Happy New Year. In case you missed it from all the bowl games, Louisville just got dropped by Cinci — in Freedom Hall and with Palacios and Padgett back — that isn’t supposed to happen when you get healthy.

How bad is Pitt’s injury situation? Bad enough that coaches from other conferences, that didn’t face Pitt, bring up the injuries as a way of pointing out that things could be worse.

“We’ve got ankles, shoulders, backs and this, that and the other,” [Virginia Coach Dave] Leitao said. “If you allow it, it can be a little frustrating, but as much as I would like to complain about it, I wouldn’t want to be [Pittsburgh coach] Jamie Dixon right now with two starters being out for the year with injuries.

Ron Cook cribs my injury post and expands it for all of Pittsburgh teams.

It’s hard to think it won’t be terrible what has happened to Pitt. The huge win Dec. 20 against Duke and the even better football win Dec. 1 at poor West Virginia were tremendous, but, apparently, somebody at Pitt made a rotten deal with the devil to get them. The football team lost All-Big East Conference wide receiver Derek Kinder before the season and quarterback Bill Stull in the first game; now the basketball team has lost Cook and Fields — its treasured point guard — within a 10-day period. That’s two-fifths of the starting lineup gone, just like that. That’s not right.

It’s all about the Pitt injuries.

1. If bad news comes in threes, the worst should be over for Pitt. After looking like a Final Four-caliber team with a comeback win over Duke in Madison Square Garden, Pitt has suddenly fallen on the hardest of times. In addition to losing Mike Cook to a torn knee (all three ligaments), Pitt will be without Levance Fields for 8-12 weeks with a broken bone in his left foot, and Ronald Ramon hurt his shoulder in a collision during the Panthers’ 80-55 loss at Dayton on Saturday. The ironic thing is Pitt had escaped major injury issues during both Ben Howland’s and Jamie Dixon’s runs at Pitt. Now, with a beautifully blended team with talent, experience and spectacular youth, Pitt heads into the Big East with only one on-the-court loss but numerous questions that did not exist a mere two weeks ago.

Pitt headlined the list of teams with big injuries heading into the New Year — yippee. It also notes that Ronald Ramon has been having a poor season.

Breakdown: Pittsburgh guard Ronald Ramon’s shooting touch. Ramon missed all eight of his shots from the field in Pitt’s 80-55 loss to Dayton and has now made just one of his last 15 field-goal attempts. It’s an uncharacteristic slump for a player who led the Big East in 3-point field goal percentage last season.

Ramon separated his shoulder in the Dayton game which could excuse that performance. His ankle issues are apparently the excuse for  everything else. Before the Dayton 0-8 shooting, Ramon was 26-68 (.382) and 17-47 (.362) on 3s. Just not good performance so far.

Ramon has probably had the biggest problem in the change of style. He benefited greatly from Gray and the slower pace. It meant, moving the ball around, passing it and throwing it in to Gray and back out to Ramon when the defense collapsed inside. He could square up, wait for the ball and take his shot. With him trying to run the point — receiving extra focus from teams — as well I’m not totally optimistic his shooting will be improving the rest of the way. Right now, he knows he needs to concentrate on the point duties.

“It’s more of a leadership thing,” Ramon said. “I have to go out there and carry the team and make sure guys are in the right spots. It’s being a team. We’re going to be the same, smart team we’ve been. Nothing is going to change with us. We’re going to play the same way we’ve been playing. We just have to go out there and execute our plays and play hard.”

Ray Fittipaldo isn’t optimistic about Pitt’s NCAA Tournament chances unless Fields comes back by the end of the regular season.

Brian Roberts of Dayton still thinks well of Pitt.

“They’re going through a tough time,” Roberts said. “But they are going to be fine. That’s a top-5, top-10 team. They have other guys ready to step up.”

Admittedly there is more than a little self-interest in puffing Pitt after beating the Panthers.

Naturally Coach Dixon isn’t saying anything but positive things.

“I have a lot of confidence in Gilbert and Bradley,” Dixon said. “I know they are going to play better than they did (against Dayton). They are going to bring different things to the table. They can bring some rebounding. … We’ll get good stuff out of them as it goes. We’re going to be fine there.”

Pitt players, unsurprisingly, aren’t packing in the season.

“Everyone else has to step up,” Benjamin said. “We just have to step it up. We’re all looking at ourselves now. That’s what you have to do. We’re a team. We have to realize what has to happen if we still want to go somewhere.

“You lose players sometimes. You lose your stars. You lose your role players. That happens. It’s unfortunate that it’s happening to us right now. But we can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We just have to go play. And we have to play much better than we did [Saturday night].”

As for the idea that Pitt might pull in some football players to help, I can only imagine that they would be from the freshmen and sophomore classes. Kids that aren’t too far removed from playing basketball and haven’t bulked up as much as the upperclassmen would have. Dom DeCicco (6′3″), Brandon Lindsey (6′2″), Maurice Williams (6′1″), Cedric McGee (6′1″) and Dorin Dickerson (6′2″) all played b-ball in high school.

I have tried to avoid this sort of thing in the past. A little too common and a bit trite. Still, at this point it seems that something has to be said in summary of 2007 for Pitt.

Basketball in December:

Austin Wallace,  left patella;

Mike Cook, Torn ACL; and

Levance Fields, fracture in his foot.

Heck you can go back to last February when Aaron Gray sprained his ankle near the end of the Washington game. He never had a chance to fully recover.

Football, well I think we’ve been over this before so I’ll just rattle off the names:

Derek Kinder, Bill Stull, Chris Jacobson, Gus Mustakas, Mick Williams, Jason Pinkston, Dan Matha, Kevan Smith, and LaRod Stephens-Howling all missed the season or time with injuries.

A brutal year, physically for Pitt players.

Not sure what the point of a recap is other than to record the misery. So, here are the local stories.

Then there’s the Dayton stories. Foul trouble for Blair. Brian Roberts was so hot, they didn’t even miss Chris Wright. Roberts had a night to shine.

Pittsburgh’s Sam Young spoke for everyone — the sell-out UD Arena crowd, the national TV audience, the NBA scouts sitting courtside, the players and coaches on both teams — when he sought Brian Roberts out after Saturday night’s game.

The Panthers’ junior forward reached down and hugged the Dayton Flyers guard in the hand-shake line afterward and whispered: “You’re one helluva player.”

He sure was Saturday night.

The loss of Fields was the bigger story not just for Pitt fans.

Metatarsal injuries occur frequently with soccer players, perhaps most famously when England forward Wayne Rooney broke his fourth metatarsal playing for Manchester United not long before the 2006 World Cup. Rooney was able to make a quick recovery and played in a Cup game just six weeks after his foot was broken.

On the other hand, the NBAʼs Pau Gasol fractured his fifth metatarsal playing for Spain in the semifinals of the 2006 FIBA World Championships. He did not play his first game of the 2006-07 season for the Memphis Grizzlies until three months later.

Pitt’s goals and hopes for this season, have obviously been downsized.

“We’ll be OK,” Dixon said. “We’ve got guys to replace them.”

That may be true, but now Pittsburgh goes from a team that could compete for the Big East championship to a team that more realistically can hope to finish above the .500 mark in conference play.

Before the extent of the Fields injury was known Pitt was still in flux, Mike DeCourcy noted the way Pitt was going to have to change with Brown in place of Cook.

The Panthers can’t help but be a radically different team, though, because the two players have such disparate skills. Cook was a fifth-year senior who brought a point guard’s creativity to the small forward spot. His lack of athleticism kept him from being a great defender, but he understood how to make himself a nuisance.

Brown demonstrated how much different a player he is with a flying tip-slam of a missed turnaround jumper by Young — one of the few Panthers highlights. But Brown managed to take seven other shots in the game without providing any hint of what sort of shots he might make. He now is hitting 41 percent from the field, 26 percent from 3-point range.

Dixon said Brown should prove to be a fine replacement, despite his uncertain play Saturday. The coach admitted there might be some different plays called in the short term but insisted major changes would not be necessary because “the other nine guys are still the same.”

With Brown in the lineup, Pitt goes from a team lacking quickness at the point guard, shooting guard and small forward spots to one that is exceptionally dynamic at small forward (Brown), power forward (Young) and center (Blair). That eventually should improve the Panthers’ defense. But until the offense regains its equilibrium, they’ll be an imperfect team.

Not good news on Levance Fields.

Pittsburgh guard Levance Fields suffered a broken left foot in Saturday’s loss to Dayton and will be out 8-12 weeks, which could end his regular season.

Pittsburgh spokesperson Greg Hotchkiss said Fields will have surgery Monday and will have a pin inserted in his left foot.

That drops the scholarship player number to 9.

Get well soon, Levance.

Brutal 2007 season for football and basketball injuries.

This isn’t sounding particularly promising.

Junior point guard Levance Fields left the game with a left foot injury with 15:45 remaining and did not return. He had to be helped off the floor and left the arena with a walking boot on his foot.

No official information was available after the game, but one source said Fields could have a fracture and his season might be over. Dixon said more information on Fields’ foot would be known today after doctors can examine him.

The Trib. says he could be out for at least a month.

In the abstract, it can be argued that Pitt has been exceedingly lucky over this decade with regards to major injuries. This season may turn out to be some sort of horrible, hideous payback.

No, I don’t buy it either.

That’s exactly what this game was. Sure, Pitt had a horrible night (both by their own doing and some back luck) but Dayton — especially Roberts — played very well. Exceptionally well, maybe even reaching “unreal”. He finished with 31 points with 15 of those coming from three pointers, some of which were taken from very deep. It seemed like he couldn’t miss all game, but neither could any other UD players. They shot 52% from the field compared to Pitt’s 29%. Marcus Johnson (15) and Kurt Huelsman (12) also hit double figures. Add in the fact that they hit 22 of 28 free throws and out-rebounded us 41-34, even though coming into the game we were at +11 rebounds per game against our opponents.

That was the tip of the iceberg during a flat our horrible game for Pitt. Pitt settled for some of the worst shots I’ve ever seen a basketball team take. Tyrell Biggs is not a three point shooter, but that’s not what he seems to think. Sam Young is a forward too, but he threw up two treys. Ronald Ramon, who’s job is to hit a damn three, went 0-6. As a team, we were 3-25 from deep. Ouch.

Moving to DeJuan Blair, who came back down to Earth after a great game against Duke where I think a lot of people forgot he’s just a freshman. He picked up two fouls early, sat most of the first half, and had to play most of the second half with four fouls. This was the first really hostile environment he’s faced and he made plenty of “freshman mistakes”.

Back to Ronald Ramon though. Oh geez, Ronald Ramon. Ramon is basically worthless if he’s not going to hit threes, especially some of the wide open looks he got tonight. He’s a liability on defense and has no real speed or quickness. At 6-1 (6-4 with the hair) and 180 pounds, he definitely has no size and when Fields went out he looked lost while running the offense at PG. He misses hitting wide open players with passes because he lacks court vision and always seems like he’s a step behind everything else. Problem is, with Gil Brown and Keith Benjamin filling in for Mike Cook and Brad Wanamaker only a true freshman who needs some work, our options are limited and Ramon will continue to see the minutes.

As TMG says in the comments:

Ramon didn’t play tonight, but some walk on was using his jersey.

No, my 7 year-old brother isn’t even a walk-on yet. [/Ramon rant]

Of course, Ramon only played the point because of Field’s injury. Obviously it looked like a foot or ankle type of thing but it seems like no one has any real information. The AP report said nothing of value and the radio guys didn’t seem to know much either except it’s some type of sprain. The severity is the big question. Losing Cook for the season was bad, but losing Levance for an extended time (which hopefully isn’t the case) is just horrible. I know this debate has been going on for a while — Fields is one of the best point guards in the nation. He’s the man on this team.

None of the views ESPN had showed the actual injury but he backed into where the cheerleaders were sitting so a good guess would be he stepped on one of their feet or something. A bit surprising that ESPN only had three camera angles, since usually they have a camera to focus on every single player. I guess the other five hoops games plus three bowl games used up every resource the network has.

Lastly, with the way college basketball games are broadcast today, trying to fit them into a two hour time slot and hoping they don’t spill into the next game’s air time is not working anymore. Commercial breaks at every chance they can get (media time outs every four minutes) make the games run longer and longer. Add in the general rule of thumb that every minute of game time ends up translating into about two minutes of real time and a smaller number of games are going to fit into the time slot. Although it’ll never happen (having less teams play means fewer markets are interested), networks like ESPN should show fewer games but give them each a 2.5 hour window. [/ESPN rant. Two of those in one post -- I need to cut back a little.]

To end this great night, Penn State won the Alamo Bowl. Still, the sky is not falling. We’re 10-1 and it’s just one non-con loss against a good team.

Near the beginning of the OT against Duke, Mike Cook went down with what looked to be a really ugly knee injury. He was on the flooring screaming in pain and had to be carried off the court. Obvious it’s not good to speculate on injuries but usually when you see a knee just give out like that it’s a good guess to say he could be out for a long period of time. Maybe (but hopefully not) a very long period of time.

On the postgame radio show, Jamie Dixon was obviously shaken when talking about Cook’s injury — not just because he’s an important part of the starting lineup but also because he’s a senior who might have just played his last game for Pitt.

Gilbert Brown replaced Cook on the court and will probably be the one who takes his spot. Great job by the entire team to battle back; not just by coming back from such a huge deficit but also for playing tough after seeing a teammate go down like that. More info on the injury as it comes out.

Another injury.

Jason Pinkston out for the season after shoulder surgery.

Here’s the way things are looking right now:

• Derek Kinder — WR — ACL, out for year
• Chris Jacobson — OL — Dislocated kneecap, out for year
• Dan Matha — OL — Shoulder injury, out for year
• Bill Stull — QB — Torn thumb ligaments, out for about 6 weeks
• Elijah Fields — S — Team rules violation, suspended for the year
• Gus Mustakas –DT — ACL, out for year
• Kevin Collier — RB — Broken wrist, out for year

Then there are the walking wounded. Players who are playing with nagging injuries (already).

• John Pelusi — TE
• Aaron Berry — CB
• Joe Thomas — OL
• LaRod Stephens-Howling — RB

I’m not blaming it on the strength and conditioning program — at all. This stuff happens. Just feel it needs to be noted from the Pitt website for irony purposes:

A significant portion of the S&C training load is dedicated to drills that serve to reduce the possibility of sustaining an injury. In this regard, a great deal of special exercises are performed during the advanced stage of the warm up, which precedes the primary phase of the workouts, that target the muscles that articulate the neck, shoulders, hips, and knees.

Anyways…

3 starters and 23 others who were expected to be on the 2-deep all season. Only Matha would have been a question mark for the 2-deep, though with the play of the O-line so far, not as much of a stretch.

Some may point to this as yet another reason to say that this is why the coaches should just be looking at this season as getting ready for 2008. No. This is the reason you don’t count on a particular season as when things happen. Injuries happen, then everything changes. The team and program can’t assume.

First it was Derek Kinder’s ACL, now it’s DT Gus Mustakas. He was injured during yesterday’s game against Grambling State and will miss the rest of the season. The injuries that this team has seen are disheartening, with out top QB, WR, and DT out for either a long period of time (Stull) or the whole year (Kinder, Mustakas). Mustakas was the second leading tackler for the Panthers this year before he went down.

“We are incredibly disappointed for Gus,” Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt said. “He was off to an outstanding start this season and had been playing like an all-star caliber defensive lineman since the spring. Fortunately, Gus can receive a medical redshirt. I know he will show his trademark dedication during the rehabilitation process and get himself ready for action next year.” (Trib.)

Losing a player for the whole season in a game against a 1-AA team definitely stinks. Even though injuries will happen in a sport like football, having all of these happen before we even play a tough game are really hard to swallow.