Kevin Willard returns to the place where he went to school, met his wife, played Pitt basketball for his father — and as a result probably caught more sh*t than he deserved. The first year Seton Hall coach, though, is not going to be caught saying anything negative.

Kevin Willard figures to reflect, if only for a moment, when he looks over at the Pitt basketball players Saturday.

There were years when he was one of them.

The first-year coach at Seton Hall played at Pitt for his father, Ralph, from 1995-97 and this weekend returns to campus as a head coach for the first time.

“I’m really proud how well they’ve done,” Willard said. “You have to have a sense of pride.”

Coach Dixon, possibly thinking ahead to a couple years when TCU is in the conference offered his own thoughts.

“It’s a unique situation,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “I was thinking about here’s a guy coming back home, a place where he graduated and played at.”

Yes, and?

Last year, Pitt was absurd (and a little lucky) with all the close, last-minute, OT and come from behind wins. This year, there hasn’t been too much of that kind of drama. Pitt has played with a lead most of the season.

“It’s really good for us,” senior center Gary McGhee said. “We’ve been real aggressive in the first half, jumping out to leads in the last couple of games. We’ve been trying to sustain it, and like coach [Jamie Dixon] says, ‘Keep your foot on their throat.’ We try to build on that lead and have a bigger lead going into halftime.”

The Panthers led Connecticut by nine at halftime, Providence by seven and Marquette by 11. Providence was the only team that took a lead on the Panthers in the second half, but it was short-lived. Pitt stormed back after blowing a 10-point lead in the final nine minutes to win, 83-79.

“We’re a veteran group now,” sophomore point guard Travon Woodall said. “Last year, we were young. We were all learning and getting a feel. This year, we’re a veteran group. We know how to jump on teams early and start off from the door. We always talk about how we can’t play from behind. This group knows that and is doing a better job.”

In case you missed it, this is a veteran group.

Good to know that Coach Dixon is telling the players to step on the throat of opponents. Bad, that Pitt keeps slipping on the spittle and blood coming from the victims’ mouths to let them back into games late. It’s a little concern when the team is 15-1, but still a concern.

Then there is the game on Saturday night. A dreaded “trap” game between heavily hyped and ESPN games.

I’ve stopped worrying too much about power rankings this year. Less and less use for the voting. Luke Winn, however, is the exception. Not because I think he gets the order right, but because the interesting stuff he puts in when talking about each team. Now, with a lot of diagrams.

The Panthers are ranked second in the nation in assist percentage, with assists being credited on 70.2 percent of their field goals.* In three games this season, according to StatSheet’s advanced data, Pitt has assisted on at least 80 percent of its made baskets — 87.1 percent at home against Rider, 80.5 at home against Maryland-Eastern Shore and 80.0 at home against Marquette. Four Panthers (Brad Wanamaker, Ashton Gibbs, Gilbert Brown and Travon Woodall) are averaging more than three assists per game, but as a comparison chart of their assists from the Marquette game shows, they do their playmaking in different ways.

(A key to the chart below: The location of the passer is shown with a blue circle containing his initials. The location of the scorer is shown with a clear circle containing his initials. Zigzagging black lines represent dribble-drives, and red arrows represent passes. “SF” means a shot-fake started the drive. “OOB” means the pass came on an out-of-bounds play. The yellow numbers show the order in which the assists occurred.)

It becomes clear — if it wasn’t already on TV — that Wanamaker is the one doing the serious playmaking, using dribble-drives from the wings to create shots for others from scratch. He’s by far Pitt’s most valuable player. Gibbs does some creating off the dribble, in part because opponents close out on him so hard to contest would-be shots, but both he and Woodall earned two of their assists from inbounds plays.

* One thing that I regret to have to mention: For the purposes of making that chart, I film-reviewed 18 of the 24 assists the Panthers were credited with in that Marquette game, and at least two of the 18 were not assists as defined in the NCAA Statistician’s Manual. It states that “an assist should be more than a routine pass that just happens to be followed by a field goal,” and that pass to a player who is “well guarded and had to make a move to get free” before scoring is not an assist. On the fourth assist Gibbs is credited with, he merely brings the ball up and makes a standard pass to Wanamaker on the left wing; Wanamaker, who’s fully guarded, faces up against his man, pauses, drives right into the lane, and pulls up for a jumper. The pass gave him no advantage. On the second assist Woodall is credited with, he makes a similar pass to Wanamaker on the right wing, prior to Wanamaker facing up his man, pausing, and driving to score. Again, it was a normal pass in the course of the offense that gave no advantage. The Panthers are excellent passers, but there’s a chance their assist totals may be inflated by friendly scorekeeping: Their assist percentage in 12 home games is 73.5, while in five neutral/road games, it’s just 60.9.

Finally, Pitt Script notes that 4 of the 5 Pitt 2011 commits have been nominated to the McDonald’s All-American Team. Something that looks really impressive until you notice that the list of nominees is 38 pages long.