Damn Penguins game meant Fox wouldn’t pick it up, so that means it can be viewed at the Pitt website.

DeJuan Blair explained how much it means.

“What do they call it, the Backyard Brawl or something like that?” Blair said with a serious tone.

That seemingly points to how much this game means to the No. 3 Panthers.

But Blair was likely kidding. Brown apparently challenged Blair not to comment on anything Duquesne in his remarks to the media Monday.

Gilbert Brown, also was a bit nicer about it.

“I wouldn’t say it’s as mean as the West Virginia rivalry,” Brown said. “But it’s just as big. It’s an inner-city rivalry. They are right down the street. We want to go out there and show something.”

At the same time, Brown indicated that he didn’t want the game to be as close as last year’s game.

The early dominating performances in games and Pitt’s defense keeps the team coming in for puff pieces.

What separates the Panthers, what makes them more than just an intriguing team as this season unfolds, is their bread-and-butter, backbone defense.

It’s as reliable as an old pair of sneakers, the foundation on which coach Jamie Dixon has built his program. Unintentionally, Dixon has modeled his team on the city it calls home. Pittsburgh citizens wear just one sort of collar — down-and-dirty blue. Their hometown team likes its basketball just the same.

And because the defense is indoctrinated like another strand of DNA upon arrival freshman year, it doesn’t go away and doesn’t take nights off. It’s in your face, unforgiving, downright nasty, and because of it, on nights when shots don’t fall, neither necessarily will Pittsburgh.

Not every team in the top 25 can say that.

“It’s the Steel City,” Levance Fields said. “That’s the place we call our second home and that’s how we play.”

Never was that more obvious than in the Legends final. In an avert-your-eyes, hide-the-children ugly game against similarly minded Washington State, the Panthers looked perfectly comfortable. They shot poorly the entire game — 35 percent from the floor, 23 percent on 3s — and never looked rattled. There was never a flinch or even so much as a grimace as one clang led to another against a Wazzu team that would have been perfectly happy to play this game in the 30s.

The annual concern of making free throws is well underway, though.

Once again it appears the Panthers will not be a premier free-throw shooting club. They are shooting 67.1 percent from the free-throw line, which is about on par with their percentages from the past several years.

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Still, it has to be disconcerting for Dixon that his two top scorers are the ones having the most trouble at the line.

Sam Young, a career 67 percent shooter from the line, is making 61.8 percent of his attempts through the first seven games. And Blair, who shot 62.4 percent last season as a freshman, is shooting 53.3 percent this season.

“I try not to think about it,” Blair said. “I just shoot them. I work on them. I come in at nighttime and shoot some with my friends and brother. They’ll eventually start falling. It’s not all that stressful on me.”

For those of us watching him take those FTs, however, it is more than a little stressful.

Gilbert Brown has been back playing for about a week. The rust started to shake off of him in the Legends Classic.

“It’s great to have him back,” senior forward Sam Young said. “We need him.”

Brown scored 10 points and matched his career-high with eight rebounds. He shot 4 of 6 from the field and added two assists and a steal in 25 minutes of action.

“He’s a big spark,” center DeJuan Blair said. “He’s our boost guy.”

Brown’s return gives the No. 4 Panthers a versatile sixth-man, shutdown defender and improving rebounder.

Last year he was starting after Mike Cook went down with the ACL injury. This year, he’ll be backing up Sam Young, but he’s fine with it since he knows he’ll be getting minutes.

“I’m playing 20-25 minutes a game,” Brown said. “I’m worried about when I get in there, that I’m contributing to the team.”

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Brown’s versatility means he can play three positions — shooting guard, swing and power forward, in a pinch. Pitt coach Jamie Dixon likes moving starting swingman Sam Young down to the power forward spot (replacing starter Tyrell Biggs) when he brings Brown in the swing because “it’s a little different match up.” Young creates from the perimeter, meaning he can stretch defenses and pull players taller than he out of the interior. He’s also good enough on defense to hold his own underneath.

Brown, meanwhile, is a long, athletic player who can shoot or drive like Young from the swing, where he expects he’ll get most of his minutes.

Brown contends he’s physically healthy — “When I wake up is when I feel the most pain in my foot. As the day progresses and I walk around and get into the shootaround, the pain goes away.” — and mentally stable despite a constant on-again, off-again injury situation. He actually said watching the team helped him learn a few things about playing defense.

Not the most promising thing that he’s still feeling pain. Great that he’s playing through it and says it fades during the day. Bad that there is still pain.

Sam Young keeps getting noticed by those national writers assigned to college basketball (and not just moved over from college football after the season ends). Andy Katz at ESPN.com puts him #2 on top players for the past week.

2. Sam Young, Sr., F, Pitt: The race for Big East Player of the Year will be quite a chase. Young is definitely in the mix. He’s leading the Panthers with 20.2 points a game and is becoming the team’s go-to guy. The senior forward had quite a week with 33 points against Belmont and 24 against Texas Tech in the semifinals of the Legends Classic in Newark, N.J., then capped off his week with a solid 15 points and 8 boards in the title victory over Washington State.

Right now the early race is between Hasheem Thabeet of UConn, Sam Young and Luke Harangody from ND (assuming he can get healthy from pneumonia in a reasonable time period).

I have been in the minority, I think, in believing that Luke Winn at SI.com does not dislike Pitt. I think he is drawn to two things that Pitt has tended to lack: NBA-caliber star players and outstanding tempo-free stats. So that has had him peg Pitt slightly below where it seems they should be.

Winn did predict, even before the season started, that Pitt would win the Legends Classic with ease. It seems he was there to watch the Washington State finale. He jumps on board the bandwagon of loving Sam Young’s shot-fake. He also makes a good point for Pitt’s hopes this year.

2. Pitt can’t afford to let post-trapping teams take DeJuan Blair out of games. The double-teams in Wazzu’s Pack-Line Defense are well-known for frustrating big men — see what happened to Notre Dame’s Luke Harangody in the second round of the last NCAA tournament — but how can’t you get Blair, who came into the game averaging 17.0 points, more than one shot attempt in the first half? With about 6:40 left in the first half, a Pitt fan stood up and yelled at Fields, “Hey Fields! Put the ball in the paint! Give it to the big man!”

It didn’t get much better in the second half: Blair had just one field-goal attempt then, too, as the Cougars continued to collapse on him in the blocks. He found other ways to contribute, grabbing seven-half rebounds (to finish with 10), blocking three shots, and setting high ball-screens to let Fields get in the lane, but still, Pitt needs more than seven points out of Blair to compete with elite teams. The Panthers survived, on Saturday, by getting decent nights out of Young and Fields, and holding the Cougars to just 24.1 percent shooting in the second half. Against a better opponent — particularly one that could create more of its own offense off of penetration, and had a decent perimeter defender to counter Young — the result might not have been the same.

This is wear Blair’s lack of height works against him. He can’t get the ball over defenders then pass out of the double team to open teammates as easily. He has to find lanes to get the ball through.