Holy crap, today is Pitt’s local media day. Tomorrow night is the midnight madness event. The season is looming, and for some, possibly taking on greater importance with the continuing struggles of the football team (and for those who are total Pittsburgh sports loyalists, the NHL lockout, the Pirates, and maybe even the Steelers). Guess it’s time for some links.
Big East schedules — for one final season — evaluated. Pitt, unsurprisingly, gets a low score from ESPN. That’s okay. Pitt fans also gave it a low score.
Toughest: NIT Season Tip-Off (Nov. 12-23)
Next-toughest: Detroit (Dec. 1)
The rest: Mount St. Mary’s (Nov. 9), Fordham (Nov. 12), Oakland (Nov. 17), Howard (Nov. 27), vs. Duquesne (Dec. 5 at Consol Energy Center), North Florida (Dec. 8), Bethune Cookman (Dec. 15), Delaware State (Dec. 19), Kennesaw State (Dec. 23)
Toughness scale: 3 — Yikes. This is a whole lotta meh for the Panthers. The NIT will help. Assuming they beat Fordham and/or Robert Morris or Lehigh (the latter of which won’t be easy), a trip to MSG will likely produce a matchup with Michigan and either Virginia or Kansas State. The rest is pretty grim, but then again so was Pitt last season. It might be not be a bad way to go about the season.
The Lehigh game will be the obstacle. Then it is Michigan under John Beilein. The idea of facing a Beilein team always terrifies me. Simply because you never know if their 3-point shooting will be hot or not. You know they will bomb away. You just don’t know what kind of shooting night it will be.
