he could never get past the Sweet 16 and neither has Dixon. He has taken Pitt there twice.

And that’s not enough for some Pittsburgh faithful who think it’s time for the Panthers to go further.

“You see people around the city and even before the season starts they’re saying, ‘Good luck,'” said junior Sam Young, who had game highs of 21 points and 12 boards. “Then they say, ‘But you guys better get further than the Sweet 16.’ It’s amazing. I’m like, ‘Can we start the season first and qualify for the tournament before we start talking about that?'”

Well, we can start talking about it now because the Panthers have qualified. And Pitt’s chances of going further appear to be pretty good. Why?

Because the Panthers are as healthy as they’ve been all season.

Everyone is familiar with the Panthers’ injury situation early on. At one point, they didn’t have enough players for a full scrimmage. No one expected them to get this far in the conference tournament, let alone do any damage in the NCAAs.

The column then leaps into message board speculation that Coach Dixon could be hired away by another program — USC or Indiana. Then he says he doubts it.

That’s it for the recap. Next up is Marquette. Our friends at Cracked Sidewalks are wondering (hoping?) if Pitt will be tired from an OT game. I would be worried normally, given Pitt’s up-and-down performance in games a couple days after another. What Pitt did last night, makes me a little less concerned.