The Selection Show came and went without much surprise regarding Pitt. They fell in the 4/5 range that was expected and the biggest gripe right now is the location — our first (and second) round games are all the way out in Denver. The full bracket can be found here.

The top four seeds in our region, the South:

1. Memphis
2. Texas
3. Stanford
4. Pitt

Compared to the other regions, ours is not the hardest (East) nor the easiest (West).

The first game will be on Thursday, and game time is expected to be released tomorrow. Oral Roberts is the opponent — one of the most obscure and least-known teams in the field this year. Potential match ups down the road (should we win, of course) are interesting to look at:

1. The the second round we would face the (5)Michigan State vs (12)Temple winner. The quick thought is a Pitt-MSU meeting, but don’t put it past the Spartans to lose to Temple. If they can lose to Penn State, why not to a team that actually wins a few games?

2. Top seeded Memphis will likely await the winner of the Denver pod. So much has been made of “Calapari is a better coach than Dixon, we should have hired him” so how about settling it on the court. Memphis runs up and down the floor as fast as anyone, opposite of Pitt’s methodical and slower paced style.

Don’t get me wrong though, I haven’t forgot about Bradley and Pacific. Let’s get past Oral Roberts first.

The brackets are set so we might as well fill them ASAP. Like last year, the Pitt Blather bracket group will be on Yahoo. To join:

1) If you don’t already have a Yahoo account, sign up for one (easy and free)

2) Go here: http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/men/register/joingroup

3) Click join private group

The group ID is 67835 and the password is gopitt

If you somehow manage to crank out a perfect bracket, Yahoo will give you $5 million.

Interesting facts on filling out a perfect bracket:

— Because there are 64 games played in the tourney (including the play-in) and each game has two possible outcomes, there are 2⁶⁴ possible outcomes. That equals 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 (18.4 quintillion!) brackets you’d need to fill out to guarantee you get one perfectly correct.

— If every one of the 6.5 billion people on Earth filled out a bracket, the odds of someone (anyone!) achieving perfection are still slim to none.

So at 6pm on CBS the 2008 bracket will be unveiled. Prior to the Big East Tournament, Pitt was sitting around the 8/9 line. Four wins in four days has skyrocketed us up towards the 3/4/5/6 area. Some questions:

Who would you like to see in the first round?

Who do you think we should root against being matched up against?

Which #1 seed would you want to be in a region with?

Fans from around the country have been waiting for this night for a few months — now it’s here.

Feels good, huh?

Tyrell Biggs needs to be recognized for his job well done in the last two games. DeJuan Blair found himself sitting on the bench a lot and Biggs came in and saw many more minutes than he’s usually going to see. The last two games he’s played 31 and 23 minutes respectively, more than Blair has played each game. Last night he made both shots he took as well as grabbing 4 rebounds. Without role players who can come in and hold down the fort, any team is going to have trouble. Biggs came in, didn’t look too overwhelmed, and it was good to see him perform so well off the bench.

Levance Fields ran the offense last night as well as he has in a while. Along with his 10 points, he added 6 assists and only turned it over once. If you’re asking for anything more than your that from your PG, you might be a little crazy. Sure he struggled from the line but it’s excusable for one game.

The team free throw shooting was poor (50%) but instead how about we focus on the positive – we got to the line 44 (!) times. Georgetown? Nine times.

Ronald Ramon put up a game high 17 points (tied with Hibbert) and drove the lane for at least three or four of his field goals, something we’ve almost never seen from him. What possessed him to drive to the hoop might be mystery, but he did it well enough to score or at least get fouled.

How about Gil Brown? He played the game of his career to date and it’s been great to see how he’s progressed this year. After Cook and Fields went down he was thrown into he mix and saw big minutes but didn’t look so comfortable. Now he looks like he’s found his spot and knows where to fit in. And damn, can he jump out of the gym or what?

Sam Young, thank you for playing defense. Three blocked shots including the early one on Roy Hibbert. Pitt thrives on emotion (what team doesn’t?) and when he pinned the ball against the backboard it got the entire team pumped up. Add the great job he’s done on offense the last four nights and Young got the well-deserved MVP. It seemed like more recently he’s been into the game the whole time, always alert even if he doesn’t touch the ball every possession. It’s a welcomed change.

From what I could tell through the noise at Buffalo Wild Wings in Robinson, the Pitt fans were far better than the Georgetown fans at the Garden. Were there just more Pitt fans than Hoyas? Someone who was there in person, let us know. The ESPN cameras panned over the Pitt students at least five times, compared to the one times they showed a few Georgetown fans. MSG really is our second home (and we went 6-0 in games there this year).

Talk about a physical game, this was it. This is classic Big East basketball – tons of pounding around the hoop, five guys going up for a rebound at once, and hands and elbows being thrown everywhere. Thing is, in 75% of NCAA Tourney games, this kind of physicality isn’t going to be good for Pitt. If we get an ACC or Big XXII ref crew, we could be in for a long game. Fouls that are usually never called during conference games will be easy whistles in the tournament. And you thought Blair was in foul trouble enough already.

The brackets will be released in under 8 hours (holy crap, Selection Sunday came fast), and I think after beating three ranked teams in three days on a neutral court plus an RPI of 15, we shouldn’t be anything less than a 5 seed. Sure the committee could screw us and slot us as a 6, but anything worse than that shouldn’t even be in the question. Also, the feeling is nice to know we kept the Hoyas from getting a #1 seed.

Great night, great week. Congrats to our Big East champs.

I need to crash. I’m feeling very drained, even though all I did was blog, drink a couple beers and do my best not to wake the kids while watching. It’s a good drained feelings. Not feeling particularly coherent.
Shameless commerce divisions already have the Big East Tournament Championship T-shirts for sale and hats.

I had to get a quickie post out on FanHouse, and the great fun was looking at all the Getty Images of pictures of the Pitt players celebrating. Seeing the players and Coach Dixon cutting down the net. Just have to smile.

It is just a great feeling right now. One that can actually be enjoyed for a day or two. The season isn’t over, but it’s been a wild and twisted one so far.

Looking forward to the selection show.

You know what makes this incarnation of Georgetown frustrating. They can be classy and give credit.

Q. At the end of the first half, they were outrebounding you. Those are hustle plays. How did you address that at the beginning of the second half, because I really saw your team get out‑hustled particularly on the boards.

COACH THOMPSON III: It just happens. It’s one of those days. I agree, it did happen. And you’ve got to give them all the credit in the world. That’s a team that’s gone through a lot of adversity this year with the injuries that they’ve had.

Obviously, Jamie is a terrific coach. They’ve done a terrific job of sticking together and staying focused as a unit. So you’ve got to give just all the credit to them for what they accomplished today.

…

Q. Jessie, did that team play like a team that had played four games in four days?

JESSIE SAPP: They just played like they wanted to win. They did a lot of hustle plays. And you wouldn’t have known that they played in four days. They just played hard, and congratulations to those guys.

No backhanded slaps. No we were the better team junk. Just giving Pitt credit.