Last week Deadspin had a bit about trademarks and they brought up how Robert Morris likes to go as “Bobby Mo” at times. Yet the university does not own the trademark. Honestly, I never knew they went by that. You would think in the storied rivalry that is Pitt-Robert Morris, I would know these things.

Liveblog in a couple hours. As usual, right below, or you can break it out by Clicking Here.

I am concerned that Pitt is slacking off on its ‘stache quotient in the coaching staff. The departure of Tumpkin meant Pitt lost a fine pencil-thin stache. Hiring Scott Turner didn’t change things. Now Pitt went and hired another stache-less guy.

2010 will be [Bernard] Clark’s 13th season coaching college football. He most recently served as the defensive coordinator for Hampton University in 2009. Prior to last season, he was a defensive assistant Florida International in 2007 and 2008.

2006 saw Clark coach the defensive line at South Florida, and he spent 2004 and 2005 as the defensive coordinator at FIU. He got his start in college coaching in 1998 when he coached the defensive ends at James Madison for two years, after which he coached linebackers and special teams are Liberty from 2000-03.

Clark’s connection to Pitt comes through his college playing career, as he was as standout linebacker – nicknamed “Tiger” – for the University of Miami in the late 1980’s. In the 1987 national championship game, Clark started at middle linebacker in place of a suspended player and went on to earn Orange Bowl MVP honors for his performance.

It’s not a Pitt connection so much as a Wannstedt connection. That fits Coach Wannstedt’s general approach to go with guys he knows and trusts.

The official line in recruiting this year has been that Pitt didn’t demphasize Florida, they were just focusing on other areas. Since Pitt was the only Big East school without a Florida recruit finding a guy with Florida ties made sense.

“To be a part of a program so rich in tradition as that, it’s huge,” said Clark, 43, a Leto graduate who coached at USF for the 2006 season. “It’s a great opportunity for me.”

Clark is reunited with Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt, who was defensive coordinator at Miami when he played linebacker there in the late 1980s. Since his year at USF, Clark spent two seasons as defensive line coach at Florida International before going to Hampton last summer.

Clark doesn’t know his exact recruiting territory yet, but he’ll use his state ties to help recruit Florida for the Panthers, especially the Tampa and Miami areas.

We’ll just pencil him in for recruiting most of Florida.

I’m still concerned about the lack of staches in the last two hires.

Usually a late-January or February non-con game takes place because ESPN or CBS wants to carry it. Pitt has had a couple of these in recent years. This year it is Robert Morris. Not sure if this is some sort of placeholder or to replace something that fell through. Whatever the reason, RMU Coach Mike Rice says he won’t do it again. Either schedule in November or December to get all the major conference beatings out of the way at once or not at all.

Robert Morris is on top of the NEC with an 11-1 record and boasts a 9 game winning streak. They have non-con wins over Cleveland State and Ohio and an RPI in the 150s. Of course RMU also lost to Penn State, Duquesne and Kent State.

Pitt, though, has yet to lose to Robert Morris in 27 tries. Still, there is familiarity by the players so intimidation is not going to be in the equation.

Freshman guard Karon Abraham said he believes the Colonials have a better chance of beating Pitt than Syracuse.

“Everybody knows their role now,” Abraham said. “We’re together. We don’t break down anymore. And we’ve played under pressure.”

Freshman guard Velton Jones said he and his teammates relish the opportunity to compete against teams from the Big East, which is considered the best conference in Division I this season.

“Playing a Big East team is pretty big,” Jones said. “I think a lot of people are really looking forward to it.”

RMU opened their season at Syracuse, losing by 40.

The Colonials have had season long distractions of sorts with their coach coming up for many NY-area jobs. Fordham — his alma mater — already fired their head coach, and has been the biggest name at this point. Not sure what his ties truly are to Fordham, but that seems like a graveyard job these days.

Just as a sidenote, Pitt commit for next year (grades willing), J.J. Moore looked very impressive at the National Prep School Invitational, dropping 30 points in a game.

Game tonight is 8pm. There will be a liveblog.

Well, unless you were a Seton Hall fan. It sure didn’t help the Hall’s chances that one of the few players on the team that plays defense like he actually enjoys it — Keon “wrong-way on the highway” Lawrence was still back in New Jersey (very vague reasons that SHU Coach Gonzo swears are minor and personal).

What amazes me about this Seton Hall season is that it isn’t going anywhere near their two expected scripts. The first was that they would rip themselves apart with the assembled transfers and all the baggage brought with them. At the very least it would be entertaining theater. The other scenario would be that the team would gel and with that talent finish in the upper-half of the conference and be a NCAA Team — they were a trendy BE darkhorse darling.

Instead it is neither. Just like the past couple years under Gonzalez. They are unpredictable with effort and how good or bad they play. Part of it is that they remain an undisciplined team that can’t control their emotions. The whole team is like that starting with their coach. He can’t control himself, the players act the same way.

Little factoids about the reason to go forward with the game was the Big East rules enforced to the letter.

“It is Big East policy that as long as the opposing team is in town and can arrive at the arena safely and the officiating crew is in town and can arrive safely, you play the game,” Pitt associate athletic director E.J. Borghetti said.

The game was played with two officials, the NCAA minimum, because one of the scheduled refs, Evon Burroughs, was reportedly stuck on the turnpike en route from the eastern part of the state.

Seton Hall arrived on a chartered flight from the New York metro area Friday afternoon, beating the brunt of a storm that piled nearly two feet of snow on Western Pennsylvania and prompted Gov. Ed Rendell to declare a state of emergency.

“Taking off was fine,” Seton Hall sports information director Matt Sweeney said. “Landing, we really couldn’t see much until we were about 150 feet off the ground.”

The weather conditions forced the entire Seton Hall contingent — coaches, players, managers — to walk about five blocks in the snow to their downtown hotel when the chartered bus got stuck after a yesterday morning shoot-around.

On the return trip later in the afternoon, the chartered bus needed a couple of tries before making it up the steep hill to its parking spot at the Pete loading docks.

As for the lack of TV, it was all on the hill.

We’ve been told ESPN Regional did send its people to Pittsburgh but that the production truck could not make it up the hill to the Petersen Events Center due to the icy road conditions. ESPN can rule the world but it can’t rule mother nature.

I’m sure that the hill was eventually cleared — or the SHU bus would never have made it — but not early enough.

Pitt did a lot of things right in the game. They shared the ball, played strong defense — stifling and frustrating Pope which encouraged bad shooting and dumb fouls, but most importantly — scoring. The assists come when Pitt makes baskets. Frankly, Pitt has been horrible at scoring. They’ve had a chances, but haven’t finished or done anything on the perimeter.

You don’t get many assists when you shoot between 30 and 40%. When much more of the offense seemed to come from just driving to the basket. You get a lot more when you shoot over 50%. The offense showed much more flow and there was a lot more movement without the ball.

“The main focus was running our motion, setting screens and creating shots for other people,” Brown said. “The last couple of games we hadn’t been getting many assists on baskets. We had a lot of one-on-one plays. Coach emphasized that the last couple of days and that improved our offense.

“I think we really struggled the last couple of games when our offense was stagnant. You didn’t see a lot of movement and that really hurt us. Even in the games we won we got away from what we do best. Tonight was a prime example of what we need to do on offense.”

One example of that was in Pitt’s assist total. The Panthers had 20 assists on 31 field goals. Pitt had a season-low five assists in the West Virginia game and had only 13 in the previous two games combined.

“I thought we moved the ball better today,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “That was something we emphasized the last two days. I think that was the key. That got us going. We were smoother.”

Watching the game on the computer video feed makes it hard for me to give fair evaluations of individual players. For live-action computer video, it wasn’t bad. But it was still a computer feed. Choppy, blurry and a small screen do not lend to seeing details.

So, there isn’t much more I can add to this and the box score.