Kids sick, life sucks.

Lots of tabs accumulated and things to touch upon. One thing that has continued, the fact that Pitt is a team, much stronger as a unit than if you looked at the individual players. And they are coming out from the shadows of last year’s accomplishments.

How are they achieving improbability after impossibility? Tenacity, toughness, great defense and rebounding. Pitt outrebounded Louisville by 14 Saturday, three days after beating Connecticut by nine on the boards. And while Louisville shot well Saturday, they were only 2 of 5 down the final 4:30 stretch of regulation, and 2 of 5 with two turnovers in overtime.

“I’ve told these guys,” said Pitt coach Jamie Dixon, “that it’s up to us to decide how good we’re going to be.”

But finding an identity, despite the early success, hasn’t been easy. DeJuan Blair and Sam Young and Levance Fields still haunt these halls. In past years, the Brandin Knights, Juliuis Pages, Carl Krausers and Aaron Grays would leave, some would wonder if the Panthers could rebound and by December, no one remembered their names.

But last year’s No. 1 ranking, a No. 1 seed and Elite Eight appearance added up to an impossible act to follow, particularly with a little-known cast of mostly underclass reserves who couldn’t get a slice of last year’s senior-dominated playing time.

How about the fact that Rick Pitino effectively helped Pitt with poor work on game management? Pitt was out of timeouts with 4 minutes left in the game. Pitt trying to stage the comeback still trailed by 5 with 20 seconds or so left — and Pitino called the timeout to let Pitt set up their inbound play.

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said late Saturday he was hoping Louisville coach Rick Pitino would call a timeout in the final 20 seconds so he could set up a shot for Brad Wanamaker. Pitino did call the timeout and Wanamaker was open in the corner off the inbounds for the 3-pointer that essentially sent the game into overtime.

An interesting observation from a Louisville beat writer before the game.

*I think the key to the game will be if the Cards can stop Ashton Gibbs from penetrating and getting shots in the lane. U of L has been hurt in losses by big play from slashing guards. (Scottie Reynolds, anyone?)

He was right about players slashing to the basket hurting the Cards. Just the wrong guy. It was Wanamaker and even Nasir Robinson from the forward position attacking the basket.

Coach Dixon got very emotional about Nasir Robinson having such a big game (I hesitate to say “breakthrough” because that is only applicable in hindsight — if it keeps going), but also about the team as a whole working so hard to get better.

“I love that kid,” Dixon said. “When we recruited him I remember watching him. … You can find things wrong with him, but he plays so hard that my belief was if you play that hard and you care that much you’ll become a good player. He’s a perfect example of that.

“He brings so much energy. He is so positive and works so hard. He’s finding his role. He’s such a good kid. I’m proud of him. It was good to see.”

…

Jamie Dixon said Robinson personifies this team’s work ethic.

“The strength of this team is they want to get better,” Dixon said. “They’re willing to be coached. They understand they’re not as good as they can be. That’s a talent. That’s a gift. Some guys think they’re good enough and can’t get better.

“Our guys are working on their weaknesses. Nasir is in there working on his free throws over and over again. Then you see him hit four out of six. And they were big free throws. That’s the strength of this team.”

We spent a lot of time early in the season complaining about these kids as far as their talent level. Robinson, Wanamaker, Gibbs, Woodall, McGhee. Their work ethic, willingness to listen to the coaching, and how quickly it seems they have improved is not just a credit to them and the coaching staff. It’s also vindication for the staff that helped recruit them. Making former assistants Orlando Antigua and Mike Rice  look a little better as far as why they wanted these kids.

To those who just peek at the team, it becomes yet another year where Pitt is just plugging in players to a machine.

For Pitt it was a stirring comeback that absolutely (for a couple days) crushed the Cards as brutally as anything they experienced.

“Outside of Duke and Christian Laettner, this was the worst loss I ever had to experience,” Pitino said after Pitt’s 82-77 overtime victory.

Christian Laettner made one of the most famous buzzer-beaters in NCAA tournament history to deny Pitino’s Kentucky Wildcats a berth in the Final Four in 1992.

Much less was at stake yesterday, but Pitt’s comeback victory was tough for the Cardinals to swallow. They were up by five points with 54 seconds remaining and committed a series of gaffes that opened the door for the Panthers, who gleefully barged through to claim a most unlikely victory.

Pitt took advantage of the fact that this Louisville team is just not a team that can close.

“We know when we’re at our best how good we can be,” guard Preston Knowles said. “It’s just sometimes we get unfocused and don’t keep the right train of thought for 40 minutes. It can’t be 35. It has to be 40 minutes.”

Coach Rick Pitino said defensive mistakes have been to blame for the late losses. They’ve tried both zones and man-to-man, but it hasn’t made a difference.

In the last five minutes of their six losses, the Cards have allowed teams to shoot 51.2percent from the field (21of41) and 63.6percent from three-point range (7of11). For the season UofL opponents are shooting just 42.2percent from the field and 34.5percent from three-point range.

Cards are 0-3 against ranked teams. What seems stunning is that in those final minutes, the vaunted pressing defense by Louisville is non-existent. Some of it is that it isn’t as good in years past. The other reason is — at least with ranked teams — the teams are able to handle it.

The Panthers, overcoming 10 turnovers and three charging fouls in the first half, negated the Cardinals’ press, largely because most everyone on the floor can handle the ball with care even when Louisville turned up the heat.

“Ashton is a poised point guard, and things don’t get to him too much,” said guard Jermaine Dixon who had nine points and six assists in the second half. “We’re more versatile this year, especially because Gilbert (Brown) and Nasir (Robinson) are able to handle the ball.

“I can see why (Pitino) didn’t press and decided to stay in the matchup zone. But I was surprised they didn’t press us because they had a lot of success with it last year. I think they felt they could press Levance because they wanted to wear him down because we ran a lot of our sets through him.”

Last year, there was no one else Pitt trusted to bring the ball up against the press. Not Jermaine Dixon. Certainly not Young and Blair. Another nice side effect of Pitt being a more guard and smaller team.

One thing that has been glossed over — because Pitt won — was how badly the officials missed the foul on Ashton Gibbs’ attempted 3-pt shot with under 8 seconds left. Missing everything and after a moment of weirdness ruled that Pitt still had the ball because it was a block. If they had made the correct call it would have been Gibbs going to the line to shoot 3 FTs with around 6 seconds left and Pitt down 2.

Instead the refs were bailed out by a bad foul on Wanamaker with 1.9 seconds left and Wanamaker hitting them both to send the game to OT.

In an alternate reality if they had made that call, how scary would those final seconds have been — assuming Gibbs made all 3 or even 2 of 3. With Louisville trying to get down the court to win. Pitt fans would have been having a collective flashback to the Elite Eight ‘Nova game.

The officiating in that game was horrid. The only good thing that can be said about it, is that it was equally horrendous for both teams. So it ended up balancing out by the end. Well, I can say that now, because Pitt won.