Dave O’Brien and Doris Burke are the announcing crew, so it’s going to be all about the game.
You may have heard and will hear something about that 9-0 versus top-5 teams at the Pete. So that’s out there.
There’s also the fact that the last time Syracuse beat Pitt at the Pete was 10 years ago in a 48-45 mess of a game.
Questions abound on the overall health of the team. How severe is Lamar Patterson’s thumb injury, really? How is Talib Zanna’s ankle?
This will be the fourth straight game versus ACC teams that play at a slower tempo than Pitt. ACC purists can complain all they want about the change to their conference, but the slower tempo is really being driven by their own teams not Pitt and Syracuse.
It’s been rough couple weeks for Pitt. The losses to Syracuse and Duke. The aching misery of the Virginia game. Two OT wins that almost felt like losses because of the competition. Compound that with Talib Zanna and Lamar Patterson battling injuries.
Of course it could all wash away with a stirring victory over the #1 team in the country tonight.
We still don’t know the nature of Patterson’s thumb injury. Just that he is sitting out practices and that Pattterson has claimed that it won’t need surgery.
“We’ll see. He hasn’t been put in a game-like situation, so you never know,” Dixon said of Patterson’s thumb. “It feels good when he is walking around and having lunch, but playing in a game is a little different deal, so we will have to see.”
Oh, good. I was afraid the situation might be nebulous or something.
