Backyard Brawl, basketball edition. Pitt is banged up. Confidence a little off. At the same time, Pitt has risen to play well against the good teams.
WVU is at home. They have only lost once at home. They have struggled at times, but still pulled out the games.
Liveblog below or break it out by Clicking Here.
Liveblog tonight.
Let’s see, it’s been hard to be as focused on this game as usual with the coinciding of NLI Day. Takes some of the edge off when there are the other distractions.
Distractions? You mean like the WVU students repeatedly getting slammed lately for their behavior at the games?
Jonathan Kimble, a sports management major at WVU who attends games in the student section, said he and his fellow Maniacs will tone it down a bit later but Pitt is an exception.
“Pitt is our rival so we’ll probably be using a lot of colorful words against them,” Kimble said.
…
The issues at West Virginia started Jan. 16 against Syracuse when fans threw items onto the court. One Syracuse blogger urged fans for the upcoming Georgetown game to refrain from littering the court: “Let’s stay classy. We’re not West Virginia fans, right?”
Gray said he’s planning to send another letter to students this week. The game isn’t on national TV, but Gray is suggesting fans depart from a certain three-word phrase they use every time the Panthers come to town.
“We would encourage them to be more creative and work on not doing those things that really embarrass and disappoint not only us, but the coaches, the players and other students and fans,” Gray said.
Can’t say I’m shocked. I mean it is WVU. Creativity beyond crudely describing the way they interact with their sisters and farm animals is asking a bit much.
On the court, a more interesting subplot is the debut of a Turkish forward who may be a big addition.
His name is Deniz Kilicli (pronounced “Kah-LITCH-luh”), and there’s certainly a chance that his impact on West Virginia’s season will be limited. It would be unfair to him to expect too much. He’s a Turkish freshman who’s only been in the U.S. for a little more than two years, was forced by the NCAA to sit out for the Mountaineers’ first 20 regular-season games, and has only seen college action in two exhibitions. He’s not yet in peak game condition.
But Kilicli is also a rugged, 6-foot-9, 260-pound power forward who could be an NBA draft prospect in a few seasons, and West Virginia coach Bob Huggins already calls him “our best low-post scorer.” So can you blame us for being intrigued, when no other top-10 team is adding a new player like this in February? The Mountaineers have gone 17-3 (and 6-2 in the Big East) without Kilicli, but, as his prep school coach from Mountain State Academy, Rob Fulford, says: “One thing they’re kind of missing is an a–hole. And he can play like an a–hole.”
Technically, WVU has the a–hole. But I guess, he was talking about players, not the coach.
I’m a little more skeptical of his impact. At least tonight. He may have been playing with the team in practice but a game is far different. Plus, haven’t we heard all this before about another big man who when he became eligible was going to be tremendous almost immediately? Anybody? Anybody?
Ator Majok? UConn? How’s that working out?
Make no mistake, WVU is really good this year. Yes, they have played up-and-down within games. Nearly blowing several and having to stage furious comebacks to salvage a few others. That said, they still won those games.
Jermaine Dixon should be back tonight.
“It was good to see him out there, and I anticipate him playing tomorrow,” coach Dixon said of his senior guard. “We will have to see how he feels. He was able to practice, and that’s a good sign. He’s ready to go, I would think, tomorrow. He seemed to have no problems.”
The players are looking forward to it.
“We enjoy the experience,” McGhee said. “It’s a hostile environment. It’s pretty difficult to play there. The fans get loud. We play harder when the fans come at you. It gets you pumped up and your adrenaline going. It’s something good for us.”
Gary McGhee gets some more love, and the suggestion that Pitt needs to go to him more. I won’t disagree. I will say, that the one area McGhee still needs to work on for that to happen, is making himself a better target for the pass inside. He still struggles to establish position and get the ball.
Coach Dixon is 3-3 down at the Concrete Toadstool. To put that in perspective, he has more wins there than any other Pitt coach.
Sure it’s not quite Weasel Stomping Day, but it is one of the big days. The days where Rivals.com and Scout.com find out if all those stress tests on their servers were correct.
Here’s where we already stand with signed NLIs, courtesy of the charts from PantherLair.com and PantherDigest.com.
Listed as signed NLI by both sites:
9:24 update:
9:30 Update:
9:37 Update:
9:47 Update:
9:52 Update:
10:14 Update:
I’ll be updating most of the morning.
UPDATE 10: 53: 21 of 24 commits are listed as signed.
I’m not sure if T.J. Peeler will be actually signing. It isn’t that he is not committed to Pitt, it is that he has an ACL tear in his left knee. It will take nearly a year to rehab. If he doesn’t sign and goes to prep school, he preserves his full scholarship and redshirt options. If he does sign it may be purely symbolic. Of course, he might still opt to attend Pitt and take it as a medical redshirt in 2010.
As for Jeff Knox and Shane Johnson, both attend DeMatha which is closed today. That may delay the signing or at least news of them.
UPDATE 11:25: While still waiting to see if the snow-bound recruits can reach a fax machine, there is one minor, potential addition. Pitt apparently has tried to get in late on Taj Alexander out of Exton, PA. He’s a Rutgers verbal but has yet to send in his LOI.
UPDATE 11:52: Okay, courtesy of Zeise at P-G, Johnson and Knox will probably have their LOI’s in around noon. Peeler is also trying to make arrangements to send his in.
I’m just unclear on one thing. Why a fax? Wouldn’t a signed, scanned NLI, attached to an e-mail in do the job?
UPDATE 1:20: Looks like a 2 of the 3 made their way to a Kinkos or something. This is Rivals.com only right now but listed as signed are:
That just leaves Shane Johnson and the 2010 class is signed and the angst can begin for 2011.
UPDATE 1:40: Okay, Rivals.com took Knox off the signed list and moved him back to unsigned with Johnson. That kind of makes sense since they are DeMatha teammates and might do this together. Maybe they should call their other teammate, Arie Kouandijo to find where he went to fax his LOI to Alabama.
UPDATE 1:50: According to Zeise, everyone is now signed. 24-24.
Now it’s time to turn attention to that little ole’ basketball game tonight…
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