You know one of the nice things about heading to Boston for the regional? It means an old school hoop-head sportswriter in Bob Ryan is right there. He may be a general sports columnist, but his love has always been for basketball. He was in Dayton watching Pitt.

And then there’s Fields, a senior who’s on his last Panther roundup. He knows what the stakes are, too. But it’s been a long, tough road for the tank of a point guard, what with two injuries and a lot of frustrating recent moments on the floor.

With his team trailing by 1, he got into the lane and whipped a pass to his left to fellow senior Sam Young, who had kept the Panthers afloat in a wildly exciting first half (49-49) with 23 of his 32 points. Young drilled his fourth 3-pointer of the game.

A Marshall Moses follow-up tied it at 74 for the Cowboys. Fields has been battling a pulled groin, and he only had gone to the hoop with authority perhaps twice since arriving in Dayton. But now he decided the time had come and off he went, slicing in for a pretty lefty layup, plus free throw (which he missed). But Pitt never would trail again.

Oklahoma State’s James Anderson missed a three. On the ensuing Pitt possession, a second-chance deal, Dixon called time out with five seconds left on the shot clock, and what transpired was a coach’s dream. Young passed up a good shot to give Fields a better one, and Fields nailed a right-corner three.

“Two good players making a play,” Dixon said. “We always talk about the pass making the shooter, and that pass made the play.”

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Blair finished with 10 points and 12 rebounds, but Oklahoma State accomplished its goal of neutralizing the frightening pivot force. Confronted with a constant front and back double team, he only took one shot in the first half.

It’s a pick-your-poison strategy, of course. The Cowboys had to hope no other Panther would, you know, go off. But Young did. This is a guy who has dropped 31 on UConn and who has an almost old-fashioned game that combines good open shooting with lots of neat ball fakes leading to artful banked floaters and the like. He knows what he’s doing. He’s got a retirement party face and he really does play as if someone gave him a waiver in order to have a 10-year college career.

“I was kind of piggy-backing off my last game,” he said with a shrug. “I was feeling good and I wanted to be aggressive.”

Pitt has made its way to Boston with a C-minus/D-plus game against East Tennessee State and a B/B-minus game against Oklahoma State. The Panthers have been turning it over too much, and that has to stop. But they are coming, and Dixon is not apologizing for anything he saw in Dayton.

“If you’re still alive, you’re playing good ball,” he insists. “Any coach will tell you that. But you can always get better, and any coach will tell you that.”

Fields seemed to be finding himself — or simply getting healthier — in the Oklahoma State game.

Fields admitted he didn’t play well in the Big East tournament against West Virginia, when he had an uncharacteristic five turnovers. He also wasn’t happy with his effort in the first round against East Tennessee State, which pressed Pitt into committing 18 turnovers in the near-upset. Oklahoma State forced two straight turnovers late in Sunday’s second half by putting on a 1-3-1 press. Though only one of the miscues was assigned to Fields, he took credit for both.

“Being a leader and a point guard, I take the blame,” he said. “I’m not trying to take it to be a hero or a scapegoat. It’s just the truth. It starts with me.”

For Pittsburgh to finish past the Sweet 16, it will need more than Fields’ grit. No other No. 1 seed had as difficult a time getting out of its pod than the Panthers.

Well, yes, no excusing the performance against ETSU. Otherwise, though, aside from maybe LSU, there was no No. 8 as underseeded and playing as well as Oklahoma State has been playing. (To say nothing of being a horrible match-up nightmare for Pitt as we have been saying since the brackets were announced.)

The Panthers looked dreadful doing it, and on the heels of their first-round flameout in the Big East tournament against West Virginia — a 74-60 loss — Pittsburgh’s legitimacy as a No. 1 seed was under some scrutiny.

Not after this game.

Oklahoma State didn’t play like a No. 8 seed. Oklahoma State didn’t look like a No. 8 seed. And in reality, the Cowboys should’ve been seeded higher. Their RPI (No. 19) and strength of schedule (fifth nationally) and 8-2 record in 10 games leading to Selection Sunday all suggested the Cowboys were better than a No. 8 seed. And they were.

And they got Pittsburgh’s respect.

And now Pittsburgh has mine.

Big relief to you Pittsburgh fans, I know. Hey, great, Pittsburgh has a sportswriter’s respect. Let’s throw a party.

Good point. But after pointing out just how unimpressive Pittsburgh was Friday against ETSU, I must point out how impressive it was Sunday. And to do that, it must be made clear just how good Oklahoma State was for most of this game. The Cowboys played a nearly perfect first half, shooting 63.6 percent on two-pointers and 62.5 percent on 3-pointers and 100 percent on free throws. The Cowboys had 15 assists and four turnovers. They couldn’t have played any better.

And they were tied at 49 at the half.

That’s how good Pittsburgh was. Pittsburgh was as good as Oklahoma State, and Oklahoma State was damn near perfect.
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Dixon tore into his team at halftime — “Man, he’s a motivator,” said DeJuan Blair — and after that, this game was Pittsburgh’s. The Panthers tightened up their defense and controlled the backboard, outrebounding Oklahoma State 41-21 for the game.

Not that Coach Dixon even admitted ripping into his team at the half.

Jamie Dixon’s locker-room message at halftime Sunday was a mixture of realism and optimism.

“I just said, ‘They’re not going to shoot it that well in the second half,’ ” the Pitt basketball coach said. “Maybe that was wishful thinking, but it did turn out that way.”

It hasn’t been pretty. The team knows they haven’t been as good.

“Right now, we’re not playing on all cylinders,” Fields said. “We’ve got to do better when we have leads. We took our foot off their throat today and they made plays. The thing that stands out for me is the turnovers. We had 18 in the first game, 14 today. We average about 10. But we did exactly what we needed to win, cut down on the turnovers, and outrebounded them by 20.”

Pitt outrebounded Oklahoma State 41-21 and collected 21 points on second-chance baskets. “Our guys were scrapping and clawing and doing everything possible. It’s just that we would go up 10 feet and DeJuan Blair and Sam Young would go up 11,” Cowboys coach Travis Ford said.

Young led Pitt with 32 points and eight rebounds. Blair, a 6-7, 265-pound sophomore, had 10 points and 12 rebounds, but scored just one point in the first half and was never the overwhelming factor he was against East Tennessee State, when he had 27 points and 16 rebounds.

At least Blair was in one piece after Oklahoma State point guard Bryon Eaton stumbled on a drive in the first half and crashed his shoulder into Blair’s leg. “It was a little stinger,” Blair said. “It was hurting. I was scared for a minute. But I had to jump up so everybody wouldn’t be worried. Then, I went to the back and I was aching. It was hurting. But I got stretched back there and it was all right. I’m just going to ice it and hopefully it will be better.”

Over on the Oklahoma State side of this, it was that they did not keep shooting 63% on threes in the second half.

Before Sunday, the school record for 3-pointers in an NCAA Tournament game was 10, set in a 2005 Sweet Sixteen loss to Arizona.

OSU matched the record by making 10 in the first half against a Pitt team that prides itself on defense.

But the season is over because Cowboy shooters committed the sin of cooling off.

OSU, which was 17-of-27 from the field and 10-of-16 from 3-point range in the first half, shot 9-of-27 from the field and 2-of-12 from 3-point range after halftime.

“I wish we could have kept hitting like we were in the first half,” OSU senior guard Terrel Harris said.

Maybe it was a bad omen for the Cowboys that the score was tied at halftime, never mind that they couldn’t miss and never mind that Pitt center DeJuan Blair had only one point.

We all make the comments of living by the three and dying by the three with a team like OSU. Beyond simply the Cowboys regressing towards their averages, the three by Levance Fields to tie the game before the half was as big a dagger 3 as anything.

You want cheap symbolism? I got your cheap symbolism right here.

Like most of the games played here this weekend, the Panthers and Cowboys filled 40 minutes with collisions, drama and swings of momentum and emotion.

Point guard Levance Fields sealed Pitt’s victory with a step-back 3-pointer from the right corner, a shot after which he stepped back too far and stumbled into a table.

The shot and stumble epitomized the Panthers’ play here this past weekend. It was neither graceful nor dominating, but it was effective enough for the Panthers to advance. After beating Oklahoma State, 84-76, top-seeded Pitt will face No. 4 seed Xavier on Thursday.

Fields acknowledged the obvious when he was asked if the Panthers were clicking in all aspects of their game. “Right now, we’re not,” he said. “But it’s about finding ways to win. We had two tough games, but we found a way to win.”

The lack of winning pretty is a theme.

Here’s the positive spin on that. When Pitt has had the letdowns this year, it seems to come right after big dominating wins. Where they totally dominated and everyone was singing the teams praises. That is not happening. Pitt is doing enough. There are still plenty of doubts and questions.

That makes it that much harder to start buying the press clippings and hopefully will make the team keep pushing.

More later