“Prime numbers, Virgo and the Calendar Girl… I can say it now… I had my doubts.” — Kevin Kline (2:30 mark) as Det. Nick Starkey in The January Man.

That’s how I’m feeling. Wins at Syracuse, at Cinci and at UConn. Come on. In eleven previous tries Pitt has never won three straight conference road games. Heck only once in the past 5 years has it happened in the Big East, period.

Add in UConn coming off blowing a big lead at Georgetown and knowing they would have to play the half-court. Pitt having won the last two and … and.. just everything.  I admit, I didn’t think Pitt could get this game. It just seemed like the kind of game UConn had to and would get.

Happily, I am dead wrong. A 67-57 win. A win where Pitt only shot 4-12 on 3s. Jermaine Dixon was a horrid 3-14 shooting. Ashton Gibbs missed the front-end of a 1-and-1 in the final minute of a tight game.

Instead, Brad Wanamaker went for 19 points — including 9-10 at the FT line because his driving and penetration had the Huskies beat. Gibbs, despite being well defended all game still hit 3-5 on 3s and scored 19 points as well. Gilbert Brown takes his moments and makes teams pay. Gary McGhee finished his shots and even sank both FTs.

The story, though, was the defense. McGhee, especially, deserves praise. He held his ground so well. He played straight-up on defense. Keeping Edwards, Oriakhi and Majok in check.

Robinson in the first half and Dyson in the second were both looking like they would kill Pitt. Yet, Pitt was able to use their supposed disadvantage in size to their own advantage. Forcing Robinson and the other big men outside to defend Gilbert Brown.

Unlike the first two road games, Pitt came out with some energy and hitting shots. It was UConn that looked sluggish and the fans in Hartford seemed very muted. The Husky fans really didn’t get into the game until roughly midway through the second half. When UConn had finally spent more than a couple minutes playing defense and taken their first lead. I’m not saying UConn fans are frontrunners, but they sure seemed like a spoiled bunch that sat on their hands until the UConn team got their very brief lead.

I loved having John Saunders and Fran Fraschilla do the game. Saunders is a solid play-by-play guy and Fraschilla brings some good knowledge. He is the first analyst to make the point about how the U-19 game worked for Pitt because Kemba Walker backed out — granted he went with the positive aspect with Gibbs learning and getting confident — but this game really drove home to me that Walker cost himself by passing on being able to learn to play half-court.

Two Fraschilla quotes on Pitt: “They don’t just run plays, they execute them.”

“There is a legacy of success built under Jamie Dixon.”

The latter really struck me because there was no qualifier of Howland and Dixon or even “started by Ben Howland.” This is Coach Dixon’s program. He has done more than maintain from Howland. He has exceeded and made this era of Pitt basketball his.

It may seem like a small thing, but it is significant to me. It says that nationally, there is an acknowledgment that Pitt is past rebuilding/resurrection. They are a program under Dixon.

Pitt is now 4-0 in the Big East and 14-2 overall. 15 games (14 BE plus Robert Morris) remaining in the season, with 9 of those games coming at home. Barring a catostrophe and a slew of injuries, the expectations for Pitt is now looking to win at least 21-23 games and go at least 11-7 in the Big East.

From where the expectations were — even at the start of conference play — just is astounding.

Okay. Couldn’t get out of obligations that will keep me out until about 7:30. I’ll be on DVR delay. Hoping for a win. Posting later one way or another.

There will probably be a liveblog tonight. I’m hedging a bit because of some things I’m trying to clear away (the kids) might force me to DVR delay.

Jim Calhoun says nice things about Pitt and Coach Jamie Dixon. That’s fine. Get him to say those things right after a UConn-Pitt game he loses and I’ll be more impressed.

I’m not letting Calhoun’s words do anything to diminish some good hate.

“Pitt and Connecticut,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said, “is a rivalry of the highest order.”

Curtis Aiken, who played at Pitt in the mid-1980s, said the rivalry has evolved.

“The big rivalries when I played were Villanova and Georgetown,” he said. “Now, you would have to put Connecticut in there — maybe at the top.”

The rivalry includes Pitt’s first-ever game on ESPN; a game played during a blizzard that shut down the Northeast; three consecutive meetings in the Big East championship game; the largest on-campus crowd to ever see a basketball game at Pitt; and DeJuan Blair flipping Hasheem Thabeet like a rag doll while battling for a rebound last season.

From Ben Gordon and Chevy Troutman to Ray Allen and Jaron Brown, the top players at both programs turned Pitt vs. Connecticut into something special.

“If you ask any other school, they all think that we’re their rival,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “But the history (with Connecticut), especially the recent history, is obvious.”

Ah, lots of memories.

And now for some exaggerations.

The lightning-quick Dyson leads a transition attack that is the top defensive priority for surging No. 16 Pitt heading into the 7 p.m. tipoff with No. 15 Connecticut in their heated Big East rivarly.

“That’s our emphasis,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “This team might be as good as any they’ve had as far as transition.”

Pitt (13-2, 3-0 Big East), which has won six in a row and trails first-place Villanova by one-half game, limited Syracuse’s vaunted transition attack to 10 fast-break points in an 82-72 victory over the Orange on Jan. 2.

The challenge will be even greater against Connecticut (11-4, 2-2), where Dyson, speedy sophomore guard Kemba Walker and high-flying 6-foot-9 senior forward Stanley Robinson turn just about every long rebound and turnover into a dead sprint the other way.

“UConn is probably the best transition team we’ve played this year,” junior Brad Wanamaker said. “Keeping them out of transition and making them execute in half-court is our plus.”

Actually, by virtue of what they have done, stats and all those objective standards, Syracuse is the best transition team in the Big East and therefore the best Pitt will have faced. Don’t get me wrong, UConn is good and it goes without saying that stopping them from getting out in transition will be very important.

“Before we played Syracuse I told them that was the best transition team we’d play,” Dixon said, “but after watching Connecticut, um, this is the best transition team we’ve played. They were in a tied game against Seton Hall when they scored 10 straight transition points, five baskets. The thing is, their big guys probably run better than Syracuse’s.”

That said, Dixon is hardly The Boy Who Cried Transition.

Transition defense is not something Pitt’s gifted head coach puts on the menu when the potential ingredients dictate as much. It’s part of Pitt’s bedrock preparation.

“We do a defensive transition drill every day, every practice, before every game,” Dixon said. “It’s always an emphasis and it’s probably why we’re pretty good at it. Because we do it no matter what. From the first practice until we’re done.”

Maybe UConn’s bigs run out better than Syracuse, but they haven’t been the key. The Huskies, can and have been taken out of their transition offense. When that happens they struggle. In no small part because sophomore point guard Kemba Walker still does not handle it well.

“He’s got to find open people and stop just trying to challenge everybody in the world,” Calhoun said. “It’s not working out. It hasn’t worked out. … We have to find the right people the ball. And it’s not just Kemba. I don’t think that Kemba is playing as well as he should.”

Calhoun added that Walker is very talented. Walker also is confident in his abilities, maybe a little too much judging from some of his decisions. Sometimes he forces action, leading to turnovers.

In the last seven games, the erratic Walker has 30 turnovers, or 4.3 per game. He also has 46 assists, or 6.7 per game.

Just an aside, but Walker was one of the late scratches from joining the U-19 team — opening the door for Ashton Gibbs. Instead Walker opted to go to the LeBron Skills camp and stay at UConn for the summer. Scary to consider that he might have actually learned more about operating the half-court better under Caoch Dixon and Purdue’s Painter if he went.

You can bet that shutting Walker down will fall to Jermaine Dixon.

God-damn that Jim Calhoun. How dare he? Actually making clear that UConn needs this game.

“It’s not a critical game for us,” said UConn coach Jim Calhoun, downplaying the importance only slightly. “It’s an incredibly important game for us, as every single game is.”

…

“We have some good players back. They have some good players back,” Calhoun said. “But they’ve been able to avoid a couple of the losses that we haven’t been able to avoid.”

Okay, so that seems a little downplayed. The key is in what he said to his players and how they are talking.

“For us, it’s a must win,” point guard Kemba Walker said. “We need a win for right now. Pittsburgh is playing well right now. They’re 3-0, so it’s going to be a very important game for us.”

UConn, on the other hand, is 2-2 in the conference. More disturbing for them is that they are 0-3 against teams that were ranked when playing the Huskies. That’s part of why they need this game.

“We’ve played great the first or second half [against ranked teams] but we just haven’t put two halves together,” Jerome Dyson said. “Sometimes we get caught up in running up and down the floor too much. When we had the lead [at Georgetown], we really didn’t run offense late in the game. We made it easy for them to come back because we missed some shots and they made shots.”

Admittedly blowing big leads on the road or at home seem to have been a common thing in the Big East over the weekend. Notre Dame nearly blew a 20+ point home lead on WVU before hanging on for 2-point win. The obvious UConn blowing things at Georgetown. Then there was Villanova coming back from 17 down on the road to beat Louisville on Big Monday.

I will admit, though, I would feel better about Pitt’s chances if the Huskies had held on to the win at G-town. Now it’s about bouncing back at home and knowing they can’t let up after the way they blew the game.

“Any time you lose a game, something happens to you, and you’re never really sure until you play again,” Calhoun said Tuesday. “Every time you win a game, something happens to you, and you’re never sure if you think it’s going to be easy now. … It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to win the next game because you’ve won. And it doesn’t automatically mean you’ve lost your confidence if you lose a game.”

Sorry, I have trouble believing that loss broke the spirit of UConn — and I just don’t think Calhoun would let it happen.

It freaked them out a bit. Calhoun was completely out of sorts after the loss.

Then, before walking away from the podium, he mentioned that Wednesday’s home game against Cincinnati now takes on added importance.

That might have been a good indication that this disheartening loss to the Hoyas could be difficult for UConn to immediately move beyond. The Huskies actually face Pittsburgh Wednesday, not Cincinnati.

…

Calhoun? Well, he’s never at a loss for words, and he spoke in great detail during his press conference. He wasn’t the ball of fire you might expect. His temper was in check. He didn’t have overly sharp criticism for a particular player. Part of that is probably because there is more than half a season remaining and one loss, no matter the type, doesn’t define a season.

Calhoun gave the team Sunday off — not always the case after a loss.

“It’s the most heartbreaking loss this year,” Calhoun said. “It’s not even close.”

Calhoun doesn’t think the practices have told him much about how his team will respond to the loss.

On the opposite side, Coach Dixon has had to contend with the long layoff — before Pitt plays 3 games in a week’s time — so practice has some meaning even as they battle history.

One of the highlights of the week was Saturday’s live scrimmage, which featured a pair of 12-minute halves with game officials. Guard Travon Woodall hit a 30-footer at the buzzer to give his team a one-point win.

“It was good,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “It was lively. It was productive. It was good for them, and we played well. I feel pretty good where we are at.”

Pitt will have to make a little history to earn its third consecutive road win. All told, the Big East has scheduled Pitt to play back-to-back-to-back road games 11 times since 1985, with every trip marred by at least one loss.

This is only Pitt’s second such trip in the past nine years.

In mid-January 2006, the Panthers won at Louisville and at Rutgers to improve to 15-0 before losing at St. John’s, 55-50, as a top-10 team.

Few Big East teams are able to survive such a rugged stretch without a hiccup. Since 2004-05, only one Big East team in 17 tries — Connecticut in 2008-09 — won three successive conference road games without a home game in between.

Oh, and something else to consider. Neither team has won more than 2 straight against the other since UConn won 6 straight between 1998 and 2002. Pitt has won the last two meetings, so, *gulp*.