There’s a “but” involved.

Been rumored for a month or so that Pitt and Penn State would face-off in basketball this year. BUT that it wouldn’t be any sort of “home-and-home” exchange. Sure enough, it’s going to be in New Jersey. And it is the undercard.

Villanova will play Notre Dame and Pitt will face Penn State in the first Never Forget Tribute Classic at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. on Dec. 10, sources told CBS Sports.

An official announcement is expected soon.

The first game of the doubleheader between the Wildcats and Fighting Irish will be available on CBS while the second will air on CBS Sports Network.

Villanova and Notre Dame will tip off at Noon ET with Pitt and Penn State expected to begin their game at approximately 2:30 p.m. ET.

So it is the undercard, but goes second. That’s different, but that is CBS for you. They will make the Nova-ND their Saturday noon game, and see if people can find their cable sports channel for the second game.

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The Cardiac Hill blog is running a “Bracket of Pitt” series that has  ‘all things Pitt” subjects listed much like we see during the college basketball NCAA tournaments.  Here is how they describe what they are going to do:

“The Cardiac Hill Podcast has a new segment; the Bracket of Pitt. It’s a 64-item bracket of everything Pitt. People, places, things, etc., basically if it has anything to do with the University of Pittsburgh, it’s in. I’ll be hosting the tournament primarily with Jim Hammett of Cardiac Hill. We’ll post the first episode here (and on SoundCloud) tomorrow with me & Jim discussing the bracket and you can vote for the matchups @CoreyECohen on Twitter; one vote per person. Each week we’ll put out a new episode discussing your results and advance the bracket accordingly! Let’s make some May Madness here at Cardiac Hill, we can’t wait to debut the #BracketOfPitt!”

This sounds like an original and fun idea and will fill up some of the Pitt sports dead time from now until the football Fall Camp opens up in early August.  Here is what the bracket looks like as a snapshot but click on this link to see the details.

Guess The Pitt Blather didn’t make the cut.

It’s the time for recruiting. Coach Kevin Stallings have put out plenty of offers. For transfers, grad transfers, still deciding kids in the 2016 class, and especially kids for the 2017 recruiting class.  Big men, guards, shooters, forwards. They have been all over the place. Nothing close to concrete. Makes it kind of difficult to get a handle on what they are looking for — other than players. Now it just comes down to landing some.

On media related news, Paul Zeise is leaving the Pitt basketball beat for the Post-Gazette. He’s been moved up to sports columnist/opinionator. Zeise was a very good beat writer first for Pitt football and then basketball. He’s been grinding for years on that side and has raised his profile on the general sports side for the last few years via radio work. It’s a well-earned promotion.

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As a quick followup to our “Where would Boyd be drafted?” contest two of us picked the Bengals (or Bungles in TX Panther’s case).

I weighed in at 9:28 am on the morning of Round One, before the draft started, with this:

OK – I’m thinking the Bengals take Boyd with their second round pick. I also think Holtz gets in on a surprise 6th or 7th pick tomorrow.  Pitts is left looking around like he never did on the field of play.

Comment by Reed 04.28.16 @ 9:29 am

Then the next day, before Round Two started, Texas Panther posted this:

He will become a Bungel

Comment by TX Panther 04.29.16 @ 7:32 pm

I win!!! I win!!!  Told you I was smart…

I also told you I love Mike Wysocki of The Pittsburgh City Paper and I just figured out why… he writes a lot like I do with tongue-in-cheek views mixed in with irreverence and some plain talking.  He also tends not to sugar coat things.

Since the last big interesting Pitt football issues just happened with Boyd being drafted we are looking a football desert over the next few months so I’m trying to find stuff that is interesting to readers yet pertains to us as Pitt fans also.

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