**** THIS ARTICLE JUMPED OVER CHAS’ BB PIECE – PLEASE READ AND COMMENT ON THAT FIRST****

Not that the basketball season is almost over, we hope not but as in Pitt Football our BB team isn’t a shoo-in for anything, let’s turn our eye toward some pre-spring practice info and discussion starters.

The P-G has a piece on DE Ejuan Price and his buying a condo at a Senior Living center in Boca Raton, FL.  He’s in his 6th year at Pitt and it seems like he’s an old man already… but he plays like a middle aged tornado… with his 11.5 sacks last season.  Here is a good video as he describes his past physical problems.

This kills me though:

But even among those hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent pairs, it only takes a split sec­ond for Price to tell you his fa­vor­ites: His Nike Gal­axy Foam­pos­ite Ones. Put out to a very lim­ited re­lease in 2012, the Gal­axy Foams reg­u­larly fetch up­ward of $2,000 on the sec­ond­ary mar­ket. Money that Price, as a col­lege stu­dent, ob­vi­ously didn’t have.

He stayed on the hunt for a few years be­fore he found a friend with an ex­tra pair who was will­ing to let them go for a more rea­son­able price. “I wore them for about a week straight,” Price said.

Then he reveals this:

Oddly enough, though, when Price is hang­ing around the fa­cil­ity, he’s al­most al­ways in flip-flops. Not any­thing from his vast col­lec­tion of sneak­ers.

“The funny thing is I have all those shoes and I wear these [san­dals] ev­ery day,” he said. “Mainly be­cause my mom will tell you, my shoes hurt my feet. She says I’ve got long toes. Even though I like them so much, my shoes hurt my feet.”

Here is Rivals’ Chris Peaks latest football-related podcast.  It starts out with BB but if you want to skip that then jump to the FB talk  at minute mark 22:50

Some key issues he talks about the open starting positions due to graduation of having left – of course Boyd is mentioed.  Peak also thinks that Narduzzi truly has a blank slate mentality once the previous season has ended.

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I didn’t get to watch the Pitt-UNC game until nearly 9pm that night. By then, I had seen the final score despite best efforts to avoid. With the knowledge of the final score, watching the game takes on a different perspective.

From that POV, Pitt went toe-to-toe with UNC for nearly 30 minutes. A team that was a preseason #1 and still thought to be one of the deepest and best teams nationally. Pitt had their usual lapse near the end of the half — which is also a credit to UNC turning up their defense. But Pitt didn’t wilt after going down by 4 at the half. They battled with UNC for the next 10 minutes before UNC started going on spurts. Still scoring and their defense disrupting Pitt completely.

Part of it is that UNC is just so deep. They could regularly send in waves of 3 players at a time completely fresh. Wearing Pitt down, as Pitt’s bench has shrunk (with good reason).

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Noon on ESPN.

Yeah, not going to be able to get free from work for a second nooner. An extended lunch? Possibly.

The Tar Heels are up today. Never really great chances when you are hoping for the sleepwalking version to show up. A little slow to start after having to wait to play until today.

There’s nothing wrong in acknowledging that UNC is a very good team. One of the best in the country. A likely #2 or #1 seed by Sunday for the NCAA Tournament. They are also prone to forgetting that for large portions of a game.

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Noon on ESPN.

Think I manipulated my work schedule just so. Should get home in time or right after the opening tip. Hopslam in the fridge. Knob Creek Rye on the dining room table if it comes to that.

I’ve hit on Jamel Artis and his shooting being a big deal. We know he’s had big success against Cuse to lead the team to wins against them. Here’s the final thing courtesy of Chris Peak from PantherLair. When Artis shoots 40% or better, Pitt is 18-2. Sub-40%, 2-8. He and Mike Young are Pitt’s best players. If they don’t have — at a minimum — decent games, Pitt doesn’t win too often.

It really is that simple for most games. If your best players aren’t performing you are going to struggle. Maybe you have just that much talent to get by. Or the other team is really bad. But Pitt isn’t the former, and Syracuse isn’t the latter.

No pressure guys. You just lost almost all the wiggle room.

“Our attitude for these last two games was we have to win (both) to get in the tournament,” he said.

But didn’t Pitt lose those games? OK, what happens now?

“We know to get into the tournament, we have to make a deep run in this ACC Tournament,” he said.

That’s asking a lot, but Jeter knows the NCAA window is closing. It could slam shut on the Panthers (20-10) and their cold-shooting hands if they can’t defeat Syracuse (19-12) in their first tournament game at noon Wednesday at Verizon Center.

Realistically, Pitt is safe if it wins against Syracuse. They just have to find a way to do that a third straight time in the season. Win, a second (or even more ridiculous a third) game in the ACC Tournament, and Pitt is playing for a seed in the 7 to 8 spot. But that is definitely getting ahead of things.

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Late in the GT game, you could feel Pitt flail about looking for someone to score. Jamel Artis wasn’t it. A second straight game where he was horrible. Both were on the road. After being so good against Duke last Sunday.

With the regular season over, the stats don’t lie about Artis not being anywhere near the same player at home versus on the road.

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Here is a two day old KDKA’s Vukovcan’s piece about Pitt’s future recruiting. From what I gather a DT in our own backyard at Central Catholic is a prime target:

**Central Catholic DT Kurt Hinish picked up an offer from Virginia Tech. Hinish tells me that he’ll take a visit to Notre Dame on March 19th.  A couple of interesting articles and facts accompany this kid.  first  off he can probably lay a concrete driveway for you.

And the Hinish Clan’s athletic success runs in the family.

Tawnie Hinish is not surprised by the athletic success of her children. “They’re hard workers and totally committed,” she said. “They don’t like to lose.”

According to Tawnie, even Trivial Pursuit games can get heated at the Hinish household. “Our Thanksgiving football games get really intense. Kurt and I are running full-out with the kids,” she said.”

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2pm, with the syndicated ACC Network or ESPN3 (hooray, Cleveland coverage for me).

Sorry for the extreme last minute, but I just got home from some family related activities.

It’s not a must win (yet), but it takes the pressure off the ACC Tournament for Pitt to get the win now. In certain years, Pitt would be in trouble for the NCAA Tournament. This year, there are so many teams with worse situations than Pitt; that it isn’t nearly as bad as it can feel when you have watched just this team this year.

Mailing the open thread in at this point.

12 hours later and I’m still a bit pissed off about last night.

Even the players couldn’t hide from what was seen on the court.

“We were hoping to use that momentum from the Duke win, carry it over,” [Mike] Young said. “But instead we had our highest of highs on the season and then followed it with our lowest of lows, I believe. I just think mentally as a team, we weren’t in it. Obviously you can tell.

“I just don’t think we came out with that same passion that we did in that last game, that was pretty evident and I think that was the key.”

It wasn’t that VT did anything too spectacular on offense. They did exactly what was expected. Attack and try to get to the free throw line.

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7pm and the game is on ESPN3 only. Intellectually, I know that this is sort of coverage is more about ESPN taking full advantage of its contract with the ACC (for which, Pitt is well compensated)to keep pushing the digital content side of things. I mean, when you scroll through the volume of games on ESPN3, you realize that this hits all conferences. Still. Frickin’ ESPN3?

Okay, about this game.

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You can make the case that Pitt had been getting closer to a big win. The Miami game. Louisville last week. Those games were within grasp. Just that awful mix of inconsistency on offense and weak defense, that all but had Jamie Dixon publicly questioning his team’s mental make-up. Still, the big win had been elusive.

They had good wins — at ND (the only loss ND had at the Joyce Center all season) and sweeping Syracuse. Only one “bad” loss — the home decimation to NC State.

But so many of the losses were plain demoralizing because they weren’t close. Whether by the end — Virginia and at Louisville — or throughout — at Clemson and at UNC — they were losses that gave no sense of hope. No real, “we can build on this,” feeling.

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