I’ll toss up the open thread closer to game time. For now, just a focus on the players that move on after this year.

Senior night still matters. It gives us a chance to be reminded that the kids that have been wearing the blue-and-gold are more than the names on the jerseys. They are more than the victories and losses. The successes and failures. The way we support our school through their play.

They have their own stories. They have their own futures. While their playing career for Pitt is ending, so much more of their life is just beginning.

The stories for Cameron Wright, Aron Phillips-Nwankwo and Derrick Randall at Pitt seemingly have been defined by loss to this point. For Wright and Nwankwo, the painful and far too early loss of a parent. Randall suffered the loss from being part of a group of kids at Rutgers who were verbally berated and abused by a coach that it affected his mental well-being for quite a while.

That’s part of their life. Part of who they are, and they will have that with them. But, it isn’t how they are defined any more than what they have or haven’t accomplished on the court.

If you want know why I regularly block without hesitation anyone on twitter who calls a player “garbage” or worse. Or why I ban or do not approve commenters who do the same, then Senior Night should be the explanation. The time when we get the reminder of how much more there is to the kids on the court than the game. Forget any “heat of the moment” excuse or that it was only “intended” to be a comment on his game. I have no patience for that.

At a time when we regularly lambaste and mock the idea of the student-athlete. Notions of amateurism, it is important to remember that it isn’t because of the kids that we generally do it. It’s because the NCAA and its member institutions regularly do everything they can to give us reason to.

Cam Wright lost his father just before the start of the 2012 season. He went out and played that night. He has left everything on the court, every game. Off the court, he has been a model citizen, and given everything he could to Pitt.

“My sense of urgency is at its highest peak for me right now,” said Wright, who has played in 126 career games with 68 starts. “I love this place, this university. I wouldn’t have wanted to spend it anywhere else.”

Wright, recipient of the 2014 Skip Prosser Award honoring the ACC’s top student-athlete in men’s basketball, also received Pitt’s Scholar-Athlete Award and is a two-time winner of the school’s Academic Excellent Award.

Wright recently was selected for the ACC’s 2015 Weaver-James-Corrigan Postgraduate Award, one of three Pitt student-athletes named among 53 honorees.

“I plan on playing basketball for a long time, but down the road I definitely want to attend school again and pursue my master’s degree,” Wright said.

Aron Phillips-Nwankwo may go down as one of Pitt basketball’s most celebrated walk-ons. From the day he decided to come to Pitt on a full academic scholarship, planning on a future in medicine. Turning down scholarships to play basketball elsewhere.

He lost his mother in December 2013. He kept on going. Continuing to study, practice, do everything. Even if he was simply following a routine.

Sitting with Dixon at a restaurant near his childhood home in Baltimore shortly after Phillips lost her battle with breast cancer in December 2013, Phillips-Nwankwo wondered when the fire that drives him would return or if he would even care if it did.

He didn’t wonder about what his mother would want. Phillips didn’t raise a quitter.

”She’s the reason I just didn’t give up,” Phillips-Nwankwo said. ”I wanted to give up but I just couldn’t.”

That future had to include basketball, despite his grief and considerable academic load. Even if he rarely played when it mattered. Even if it forced him to sacrifice anything resembling a normal college life.

Phillips-Nwankwo spent the months after her passing ”sleepwalking.” He buried himself in books and the open arms of his teammates. Slowly, things returned to normal. Slowly, the fire returned – both in the classroom and on the court.

The honor is really mine to say that these men are fellow alumni of the University of Pittsburgh.