Briefly, at least.

There is a game at the Pete against Wagner tonight. Given the time of year — plenty of good seats still available.  For those of us not in the Burgh, the game is on ESPNU at 8pm.

I may have to go with an open thread for tonight, because it is a better than 50% chance that I will have to resort to DVR delay. Only way out is if my wife is let out of work early so I can take care of my last minute errands. Ah, Christmas time. The moments of personal inconvenience when I think I should have have listened to my grandfather and found a nice Jewish girl. But I digress.

Ashton Gibbs is on the verge of some nice statistical accomplishments.

And in the next few games, beginning Friday night against Wagner at Petersen Events Center, Ashton Gibbs likely will move past Brandin Knight and into 15th place on the Pitt all-time scoring list. Gibbs has 1,417 points, and Knight, now an assistant on Panthers coach Jamie Dixon’s staff, totaled 1,440 from 1999-2003.

Gibbs, who’s averaging a team-high 17.5 points, said reaching performance standards doesn’t excite him. When he was close to setting a Pitt record for consecutive made free throws in 2009-10, he said he didn’t know it until his father told him.

“No clue,” said Gibbs, who set the mark at 46. “That’s one thing about me nobody really knows. I never look at stats. I don’t want it to get in my head like how many points I need to keep up my average. I just keep on playing and just win games.”

But he is pleased to be so close to Knight.

“Just to pass someone who is a great player, great coach, great person, it’s definitely an honor,” he said.

There’s a little more.

Gibbs now stands at 252 3s made. The Pitt record is held by Jason Matthews with 259. Brandin Knight’s record 654 3FGA, probably will fall as well. Gibbs is up to 583. Jason Matthews 45.7% 3FG%, however, looks safe. Gibbs is second at 43.2%. Barring injury, Gibbs should finish this season as one of Pitt’s 10 top scorers of all-time.

Ray Mernagh previews the Seahawks. While the local coverage for Wagner calls the game what it is:

“Great team,” Wagner coach Dan Hurley conceded of the Seahawks’ opponent tomorrow night in a game to be shown on ESPNU. “Big. Strong. They’re an elite program.”

What this is for Wagner is a “guarantee” game, one of those road trips lower-level Division I programs make each season to help fill out a power team’s home schedule.

In this case, Pitt gets to sell out Petersen against a supposedly lesser opponent. In return, Wagner gets to pick up a paycheck approaching six figures that helps underwrite program costs.

These program’s met for the first and only time in the first round of the 2003 NCAA Tournament when the No. 2-seeded Panthers rolled 87-61 on Jermaine Hall, Dedrick Dye-led Wagner, which was making its only NCAA appearance to date.

Pitt’s defense has played better. Mainly the rebounding. But it doesn’t hurt that the opponents have been on relatively easy.

Three of the past four opponents have shot 40 percent or less. The one team that shot better than 40 percent was Oklahoma State, which shot 41.9 percent.

The Panthers held Saint Francis to 35.2 percent Tuesday night — the lowest shooting percentage for an opponent this season.

“We’ve come a long way,” Dixon said. “I feel good about it. We were way below our normal standards. We got it changed. It obviously had to do with some new guys being in there. We’re getting better.”

…

“You can definitely feel it,” Patterson said. “In the beginning, guys didn’t know certain little schemes we wanted to get done. They weren’t as confident in themselves. Now we’re starting to get our feet wet more. We know how to get it done.”

Dixon said it’s hard to pinpoint one thing for the recent improvement. He said it’s the result of the young players learning the system on offense and defense. Long Beach State and Rider shot a high percentage against Pitt partly because the Panthers displayed poor shot selection on offense.

Long Beach State and Rider got dunks and other easy shots because the transition defense was caught off guard after the offense was not executed well enough.

As the players have become more familiar with the way Dixon wants them to play on offense, the number of layups opposing teams have been converting have decreased.

No one is saying this is going to be a defense, circa 2003. At best this may be an average defensive team this year. There are still too many lapses. Especially late, where the team starts to ease up on defense. Obviously the loss of Birch is not good from that perspective. He may not have been physically intimidating, but he already had created a certain level of anxiety towards the possibility of getting a shot blocked inside.