12 pm, ACC Network Syndication (bastards) or ACC Network Extra/WatchESPN.

In the Cleveland area, you would think that ACC games would be shown fairly regularly when its ACC Network Syndication. What, with Raycom actually owning two channels (CBS affiliate and a UHF channel). It is true at least in football season, but basketball is a bit more spotty. Today it is nothing but infomercials, which leaves me with streaming the game. Streaming is much better, but still not as good as broadcast.

Today is Pitt’s second true road game. Pitt is 3-2 away from the Pete when you include neutral site games. Not really much of a sample size.

Syracuse is 9-6 overall, and 9-2 at home. They just came off a surprising blowout win over Miami. Worth noting that Syracuse is 0-4 this season against teams that they used to call conference mates in the Big East. No, wait, technically 1-4 with the win over Miami, but no one really counts them as Big East basketball.

Syracuse, early in the season, attempted to play more guys in games. That has rapidly changed in light of both the number of losses they have already suffered and that players simply haven’t stepped up. In their win over Miami, for example, they really played just 6 guys. Three other players — including “starter” Tyler Roberson — gave them all of 7 minutes. In a loss to BC, they 7 players  were used.

We already know Pitt is not going much deeper than 7 as well, so there really won’t be any surprises on the court.

Pitt has beaten Syracuse five straight times, and has simply dominated the match-ups over the last 15 years. Pitt is 18-7 over the last 25 times the teams have faced, and 7-3 at the Carrier Dome in the last 10 years.

Things are different with a new coach for Pitt, but the experience in the starting lineup should — in theory — allow for changes on the fly.

Syracuse is trying to build on their win over Miami, but has a healthy fear of Jamel Artis.

He’s the Panther who has orchestrated the zone destruction. He’s the man in the middle who has made all the difference for Pittsburgh.

“He’s a great player. We know that we gotta stop him,” SU forward Tyler Lydon said. “They run a lot of their offense through him, so we just gotta pay attention to him.”

Artis is averaging 17 points on 53 percent shooting over Pittsburgh’s five consecutive wins over the Orange. He has also hauled in 8.2 rebounds per game and has averaged 5.8 assists. All of these numbers exceed his career stats at Pittsburgh.

He is the perfect player to depend upon when confronted by a zone. A skilled passer, he can make plays from the high post and score from there, too. Artis talked last season about how much his team depends upon him to execute in SU’s 2-3 zone.

Despite his — and the team’s — success against it, he’s not a fan of facing Cuse and the 2-3 zone.

To the athletic 6-foot-7 point guard, it’s a scheme that fosters a certain offensive complacency, making otherwise active players stationary and slotting them in spots where they feel compelled to shoot from deep instead of drive to the basket. He can’t do all he wants offensively, which is part of the point of a zone defense and what makes it so frustrating for its foes.

While explaining his distaste for the zone, Artis has to stop himself. There is, after all, a caveat to the venom.

“But, hey, it works for us in the long run,” he said Friday.

…

“We have a really good way of attacking their zone,” sophomore guard Cam Johnson said. “Under coach [Jamie] Dixon, we would figure out ways to beat it and we executed them pretty well last year and the year before. We crash the offensive glass pretty hard and make sure we have a lot of opportunities that way. We just really got excited for that game. We really wanted to take advantage of the opportunities that we could create.”

The numbers bear that out.

The series’ recent lopsided nature has little to do with the Panthers’ shooting numbers in those five games — with pedestrian marks of 46.6 percent from the field and 34.3 percent from 3-point range — but rather their ability to collect rebounds. Against a spread-out defense based more on guarding an area rather than a particular man, the Orange has been vulnerable down low on missed shots, something Pitt, and a rebound-obsessed coach such as Dixon, seized upon. In those five matchups, the Panthers outrebounded Syracuse, 173-147, which included a 68-52 advantage on the offensive glass. From those offensive rebounds, Pitt was able to outscore the Orange on second-chance points, 47-18, the past three games.

In the past two years, it also has slowed the pace and used Syracuse’s more passive defense as an ally to create a game more to Dixon’s liking. The three games last year featured an average of 60.3 possessions, well below the Orange’s average of 65.8, while they averaged 61.5 possessions the previous season, again below Syracuse’s mark of 66.1 that season.

Tempo really won’t be much of a factor this year. Both teams play at about the same pace. Pitt’s adjusted tempo is 68.1 (228th) and Syracuse is 68.4 (204th). What I will be watching is whether Pitt does the things it did to beat Syracuse. Things the players know worked real well.

“The key is getting it in the middle,” Artis said. “If you can’t get it in the middle, you set some screens, try to cut and crash the boards. We don’t want to keep shooting 3s. We want to get inside and then play outside.”

Though Pitt has a new coach this season in Stallings, its players have worked to educate Stallings on what has worked for them the past several years against Syracuse, hoping to get those pieces of advice integrated with their coach’s overall game plan.

“He talks to us and asks us what we want to do with the zone,” Artis said. “He knows we’ve had success over the past several years. He put in some plays and he knows to get it in the middle and play out of that. That’s basically what we’re going to do.”

The “BUT…” you could probably guess was coming from me is this: Pitt likes shooting 3s this year. They really like them. The 2-3 zone encourages teams to try and take 3s rather than find the spots in the middle and work the boards. The question becomes whether Pitt will be disciplined enough to keep going into the zone rather than staying on the perimeter hoisting 3s