I have been giving serious thought to bagging a liveblog or even open thread after Pitt’s win over Syracuse when I never had a chance to post ahead of it. Yeah, but that is a coincidence (or at least that is what I am telling myself).

Cinci is looking to do something it has never done in the Big East, start out 3-0 in conference play.

A win over the Panthers would leave Cincinnati 3-0 in conference play for the first time since the 2004-2005 season, when coach Bob Huggins’ last Bearcats team opened its Conference USA schedule with wins over DePaul at home and St. Louis and East Carolina on the road before losing at home to Louisville.

The Bearcats followed a last-minute win over UConn with a gritty (read: struggling) win over Rutgers.

For Pitt, this would be a tough road game at any point in the season. To have it happen 2 days after a big road win makes it harder as the young team has to avoid a classic letdown.

Cincinnati has perhaps its best team since the Bearcats joined the Big East five seasons ago. Coach Mick Cronin’s team is led by senior guard Deonta Vaughn and 6-5 wing Lance Stephenson, a New York City phenom who was named the Big East Preseason Rookie of the Year.

Pollsters have taken notice. The Bearcats were ranked as high as No. 19 in the AP poll in early December.

“We’ve got to be focused on Cincinnati,” Pitt guard Brad Wanamaker said.

Stephenson has started every game and has made an immediate impact as his team’s leading scorer. He is averaging 13 points, 5.0 rebounds, 2.8 assists and a team-high 29.4 minutes per game.

Vaughn has struggled with his shot for a good portion of the season but in the last two games has put up 17 points in each. Really, there is no doubt that this is the best team in the Mick Cronin era. It is also the first team to have some depth since the Huggy-Bear demolition. Yancy Gates is strong inside. Rashad Bishop is still there. Cashmere Wright is healthy. Ibrahima Thomas is eligible. Plus players like Dion Dixon (cripes 3 Dixons in one game), Larry Davis and Steve Toyloy.

On top of playing in Cinci, Pitt officially gets a target (beyond the one they have earned in the Big East for being one of the dominant teams of the aughts) for being ranked #23 in the AP poll.

The good news is that while Pitt is still offensively challenged, they have an identity. They are back to stifling defense. And they have a coach that won’t let them use their inexperience as an excuse (even if it is given its own chart for the media to use in the game notes, pg 5, PDF).

“The freshmen aren’t freshmen anymore,” Dixon said Saturday after Pitt upset No. 5 Syracuse in the Carrier Dome. “I declared them sophomores over the break. I took that away from them. I advanced them a year.”

It was another subtle reminder that his young players have to perform beyond their years if the Panthers are going to compete well in Big East Conference play. And two games into the conference schedule some of the young players are heeding their coach’s advice and growing up in a hurry.

More love and attention for Ashton Gibbs who takes home Big East Player of the Week Honors, along with ESPN.com’s Weekly Watch’s POY.

Ashton Gibbs should thank UConn’s Kemba Walker for staying home instead of playing for the United States on the Under 19 national team that won gold for the first time since 1991.

Gibbs was tabbed as the starter once Walker decided against returning to the squad for a second summer. Gibbs was the lead playmaker for U-19 (and Pitt) coach Jamie Dixon, and it is paying huge dividends for the Panthers this season.

And this bit about Pitt and Coach Dixon.

…Pitt is 2-0, and if the Panthers win eight more Big East games, assuming a few are against the upper echelon, Pitt is once again an NCAA tournament team. Never doubt coach Jamie Dixon and pick him ninth again, Big East coaches. Never.

Anyways, LiveBlog is around 7pm. The game is on ESPN. I need Pitt to win this game so I can reclaim some bragging rights from my wife.

You can break out the liveblog when you Click Here.

Otherwise it will be below.

Oh, good. Snow in the Cleveland area. The kid has an extra day of vacation and I get little productivity and extra shoveling. Yay?

Pitt-Cinci stuff later. Safe to say, though, that if the Bearcats even considered looking past Pitt (which I really, really doubt) they are not after Saturday.

Pitt upsetting Syracuse was probably bigger for Pitt than devastating for Syracuse. It was a much-needed confidence win and drove home to the players how important the defense has to be.

“We’ve been improving,” said coach Jamie Dixon, who improved to 8-2 against teams ranked in the top five of The Associated Press poll. “We’re not the team we were early in the year. We’re a different team. We’ve improved every game out. We had a lot of great performances, but I really loved how hard we played. I can’t say enough about our effort. We have to continue to do that every single game.”

…

“We’re a team that has gotten much better as the year has gone on defensively,” Jamie Dixon said. “You can’t give them transition baskets. We didn’t do that, especially in the second half. We guarded on the perimeter well. We didn’t want to give them opens 3s. And maybe we just caught them on the right day. Maybe it was just our day.”

Coach Dixon has been on the team about the defense, and this game really saw it come together.

Brad Wanamaker attributes his team’s tenacity to its head coach. Or more precisely, Wanamaker believes Pittsburgh plays with such heart and such determination because Jamie Dixon refuses to accept anything else.

“He’s constantly on us. He’s in our ear all the time – how we’re not working hard enough and things like that,” Wanamaker said. “After awhile you get tired of hearing that, so we go out there and do that.”

“That” is what unhinged Syracuse Saturday afternoon in the Carrier Dome. “That” is what disrupted the Orange men’s perfect string of games.

That game was also where Pitt finally showed they could handle the 2-3 zone. Against the team that probably does it more and better than any other team.

That’s the best anyone has shot the ball against the Orange this season and the most points any team has put up against SU in one half.

“You know, we practice it and work on it every day against the 2-3,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said, “but you still didn’t simulate it because of their size. I think our attack wasn’t as good early on, but as we got going, we got better as the game went on, which is what you want. We got better penetration, we got better shots. We got some drives, we got some kick-outs. And we passed the ball better.”

“We just got more comfortable,” said Pitt forward Brad Wanamaker. “Early on, we were out there getting a feel for how they were playing their zone. Second half, we knew what was going on. We knew the open spots and we got there and finished and made plays.”

Sometimes it is weird how things can work out. Davidson’s Bob McKillop pulls out from coaching the U-19 kids. Coach Dixon gets elevated from assistant on the squad to the top spot. There are a slew of top college kids who do not even accept offers to play on the squad. That leads to Ashton Gibbs getting a tryout mainly because, he was the coach’s player and knew the system.

“He became the point guard because we had so many people pull out,” Dixon said. “He became a leader on that team because obviously he knew our system better than the other guys and he knew what I was looking for.”

The unexpected summer experience prepared Gibbs for the bigger role that awaited him this season at Pittsburgh.

…

“Last summer really helped boost my confidence coming into this season,” Gibbs said Wednesday. “I knew if I could play with best payers in the world, I could play with the best players in the Big East.”

And…

“I think we got closer,” Gibbs said of playing for Dixon last summer. “It just helped me understand his system even better. I knew what he wanted out of players even more because I got to see it as someone who had played for him. He’s a great coach.”

Now, imagine if Gibbs didn’t get that time and experience. He wouldn’t have learned as much and spent any time with Coach Dixon. Yes, he would have spent more time with his Pitt teammates but that would not have prepared him for the role as a team leader that he had to assume. Gibbs found out he could be more than a cog or a role player on a team.  That confidence has continued all over his game and practice including at the free throw line where he continues to hit his free throws and get his name in the Pitt record books with 37 straight made free throws and counting.

Gibbs had no choice but to assume more of a leadership role with Jermaine Dixon out for most of the non-con. Now that Dixon is back, his defense has been intense as Syracuse — and specifically Wesley Johnson —  found out.

“I tried to stay in front of him,” Dixon said. “He’s the best player I’ve played against in my two years here. He goes to the offensive rebound hard. I gave up a few inches. He could shoot over the top of me. I tried to play him as tough as I could.”

Johnson tried to take Dixon down low, a move that resulted in some success. But Dixon never stopped pushing, holding and harassing Johnson.

“He wouldn’t let me breathe at all today,” Johnson said. “He was right in my jersey. He played tough defense today.”

Johnson still scored 19 points, but they were not easy baskets and his teammates struggled to find him in the game. Yeah, I remember when Johnson transferred from Iowa State. Pitt was on his list, but he never got past Syracuse. Damn shame.

But having Dixon lead on defense has been big. And along with Gilbert Brown back, allows Coach Dixon to drive home the point that defense first gets playing time.

“He (Dixon) emphasizes it each and every day in practice,” said Gibbs, a sophomore from Scotch Plains, N.J. “Defense and rebounding and not backing down from anyone.”

And the players take it to heart.

“You’ve got to buy into it if you want to play,” Gibbs said. “If you don’t rebound and play defense, he’s going to say something, and it’s not going to be good.”

You have to imagine that Pitt is somewhat in the heads of Syracuse players. They had the big edge on experience, but it has been uniformly bad. No player on the ‘Cuse roster had beaten Pitt in the Carrier Dome. Pitt is on a 12-3 run against the Orange dating back to the Big East Tournament in 2001 — though to keep things in a larger perspective Pitt is still only 37-61 all-time vs. Syracuse.

The Syracuse perspective/spin is that this was the “wake-up call” or simply, it’s the Big East, baby.

“We’re going to see a lot more of these teams,” said coach Jim Boeheim, whose team will try to rebound at home Wednesday in a non-league matchup with Memphis (9-3). “We’re going to have to get tougher and more physical if we’re going to be successful.”

“Learning experience” seems to be the theme that Syracuse went with.

As for Pitt and Coach Dixon, he is now second on the all-time coaching wins list at Pitt in just 6 1/2 years. Nothing would be better than to have him move to #1 sometime in year 13+.