The last day of July. That means we reach the official end to what is usually one of the deadest months in college football. It’s a little more extended for Pitt fans since the start of practice does not begin until August 11 — with new Nike unis probably unveiled the day before at the Pitt Media Day.

Big East media days will fill the gap somewhat before that.

The big story is still that Pitt and Utah will meet. Love the gratuitous shot at ex-AD Long.

Utah fills a void left when former Pitt athletic director Jeff Long allowed Clemson out of its two-game series with the Panthers, who now have one open date remaining on their 2010 schedule.

The Panthers will open at home in 2010 against New Hampshire on Sept. 4, then visit Utah Sept. 11, play host to Miami Sept. 25 and at Notre Dame Oct. 9. In 2011, Pitt will visit Iowa and play host to Buffalo, Maine, Utah and Notre Dame in a schedule that features eight games at Heinz Field.

Nice. Remind everyone that Long let Clemson out of a home-and-home with nothing and never even got to finding a replacement.

BTW, UConn is going to Michigan for 2010 and gets the Woverines to come to the Rent in 2013. So let me get this straight. Michigan will play one game at the Rent, but in 3 “home” meetings with ND, UConn can’t get one to take place in their own frickin’ state?

Very late in acknowleding that Nate Byham is on the Mackey Watch List for best tight end. This was completely expected. Byham should be a unanimous pick on the preseason All-Big East first team as well.

Andrew Taglianetti got some love last week, and I never got to this story.

It’s that kind of effort that makes Gattuso think Taglianetti can challenge for playing time at safety, even though the Panthers have talented players there in Dom DeCicco and Elijah Fields.

“He’s got great instincts and he hits like a truck,” Gattuso said. “I don’t even think of him as an overachiever any more because he’s running 4.5s and high 4.4s (in the 40-yard dash). No one outworks him and no one outthinks him. He’s got all the tools. He’s just not 6-1 and 200 pounds.”

Taglianetti says he’s up to 186 pounds now. And there’s no questioning his toughness, because it was passed along in his genes.

At the end of the story they mention his hockey playing dad, but the bit is focused on what he does on the field. Just making plays.

Recent Pitt commit Andre Givens gets a story on his verbal from one of his locals.

Givens verbally committed to play football at the University of Pittsburgh last Friday. He made the choice after visiting Pitt and Ohio State.

“I just loved it,” Givens said of his visit to Pitt. “I’m going there pretty much for academic reasons. I want to major in criminal justice and become a detective. I saw how they handle things there. Everything is hands-on. I told coach (Dave) Wannstedt that the football team will take care of itself.”

…

Givens enjoyed his visit to Ohio State, but the Buckeyes weren’t a strong second choice.

“I liked the facilities at Ohio State, but I knew for a fact that I wasn’t going to play in the Big Ten,” Givens said. “The Big East is more my style. It’s a fast style of playing.”

Not that tOSU actually offered. Still, glad to have him.

Finally, Greg Romeus gives a quick profile on himself to Sporting News. It’s probably just a reflection of the times, and the fact that I’m always writing about college scandals. Still, what ended up jumping out at me was that his ride is a Lexus 300 GS. I don’t know his family’s background, but part of me is hoping it’s got a lot of miles on it and more than a few years.

Anything else will probably be a trickle that will end up in a general clearance post down the road. There are a few stories to get out there.

Good god, but the Kiwi sportswriters have some major man-crushes going on Coach Jamie Dixon. There was the piece earlier, now for the departure.

He’d masterminded a long-overdue gold medal for the USA at the Fiba world under-19 men’s basketball championships in Auckland – and he’d done it in the country that had set him down the pathway to his position now as one of the preeminent coaches in American hoops.

It was little wonder you could not wipe the smile off the likeable American’s face at the North Shore Events Centre on Sunday night.

Dixon, after all, had first realised his ambition and aptitude for coaching during his two years as a star import for Hawke’s Bay in the New Zealand NBL back in 1989-90.

To return 20 years later, having grown into one of the highest-rated coaches in American college basketball, and claim a world title his country hadn’t taken home in nearly two decades was almost a dream come true for this Pat Riley-in-his-heyday lookalike.

…

Now ensconced as the head coach of the powerhouse University of Pittsburgh programme, his success in bringing the sought-after world under-19 title back to the home of hoops would have further enhanced his status in the American game.

It probably helped that Dixon had no shortage of praise for New Zealand as  a place and the people. Always the gracious guest.

Not that Andy Katz was too far behind in the praise-heaping. It just got spread more among the players and coaches.

The Americans won all nine games in New Zealand. They outscored their opponents by an average of 22.2 points, holding teams to 66 points a game, 38.2 percent on shooting overall, 30.7 percent on 3-pointers. They also outrebounded their opponents by eight a game.

If this sounds familiar then it should. This is exactly how Dixon’s, Painter’s and Lowery’s teams win at Pitt, Purdue and Southern Illinois, respectively.

“They’ve had two years together and we had one month,” Painter said by phone about the difference in preparation. “They all accepted their roles.”

This squad won it without the best available players committing, and a head coach who was put on the spot late.

Pitt’s Dixon, who replaced Davidson’s Bob McKillop to make his coaching debut for USA Basketball, confirmed that 22 players from around the country had declined invitations to play in New Zealand. That number included Connecticut’s Kemba Walker, who was the MVP of the McKillop-led American team that won the silver medal at the qualifying event last summer in Argentina. In fact, not a single player from last summer’s qualifying team in Argentina was in New Zealand this summer. Walker declined to play for the team again this year to attend summer school.

Wake Forest’s Al-Farouq Aminu, a projected lottery pick in 2010, was invited but declined to play for personal reasons.

If you review the USA team’s roster, the only player on that list that was a highly sought recruits were Howard Thompkins, Georgia, Darius Miller from Kentucky and  Tyshawn Taylor from Kansas. None of these guys were even considering going pro after one year — and probably not after two.

But no one may have gained more out of this trip than Pitt’s Ashton Gibbs. He has to replace Levance Fields at the point for Dixon. In nine games, he had 20 assists and just six turnovers to go along with seven steals.

“It’s a credit to Jamie that there was no ego with this team,” said Lowery, who along with Painter (whom Lowery was an assistant under at SIU) handled the substitutions. “He kept telling them how good we could be.”

Dixon said he stressed to the players how the Americans hadn’t won this event since 1991. The pride in the achievement of claiming gold didn’t take long for them to appreciate.

Whether Gibbs is the starter to replace Fields or is just filling all roles in the guard spot, he has more confidence and experience.

This team, by the way, won without a true PG on the team. Some of that may be the international game, but it is also a pretty good testement to the coaching job that the team was able to win the whole thing despite that.

Brief aside since inevitably the comments will once more turn to Pitt’s PG situation for 2009. We are a little spoiled. It has been a long time — Brandin Knight’s freshman year (1999-00) — since Pitt has been without an experienced, true PG. It really has been a remarkable run at that position. Knight, Krauser, Fields. All stayed four years. All unquestioned team leaders. Each transitioned to the next. There are few squads — regardless of their pedigree — these days that can point to that kind of run at the point guard position.

Back to the story, I do love that Coach Dixon had no problem emphasizing to the team that no USA U-19 had won it in 19 years. He didn’t try to hide the pressure from them. He didn’t try to downplay the expectations. He got them to use it as further motivation. Nothing upsets me more than a coach that tries too hard to downplay the big games or the goals. It just never works well with that approach.

Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News also praises Dixon.

His heart was broken in March by a coast-to-coast Scottie Reynolds drive that allowed Villanova to walk over Dixon’s Panthers and into the Final Four.

But Dixon was smiling at the end of this one. Unlike the Olympics, they give the head coach a gold medal, and he certainly earned it (with considerable help from assistants Chris Lowery of Southern Illinois and Matt Painter of Purdue).

With no international experience and late notification he’d be needed, Dixon took a near-starless team to New Zealand.

Which is part of why the performance by Dixon and the assistant coaches is considered so outstanding. Not only did they snap a long drought in the U-19, but they did it with a very unheralded group.

It’s no wonder Duke Coach Mike Kryzewski chose to show up at the Peach Jam in Georgia wearing his Team USA shirt rather than a Duke shirt. Makesure to remind the recruits about the bigger goals.

Now the defense of the USA U-19 is beginning to come to the forefront. A second straight game where the shots — especially from the perimeter — were not falling, but defense and rebounding continue to be there. The USA team took control late in the first quarter and took the game 82-61.

The U.S. blew the game wide open with a 24-2 run that covered the last 2:41 of the first quarter and the first 5:12 of the second quarter. During the games deciding run Ashton Gibbs (Pittsburgh / Scotch Plains, N.J.) and Seth Curry (Duke / Charlotte, N.C.) each tallied six points, Terrico White (Mississippi / Memphis, Tenn.) contributed five points, and Howard Thompkins (Georgia / Lithonia, Ga.) added four more in the massive run.

Outscoring Puerto Rico 9-2 over the final 2:31 of the opening quarter to grab control 20-13, the Americans opened the second quarter by scoring 15 straight points to take full control 35-13. Of Puerto Rico’s six points in the second period, four came on free throws as the islanders made just 1of-16 shots from the field.

Leading comfortably at halftime 43-19, the USA lead hovered around 20 points for the remainder of the game as Puerto Rico offensively was continually harassed by the USA defense.

Puerto Rico’s star player, Rutgers Sophomore Mike Rosario, had 54 points against France and averaged something like 32/game coming in. He was held to 11 points on only 4-15 shooting and was forced into 4 turnovers.

The win moves the USA U-19 to 5-0 and clinches the #1 seed in Group E regardless of what happens tonight/this morning (7:30 pm NZ, 2:30 am EST) against Lithuania. That means the USA team will face the #4 seed of Group F on Thursday night/morning. Right now, it looks like the possibilities for the #4 seed are Spain, Canada or Argentina.

Australia and Croatia are going to be the #1 and #2 seeds — order determined after their game tonight.

Ashton Gibb, like the rest of the team — aside from Howard Thompkins who has been thriving — struggled with his shooting. Only 3-10 and 1-5 on 3s. Despite this, Gibbs has shot better than 45% overall in the 5 games and has ended up taking the most shots of any USA player. He seems to be doing very well in the group and is playing around 22 minutes a game — the most on the team.

It’s hard not to think that Coach Dixon is getting him lots of work in preparation to lead Pitt in the upcoming season. So far, Gibbs seems to be handling it.

As for Coach Dixon, well he gets the puff pieces now that he’s visiting New Zealand — the place where he played for 2 years (hattip to Asst. AD Greg Hotchkiss’ Twitter). It’s a full-blown puffer.

The Hawks’ US import from the 1989-90 seasons smiles as he greets SportToday at the Westshore Inn in Napier.

The 43-year-old Californian has made a whirlwind trip to catch up with his former Bay teammates and acquaintances after almost two decades.

Dressed smartly in a blue long-sleeved shirt and black pleated slacks, Dixon plants himself in the lounge seat of a self-contained unit at the inn as a heater tries to beat the chill in the room.

But Dixon has an aura that emits warmth of its own. If all the publicity has the potential to corrupt the best there’s no signs that Dixon is tainted.

It’s almost Tebow-esque.

In the interview he admits that he was asked to coach the World USA Team of 23 year-olds, but wanted the U-19 so he could come back to New Zealand for a visit.

Once you get past the fawning, it’s a good piece with Dixon talking a bit about how being in New Zealand gave him his first chance to coach some kids and started him down the path to coaching. And being asked about his future.

He’s quite content with continuing at the highest level in college basketball.

“I have a great interest in NBA as a game and it really does cross over to a lot of people in many ways but I want to keep Pittsburgh at the highest level of college basketball.”

Plus no story on Coach Dixon can be complete without a side piece relating to his sister, Maggie.

It’s not something Jamie Dixon often talks about but it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Huh? It is the automatic subject of at least 2-5 stories every year. It may not be something Coach Dixon brings up, but he gets asked about it and is willing to talk about it whenever asked.

The late Maggie Dixon’s story became an international story.

“It’s opened me up to better express my feelings because I saw people express their sympathies so it’s done a lot in that regard.”

Hmm. That’s something of a new tidbit that I hadn’t thought about before. I’ve mostly ascribed Dixon’s growing comfort with the public media as a part of his growth and learning to be a head coach and do the things needed. Plus the maturity of getting older and more comfortable in your own skin.  But, the loss of his sister and having to relate and talk to strangers on a personal, empathic level  would be something that would have a huge impact in changing the way he relates with people and communicates. Less of an arm’s length approach.

A few things to get out of the browser tabs.

Tom Herrion is definitely in the mix for the Holy Cross job. He is interested, but so is his brother,  Bill, the head coach at New Hampshire. That just seems awkward.

Jamie Dixon speaks. Just in relative fluff. He is the first guest on ESPNU’s college basketball podcast with Andy Katz so there’s no wading through the other coaches being interviewed. He talks about Blair and Young, along with the U-19 tryouts. Nothing too earthshattering. Plenty of coach speak. He does admit that Dante Taylor is already penciled in as the starting power forward. And of course, not even a question about the USC job.

Andy Katz doesn’t get specific but he liked what he saw from Taylor at the tryouts.

Pitt should be pleased with the size and strength of incoming freshman Dante Taylor. The 6-9, 235-pound Taylor will be a load for the Panthers once he’s in shape.

While on the U-19 games, the Gibbs brothers are both involved in USA Basketball. Ashton is on the U-19 team, while his younger brother Sterling is on the U-16.

Draft Express was at the tryouts, and based on the talent of the U-19 team does not like the US’ chances. They did like the way things were run, though.

While it may sound cliché, the emphasis here is clearly on “playing the right away.” The coaches are for the most part all from programs known for being extremely organized and disciplined in their approach to the game, and much of the instructions they give the players from the sidelines revolve around concepts such as playing strong defense, moving the ball around unselfishly, correct spacing and not settling for bad shots. While there are referees on the court, they are forcing the players to adjust to the physicality of international basketball by calling the games very loosely, which makes things far more educational in our eyes.

With that in mind, it should be said that the USA Basketball people have not had the easiest time filling out the rosters with the best talent available to them. While they would never publicly state as much, word trickled down from the NBA-types that as many as 19 players declined their invites to attend these tryouts, just from the Under-19 group. There are many reasons for that, mostly revolving around the fact that the schools and college coaches want their players on campus in the summer to attend summer school and get a head start on staying eligible, and thus maintaining their APR (Academic Progress Rate), which is essential for not losing future scholarships. As Jerry Colangelo told us in a wide-ranging interview that will be published in the next day or two, “they have their own agendas.”

Some players, such as Kemba Walker, decided they would rather attend Nike’s Lebron Camp instead of representing their country in international competition, which is a real shame. Ignoring the patriotic element for a moment—which is a much stronger pull in seemingly every other country in the world outside of the US– it’s tough not to feel like these players are missing out on a wonderful experience. Colangelo vowed to pay special attention to this issue and stressed the success they’ve had getting the younger and older NBA players to make sacrifices and commit to USA Basketball. He feels like it’s only a matter of time until the U-19 group is the same way.

To be fair to Kemba Walker, he was on the U-18 team last year. The LeBron Camp is an important camp especially for those players eying an NBA future possibly as early as next year.

Big East Basketball blog takes a look at the recruiting targets for Pitt and WVU. Isiah Epps is either heading to Hargrave or National Christian for a year of prep.

Chris Dokish takes a shot at picking the Big East. He puts Pitt at #7. Key quote.

Bottom line- With such an inexperienced team, it’s unlikely that even Jamie Dixon’s wizardry could make the Panthers a major contender. But anybody completely dismissing a Jamie Dixon team, though, would be foolish.

I don’t know if the 49ers quietly guarantee his 1st season with the team, in return, or if SF really do “love” him. I do think they would have a hard time cutting McKillop since he is the only player they have doing “Rookie Camp Diaries.”Plus he claimed the  top score of 176 among the rookies in a bowling night.

His latest diary includes a little love to Pitt’s strength and conditioning program.

Although I couldn’t run at first, I was riding the exercise bike and eventually I started working out again with my strength coaches at Pitt (my alma mater). What I did back home is very similar to the weight training we’ve been doing in the morning here. We lifted every morning at 6:30 to be exact. I’m happy I stuck with their weight program while I was home and I have to give them some recognition because they are some great coaches. They definitely helped me prepare for the lifting we’ve done out here.

Which is not too surprising. Buddy Morris has been doing it a long time, and he has been in charge of NFL programs (okay, it was the Browns, but it still counts).

There was an excellent puff piece on McKillop from last week. Sounds like he’s got a good agent counseling him on his money stuff. To say nothing of what his parents have probably tried to teach him.

“I bought a computer, but that’s about it so far,” said the former Pitt and Kiski Area star linebacker. “I’m not getting a car or anything like that. I am going to invest it in the bank.”

…

McKillop said the only thing guaranteed in his contract is his signing bonus. But he guarantees he will go all out every play. And he’ll earn his keep.

“I know I am very fortunate to get this opportunity,” he said. “It’s my job. Only I am putting on spikes, not dress shoes. Football is fun, but it’s a business, too. I want to invest properly and spend my money correctly, not go out and waste it.

“The average NFL career is 3.2 years, and the average player goes broke 80 percent of the time when he’s done playing.”

McKillop will get to play for one of the greatest linebackers of all-time in 49ers coach Mike Singletary, who already has become famous for his postgame rants. He may have to move to inside linebacker because the 49ers use a 3-4 scheme.

“Scott is exactly what you want, from an attitude and physical standpoint,” said McKillop’s agent, Dave Dunn.

Apparently, going to SF, also means trying to grow a beard.

Okay, as usual there will be a liveblog tonight.

One thing that Pitt and Villanova share, hot coaches who have their names coming up a lot for big jobs. And we share the hope that they kick that interest to the curb. Good (and optimistic) piece on what it could mean if both stay.

If Jamie Dixon and Jay Wright stay put, if they decide to continue their run of excellence at Pitt and Villanova for the foreseeable future, then you are about to witness the beginning of the new hierarchy of the Big East.

It’s no secret that Jim Calhoun of Connecticut and Jim Boeheim of Syracuse are heading toward the end of their careers. They have been the two anchors of the conference from the ’80s until now.

Dixon and Wright have a shot to keep Pitt and Villanova as the two programs of record. One of them will earn his first Final Four berth with a win in Saturday’s Elite Eight match at TD Banknorth Garden in Boston. This is Dixon’s first and Wright’s second trip to the Elite Eight.

The Panthers have been a national program under Dixon the past six seasons, reaching the Sweet 16 three times during his tenure. Villanova just made its fourth Sweet 16 appearance in Wright’s eight seasons.

Pitt might have a senior-dominated starting lineup but the Panthers continue to recruit as well as anyone in the East and show no signs of slowing down. Villanova is expected to haul in one of the top 10 recruiting classes in the country, meaning the Cats won’t miss a beat, either.

“The best thing you can say about both our programs is just the consistency at a high level over the past five years,” Wright said. “That’s hard to do. And that’s challenging.”

…

And like Wright, Dixon is passionate about and loyal to his school. Forget about Dixon being a West Coast guy who has to be back on the Left Coast because he went to high school in Cali and his wife, Jackie, was raised in Honolulu. Dixon grew up visiting his grandparents in New York and said he was the only one who ever “summered in the Bronx.” He remembers more Big East games than Pac-10 ones. His loyalty to the Pitt administration runs deep with the way the university extended itself with a private plane to shepherd his grieving family to memorial services in New York and California after Maggie’s untimely death.

Dixon said he’s proud to be a part of Pitt, through whatever small role he has played since he arrived.

“That has been the most gratifying thing for me,” Dixon said.

So, here they are: the 47-year-old Wright and the 43-year-old Dixon on the verge of a Final Four berth. No one will be surprised if it is the first of a few for each as they potentially become the standard in the Big East.

That would work.

The players want to win for their coach.

“People talk about no Final Four appearances and no national championship,” he said. “I want him to get that.”

“Him” is coach Jamie Dixon, who can guide Pitt into the Final Four for the first time in the modern era when the No. 1 seed Panthers (31-4) play Big East rival and No. 3 seed Villanova (27-8) in an East Regional final at 7:05 tonight at TD Banknorth Garden.

Fields, who helped Pitt reach the Elite Eight for the first time in 35 years with his no-fear 3-pointer against Xavier on Thursday night, said he’s driven to see Dixon get his due.

“I think he’s a coach who deserves it,” Fields said. “I know the players play the game and the coaches get their credit. But he deserves it.”

There has never been a question that players love him and throughout Dixon’s tenure the most shocking thing has been games where the players have not played hard. That is a credit to how well Dixon has gotten them to play as a team.

Oh, and Sam Young is playing up the payback angle.

Pitt has thrived in “revenge” games in recent years, going 7-1 in their past eight postseason games against a team that beat it in the regular season.

“I definitely think it’s a payback game,” Young said. “That game kind of threw us off a little bit. Now, it’s on the biggest stage, and we’ve both got a little bit more to lose. I definitely would rather have this game than the last one.”

It helped that Pitt had 3 or 4 just last year in the Big East Tournament.

Another article on how Dixon is underrated. Yes and no. I think national media does not put him in elite status — but he hasn’t gotten there. No Final Fours, not at one of the handful of elite, historical programs. Not the most glib and media friendly. At the same time, there is no doubt he his highly respected and plenty of teams would love to have him. Arizona, Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky — just this year have all had some mention of Dixon being a possibility or hope to hire. I hope he stays at Pitt a long time.

Player puff pieces:

Sam Young recap.

Levance Fields as the embodiment of Pitt’s toughness.

Fields wants the pressure.

Fields and Roethlisberger comparisons continue.

Finally this made me smile a little.

I’ve spent the better part of the past two weeks thanking the hoops gods that I am not a Pitt fan. If I were, I’d be in the ICU by now. No one can beat the Panthers right now, but let it also be said that the Panthers can’t pull away from anyone either. I wonder if that’s going to work against Villanova, which has played nearly flawless basketball now for five consecutive halves. We will find out.

We’ll get to find out in large part because of the three that Levance Fields made with 53 seconds left in the game. It put his team up by one, and even as it left his hand I was thinking it was a bad shot. Maybe it was–it followed a no-pass, all-dribble sequence. Then again, it went in.

In their upcoming game, the Panthers will want DeJuan Blair have a better first half than the oddly subdued one he had against the Musketeers. In fact Pitt trailed by eight at halftime and I thought maybe their recent Sweet 16 losses were getting to them. Even after they stormed back in the second half, the Panthers played like a team aware of and defensive about their history. When Fields and Gilbert Brown got their signals crossed on a turnover with four minutes remaining, it seemed like they bickered about it for a little longer than players on a top-seeded team usually would.

It was a very thin smile.

DeJuan Blair’s younger brother got on his case after halftime.

“I walked out and my little brother (Greg) said something to me,” Blair said. “He said, ‘It’s the Sweet 16 and you’re an All-American. What are you playing like this for?’ I thought about what he said.”

Nice piece on Levance Fields.

Another story on gritty Pitt not winning style points. Just winning.

Recap from USA Today.

“They pushed us around in the first half but we responded in the second half as we usually do,” said Pitt coach Jamie Dixon. “I never get tired of watching Levance take big shots. He’s made them year after year.”

Blair finished with 10 points and 17 rebounds for his 20th double-double of the season.

“It’s great, the first time; it kind of gets the monkey off your back,” Fields said of getting to the Elite Eight. “But we came here to win two games, so we’re going to go back to the locker room and get focused for one of these two teams for the next game.”

When Fields jumped onto Coach Dixon and mussed up his hair, well Coach Dixon was more focused on other things.

“He was still mad, telling me the game wasn’t over,” Fields said. “I was excited for Coach. As good as he’s been for this university and picking up where Coach [Ben] Howland left off . . . the biggest knock has been not a Final Four appearance and not getting past the Sweet 16. So this is just a step towards that. And I just wanted to embrace him because he deserves it.”

I’ve mentioned Bob Ryan writing stories from the Boston regional a couple times. He’s a BC grad, who was one of the loudest voices opposed to BC leaving for the ACC. He preferred the Big East style and the geography. So, he likes to take the shot.

This used to be a Big East town, remember?

It will be once again tomorrow when Pittsburgh and Villanova meet right here in our town for the right to play in the Final Four.

…

No. 1 seed Pitt was in great peril in the opening game, but this is like saying J.D. Drew is going to get hurt. They’re always in peril of late. It’s who they are. The Panthers seem constitutionally incapable of seizing control of a game until they are on their backs and the referee is about to call it a pin, and then, well, then Levance Fields thinks it’s time to do something dramatic.

Young Mr. Fields is the Pittsburgh point guard, and among his other athletic charms he has a highly, and I mean highly, developed sense of the dramatic. His particular specialty is the backbreaking, you-know-what-busting moonshot three to break open a game.

Then there are the puff pieces.

John Feinstein does (yet another) piece on Coach Dixon and his sister. It’s a nice piece, but I’m more aggravated at Feinstein for mailing it in. I mean there were already a couple just as good pieces on this done just this year. Plus the recent HBO Real Sports segment. So he was able to regurgitate old stuff and toss in a few extra quotes from an interview on Wednesday with Dixon.

Associate head coach Tom Herrion is a Massachusetts native and rumored to be a possibility for the Boston U job. He gets a local story.

His two seasons at Pittsburgh have been a great experience. Herrion loves the school, the players and staff and he and his wife, Leslie, and their 3-year-old son, Robert James, have made a home in the area. A diehard Red Sox and Patriots fan, he’s even learned to tolerate Steelers’ supporters.

Herrion would like to be a head coach again.

“I did it at Charleston and had success so I feel confident about myself,” Herrion said. “It’s got to be the right situation. I’m at a different stage in my life and my career and you have a different perspective on things. When I was younger, it was how fast could I be a head coach. I’ve learned the best job is the one you have and I’ve got a really good job.”

Herrion’s name has been mentioned as a candidate for the vacant Boston University position. Herrion said he has not been contacted by BU and declined comment on the situation, saying, “I’m just focused on helping Coach Dixon right now.”

Send in the reserves for local pieces. Brad Wanamaker gets one from the Philly area.

Over the summer, everything changed.  A series of one-on-one meetings between Wanamaker and Dixon led to Wanamaker reasserting himself.

“I had confidence that I could play for this team, so I just put in the work and effort,” he said.  “I think I earned the minutes that I play.”

All 18.6 of them.  Wanamaker has even played 20-plus minutes in 15 games this year.  Not surprisingly, the more he’s played, the better he’s performed.

Those errant jumpers of a year ago suddenly started splashing.

“I don’t care about you making it.  You’ve just got to shoot the outside jump shot, which will open up the rest of your game,” said Dixon, recalling what he told Wanamaker in the summer.  “I think that was the biggest thing.  I didn’t put pressure on him to make the shot, just shoot it.

“Sometimes he was over-penetrating and using his strength.  That’s what he did in high school.  Just taking the open shot is going to open up a world of things for him offensively.”
…
“He’s going to be like three-quarters of the way to graduating after (this) year,” Dixon noted.  “He’s just a great, great kid.”

Ashton Gibbs gets some love in New Jersey.

“You look at what he has done, hitting that 3-pointer against Xavier, and that’s something you dream of. You dream about hitting that big shot as a kid,” said Gibbs. “Hopefully, I’ll get that chance when my turn comes.”

For now, the leading scorer in Seton Hall Prep history is content to watch and learn in a reserve role as a freshman with Pittsburgh, which faces Villanova Saturday night at 7:05 for the East Regional championship and a trip to the Final Four — thanks in large part to Fields’ clutch 3-pointer with 53 seconds to play in the Panthers’ 60-55 victory over Xavier Thursday night.

Gibbs, a 6-2 guard who has become a key spark off the bench for the 31-4 Panthers, knows his time will come.

“It’s been a big adjustment for me this year,” said Gibbs, who scored 1,882 points at Seton Hall Prep. “But coming in I knew we had three big seniors (Fields, Sam Young and Tyrell Biggs), and I knew we were going to be a good team. We were top 10 preseason.

“So I knew this team was already good and that I would have to sacrifice something, so I sacrificed my scoring abilities to help. I’ve always been team-first and me second. I’ve been playing well when I’ve had my chances.”

Hopefully both will have a good game tomorrow to help the team.

Some more onsite reports from the open practice.  Rush the Court, has some photos and observations.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. The East Region open practice might have been the most boring 5 hours of my life (not counting lectures). There’s a reason the NCAA makes this event free (outside of the fact that they more than make up for it through the $8 programs, $5 Cokes, and $23 baseball caps). The crowd was 95% white males in their mid-30s or above along with a handful of kids chasing autographs from players who they were looking up during the practices checking to see which ones had the best stats. My favorites were the old guys sitting behind me who kept on commenting on how good Gary McGhee and Brian Zoubek were (the tallest guys on the court) and what outstanding pros they were going to be.

Bill Raftery and Verne Lundquist were on hand to talk to each of the head coaches ahead of the games. No surprise that it was noted that they barely spoke with Coach Jamie Dixon. They just saw and spoke with him the prior weekend in Dayton (to say nothing of the fact that Raftery has called probably a half-dozen or so of Pitt’s games this year). Little has changed. The other 3 coaches played in other locations.

The Panthers seemed to be the loosest of the 4 teams. Despite being in drills, they were constantly playing around with DeJuan Blair,  Sam Young, and Levance Fields being the ring leaders.

Only Duke seemed to be going hard in the 50 minute practice sessions. So, it doesn’t seem like much can be read into these.

Nice article with Mike Rice (Robert Morris HC, ex-Pitt assistant) and Ron Everhart (Duquesne HC, A-10 member) talking about tonight’s game with Xavier and Pitt.

Both give the clear match-up advantage at point guard to Pitt, and at least imply that will be the difference. Rice also notes that there isn’t a significant talent differential. Pitt may have the stars, but the Xavier players are pretty damn good.

The Pitt players swear they are focusing on the game at hand.

Said Blair: “We’re not looking ahead. I’m not letting anybody look ahead.”

They know the dangers. Some of the Pitt players admitted they got caught peeking at top-seed Memphis last season.

“Not this year,” Panthers sophomore Gilbert Brown said.

The Pitt players are saying the right thing about facing their opponent.

Pitt seniors Tyrell Biggs and Levance Fields have been impressed with the Musketeers’ ability to rebound when they have watched their games in recent days.

“They’re really tall at every position,” Fields said. “So we’ve got to do a great job of boxing them out and not giving them second-chance opportunities.”

“They’re very athletic,” Biggs said. “That’s the one thing that jumps out at me. They have a bunch of guys who can really jump.”

Xavier is confident and one of the thing they stress, is their depth.

“That’s part of our success this year,” said junior forward Derrick Brown. “It’s not just sticking with five or six players. We’re a very deep team. That’s why on any given night different players step up. It’s not always one player averaging 25 points or anything like that because this is a team. We’ve got young players and different players in different roles and I think that’s why our program continues to be successful, because the experienced people get used in all different situations.”

Xavier comes into the game with a 27-7 record and solid wins over Portland State and Wisconsin in first- and second-round games last weekend in Boise, Idaho.

Brown has been a key factor, averaging 13.7 points and 6.0 rebounds a game. The core group includes senior forward C.J. Anderson (10.0 ppg, 5.4 rpg), junior center Jason Love (6.9 ppg), and guard B.J. Raymond, who leads the team with a 14.1-point average.

Miller, who is coaching against his alma mater, says the overall depth wears people down. “It is a big factor for us,” he said. “We have nine players. We try to have different players step up on different nights. We really are a team in every sense of the word and have a lot of different players who can beat you.”

Here’s the one thing about their depth. It is there, but it isn’t used right now. It’s the Tournament. Rotations shrink. While they didn’t have a hard time with Portland State, to allow them to play four bench players 11 minutes or more. The Wisconsin game was  a bit different. While they had 3 bench players with 18 minutes, he major reason was that starting center-forward Jason Love could only play 16 minutes with major foul problems.

You play your best players. Period. So will they throw some more players inside to absorb fouls against Blair? Certainly. But if they are getting burned at both ends, that won’t last. The multiple bodies weren’t enough to keep Love out of trouble.

As expected, the Sean Miller faces the team where he played is a popular theme. He acknowledges, but keeps trying to bring it back to Xavier.

“Yeah, I’ve watched them with a lot of pride over the last 8 years, as much as from a coach’s perspective, from the fact I once went there, and even the amazing job they’ve done, from Ben Howland and transforming their program from Fitzgerald Field House to the new arena,” Miller said.

“And watching Jamie Dixon take over and just the consistent success that they’ve had in the Big East Conference speaks for itself. And a lot of the things their program has become known for we, too, try to take great pride in what we do at Xavier.”

Pitt’s longtime trainer, Tony Salesi, is still close to Miller. As, apparently, are many of his old teammates who seem to feel they can root for their school and their friend/teammate.

“It is emotional,” Martin said. “It’s our alma mater. We had a lot of wins there. I love Pitt, but my heart is with Sean. That’s my man. I’m going to have my Xavier shirt on.”

Porter, who also has close ties to Pitt center DeJuan Blair, said he will be happy one way or the other tonight.

“I’ve spent a lot of years with Sean,” Porter said. “We were roommates and close friends. You always want your friends to do well. I’m in a no-lose situation. It’s either going to be Sean or DeJuan playing in the Elite Eight for the right to go to the Final Four.”

Andy Katz at ESPN.com says the pressure in this game is all on Pitt.

“We’ve just got to get back to the basics and it starts with defense,” Fields said. “The offense will come but we’ve got to outrebound teams and cut down on turnovers and we did that in the second round.”

The Panthers know they’re close. The three seniors — Fields, Sam Young and Tyrell Biggs — know this team is built for a six-game run to the title. This is easily Jamie Dixon’s best shot to win a national title in his six-year tenure at Pitt.

“It’s right there,” Fields said of getting to the Final Four. “But we’ve got to take care of phase three first.”

That’s Xavier. The Musketeers are in their second straight Sweet 16. They don’t have the pressure to win. Reaching the Elite Eight for the third time since 2004 would be quite remarkable. Xavier lost to UCLA in the West regional a year ago in the regional final. But like last season, and now this one, the X can play freely. Pitt cannot.

Oh, hey,  now we have a Sam Young story. All three get at least some attention.

Stories of Young’s devotion to his craft are legendary around Pitt. People talk about the nights he slept on an air mattress in the gym after hours of shooting alone, or how he would blow off social gatherings on weekends to find a pickup game on campus. That tunnel vision didn’t just begin in college, either.

“This is a guy who’d be at school at 6:30 in the morning working out or at the gym,” said close friend Chris Howard, Young’s teammate at Friendly High School and now a guard at South Florida. “When he was at Hargrave [Military Academy], there’d be times we’d call each other and be on speakerphone while we were doing push-ups.

“He’s not one of those guys you’re going to see in the club. Sometimes he’ll call me and say he’s going to movies, and I’ll joke around and say, ‘Who are you going with? Who’s the girl?’ And he’ll say, ‘I’m going by myself.’ That’s the kind of focus you’ve got to have until you get to the place you want to be.”

The aim of his focus wasn’t always clear to others. Pitt keeps rebounding statistics in practice, and Lombardi said Young easily could have led the team in that stat every single day with his leaping ability and strength. But whole practices would go by when he wouldn’t even try to grab a rebound, so intent was he on proving he was not just a post player.

Then there’s the head fake. Few college players are associated with a signature move as Young is. He’ll rise up almost halfway into his shooting motion, often even lifting one foot off the ground. Defenders will fly out to contest the outside shot, only to watch Young glide by for a short jumper or a dunk.

Big East opponents have bitten on this deception for years. Oklahoma State’s players, who had to have “stay home Young’s head fake” highlighted and underlined at the top line of their scouting report, still fell for it repeatedly Sunday.

And according to the story, Coach Dixon tried to break his head fake in favor of a more conservative manner. Interesting. Otherwise, it’s mostly a review of a lot of his background/history we’ve read before.

Okay, there is no shortage of articles relating to Pitt. I’m skipping all the capsules that every newspaper does.  I think we get it with the base stats on each team.

It’s a big game, with a few days building behind it. So, there are plenty of stories on DeJuan Blair. The New York Times focused on his rump — an amusing and decent piece.

But Blair’s game has more nuance to it than simply rocking his hips and pushing people out of the way. The Pittsburgh associate head coach Tom Herrion marvels at how Blair uses his rear end to create angles, something he said took more than physical strength.

“What’s amazing about him is how subtle and legal he plays with that,” Herrion said. “He’s not a brute player. It’s all subtle. His feel and his instincts allow him to take advantage of his body.”

The maestro of properly using one’s backside is Barkley, who earned the nickname the Round Mound of Rebound and angled his way into a Hall of Fame career. In a 1984 Sports Illustrated article, the 6-4 Barkley articulated why he had success against taller centers like 6-11 Melvin Turpin.

“It’s easier for me to get low,” he said. “I can put my butt on Melvin’s legs, but Melvin can only put his legs on my butt.”

Blair puts it this way: “It’s hard to get around my wide body. Why not push people out of the way with it?”

Ron Cook apparently wasn’t expecting much since Blair wasn’t too talkative on the subject

As a companion, this Wall Street Journal article on the return of the big man in college is well worth reading. The focus is mainly on Blake Griffin, but it is interesting and provides a quick little history lesson on their lessoning impact.

There’s also a couple stories from the Boston papers. One trying to look forward.

Asked if a trip to the White House to meet with the president gave him any added motivation to want to win it all, Blair perked up. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be cool,” he said. Then, turning serious, he added, “I’m not worried about that right now. We’re in Boston right now, we’re not in Detroit. When we get to Detroit, we can talk up a storm about that.”

The only thing on Blair’s mind yesterday was getting past Xavier tonight.

“Xavier is a tall and athletic team,” he said. “They like to play and they like to run and they have an excellent rebounding team, so it’s going to be a little challenge for me. But I’m just going to try to do what I can do.”

The other just recapping his story.

“He’s a very unique player,” said Xavier coach Sean Miller, a former standout point guard at Pitt. “He reminds me of a guy I played with, Jerome Lane, and Jerome led the nation in rebounding. And DeJuan is right there.”

While his body type and game frequently draw comparisons to Lane, as well as players such as Karl Malone, Blair shrugs them off like so many opponents who battle him inside.

“I’m just trying to be me,” Blair said. “That’s all I am.”

The similarities are not lost on Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon, who sees certain qualities that allow such players to make up for their lack of height inside.

“Oftentimes you have to have soft hands and good feet,” Dixon said. “If you have a combination of those things, you can have success. He’s got all those attributes, I think, so that’s what he builds around and plays around.”

The players are trying to stay loose as the game looms.

In winning their first two tournament games, Blair and the Panthers settled down and allowed their talent to take over. They started playing more and thinking less, putting them in the right frame of mind for tonight’s game against a dangerous Xavier team coached by former Pitt standout Sean Miller.

“You want to have fun, especially with this being our last go-round,” point guard Levance Fields said of himself and fellow seniors Sam Young and Tyrell Biggs. “You try to have fun, but at the same time, we want to be as focused as possible.

“As the (second-round) game (against Oklahoma State) went on, we loosened up, got a little bit more excited and played better.”

…

“You want balance,” said Fields, who’s 82-16 as a starter at Pitt. “You want to be determined but also a little loosey-goosey. You don’t want everybody to be uptight and feel the pressure’s on.”

The only other Pitt player to get feature stories is Levance Fields. Seems to be the focus on NYC point guards thing. I always wonder if it is some sort of hive thing with media. It’s one thing when it is a pool of local beat writers but this is a bit different.

Pitt will survive or burn out with The General.

That’s the sometime nickname of Levance Fields, Pitt’s senior point guard and the most important player in the Panthers’ universe. The stocky 5-10 guy from Brooklyn, from legendary Xaverian High School and from the long list of big-time New York City point guards, is the one who runs the show for the top-seeded Panthers, the one who will be staring down Xavier tonight at the TD Banknorth Center.

Just ask him.

“DeJuan, Sam, those guys are our two horses, our stars,” Fields said. “When the game’s on the line, I’m going to have the ball. The biggest thing for us is confidence. I feel confident when I have the ball and I want to take that last shot. And my teammates and coaches feel the same way. They want me to have the ball.”

If you feel a bit put off by Fields’ bravado, well, two things: He’s from Brooklyn, so he doesn’t care; and he’s got a pretty solid resume to back those words up.

Just look back to Sunday in Dayton. Oklahoma State was throwing all it had at Pitt, hitting shots from all over the court. Down by a point with 3:30 to play, Fields turned it up a notch.

He drove and kicked out to Young for the go-ahead three-pointer. Next trip down, a putback by Fields. Next one, a Fields three. Game over.

Okay, that was a NYC area paper. So it is almost standard to bring in the local hook. But a New Hampshire paper with this?

“People brush him off because he doesn’t pass the eye test,” Pitt assistant coach Tom Herrion said from his team’s locker room at TD Banknorth Garden yesterday. “His appearance isn’t the fittest, but yet he’s the toughest. He’s a big shot taker, a big shot maker. He’s a winner. Hopefully he can keep that going in the next couple weeks.”

So where does Fields belong? At this point, he deserves to be mentioned among the Big Apple’s success stories. The 21-year-old, a three-time finalist for the Bob Cousy Award, given each year to the nation’s best point guard, has spent his four seasons at Pitt maximizing his talent.

“You can make the argument that he does as good a job playing that position as anyone out there,” said Xavier coach Sean Miller, himself a former all-star point guard at Pitt.

If you’re an unaffiliated basketball junkie searching for someone to root for during tonight’s NCAA East regional matchup (7:27 p.m., CBS) between No. 1 Pitt (30-4) and No. 4 Xavier (27-7), look no further than Fields. Sure, 6-7, 265-pound DeJuan Blair is the star (he looks like he could be the long lost son of former Michigan star Robert “Tractor” Traylor), but Fields runs the show.

“He’s the leader out there,” said Holloway, a 6-foot guard averaging 5.7 points per game for the Musketeers. “If you watch Pittsburgh, and you take him off the team, you can see that they’d be a lot different.”

Sam Young gets snubbed on the stories. Hopefully he’s got some more motivation then.

More in a bit.

On the topic of regional SI covers. In addition to Pitt there were: Gonzaga, UNC, ‘Cuse, MSU, and Oklahoma,

We’ve been warned that tomorrow will provide plenty of old-Pitt player stuff.

Jason Matthews and Darelle Porter are flying in from Pittsburgh. Bobby Martin, a personal trainer to college and professional athletes, lives in Boston.

Of course, Sean Miller wanted to go to UNC (thank you Roy Williams).

Miller, though, is only talking about the game.

“For us, I think where it really starts and stops is to be physical ourselves, to not allow them to dominate the glass. I don’t think they nearly get enough credit for being a great offensive team. Their transition – they get dunks and easy baskets that break your backs,” Miller said in Wednesday’s press conference. “We have to be rock solid in our transition defense and rebounding, two things that we’ve been very good at this season. And for us to have a hope, I believe, of advancing or beating them at the end of the game, you’d have to see us do a great job in those two areas.”

There was an additional note of Pitt looking rather loose at the open practice today.

Xavier players had no shortage of confidence during their 50-minute walk-through practice or press conferences. But Pitt had more. Panthers players laughed and joked around during their practice session. Some, like Fields, abandoned the team shoot-around in the final minutes to sign autographs.

Something our own correspondent, Brian mentioned.

A columnist doubting Pitt’s mental toughness.

To me, it’s more than tactics. The Panthers have yet to fully demonstrate the kind of mental toughness in the tournament that allowed them to do so well in the Big East. If they had there wouldn’t have been two close calls against inferior competition.

He’ll only be satisfied judging by his final statement if Pitt wins in a blowout. Whatever.

Since that brings us back to that whole matter of breaking through the Sweet Sixteen, there is this story from Bob Ryan.

There is great local pressure on this team because the recent success has made it the equivalent of a pro franchise in a city lacking NBA basketball. The Panthers have sold out every game in the 12,508-seat Petersen Events Center since it opened in 2002 (and where they are 99-10) and they have developed a rabid following that far transcends Pitt alumni.

This is the best team in Pitt history and this is the Last Chance Saloon for Messrs. Young and Fields, two high-quality seniors.

Pitt has done all this to itself by raising the bar so very high. Duke, Villanova, and Xavier can afford to fall short. They are all playing with house money here. But the Pitt Panthers must understand that if they do not at least make it to the Final Four, there is a question they will be hearing all spring, summer, and perhaps for the rest of their lives.

“Hey! What happened?”

I really don’t want to have to answer that question.

There still seems to be plenty that think Pitt can make the Final Four, or at least people aren’t moving from their picks before the Tournament started.

Here’s a sort of vague, three reasons why each team will win bit.

2. The Three Musketeers. Xavier is hard to shut down — and even harder to catch on a significant off night — because it doesn’t rely on any one player to carry the offense. B.J. Raymond, Derrick Brown and C.J. Anderson all average double-digit points and are all equally capable of leading the offense if one teammate is struggling. Nine different players scored in the Musketeers’ first-round victory over Portland State, with Anderson leading the way at 14. Brown, Raymond and Dante Jackson all scored 13.

3. Crashing the boards. Pittsburgh’s best offense is sometimes simply throwing a shot up and letting rebounding machine DeJuan Blair collect his millions. That strategy might not work against Xavier because the Musketeers are even better at splitting rebounding duties than they are with balancing the scoring. Xavier enjoys a plus-7.9 advantage on the glass and boasts seven players averaging between 3.5 and 6.0 rebounds per game.

A group of three that can lead the offense, a team with experience and they rebound. No wonder the Pitt players see similarities.

Pitt’s 6-foot-7, 265-pound DeJuan Blair will encounter 6-9, 255 Jason Love in the middle; the Panthers’ Tyrell Biggs (6-8, 250) and Xavier’s Derrick Brown (6-8, 277)possess similar outside shooting skills; and Pitt’s wing scorer, Sam Young, who goes 6-6, 220, will face C.J. Anderson, who measures precisely the same.

But in the backcourt, it’s a much different story: Xavier possesses B.J. Raymond and Dante Jackson, who stand 6-6 and 6-5, while Pitt’s Levance Fields is only 5-10 and Jermaine Dixon is 6-3. But, Jackson is not the ballhander that Fields is, and Raymond isn’t the threat from long range that Dixon is.

Of course, the hope is that Fields is feeling even better and that the Oklahoma State game was only the start of his return to form from in the regular season.

If anyone doubts Sam Young’s importance, just take note of how his minutes are way up as the season got to the end.

Young’s workload is increasing in March. After playing 35 minutes or more only three times in Pitt’s first 27 games, the second-team All-America has averaged 37 minutes in the past seven games. Young is relishing the extra work, posting 29-, 31- and 32-point games in that stretch. “As we’re going on, I think a little less rest is probably a possibility,” Dixon said.

He played all 40 minutes on Sunday.

Ashton Gibbs gets a full puff piece.

A solid upbringing produced a self-assured young man who carries a 3.3 grade-point average as a communications major. Gibbs’ work ethic was instilled by his father, Temple, who played college football — this is not a misprint — at Temple, where he roomed with future NFL Pro Bowl cornerback Kevin Ross.

“I learned at an early age that working hard is vital if you want to be good at anything,” said Temple Gibbs, an electrical contractor whose football career was cut short by a knee injury.

Bob Farrell, basketball coach at Seton Hall Prep in West Orange, N.J., said Gibbs might be the best shooter he’s had in 32 years on the job.

And Jermaine Dixon had his own backstory fleshed out.

Not long ago, Pitt guard Jermaine Dixon was Jermaine Cooper. That’s when he finally decided to disown the Cooper name the way his father disowned him all those years ago. It’s what his half brothers, Phil and Juan Dixon, wanted. It’s what their mother, Juanita Dixon, would have wanted.

Jermaine Dixon still talks fondly of his mom, who died of AIDS in 1994 when he was 7. “Even though she had [heroin] problems, she was a great mother. She always made sure we were good.”

There isn’t much nice for Dixon to say about his father, Robert Cooper. He bailed when Dixon was a baby.

“I wonder about him sometimes,” Dixon said. “I wonder what he’s thinking now. I wonder what he thinks when he turns on the TV and sees me.”

Don’t think too much about him. He is not worth it.

Lots of links to put out for Pitt.

Pitt has accomplished more than credited this decade.

A puff piece on how far Coach Dixon has come, and he’s now more intense.

Fear of being the first #1 seed to fall to a #16 seed is always present.

ETSU comes with dreams of being the first.

ETSU will try to press. Somehow I don’t think it will be the same as Louisville’s or Villanova. Or even Seton Hall’s.

Human interest story on ETSU’s Kevin Tiggs.

Is Dayton a hot ticket with both #1 seeded Pitt and Louisville? Or because Ohio State is playing there? Or is it less so, because Dayton is playing in Minneapolis today?

How do you do a story that talks about stats and psychology for Pitt in the NCAA Tournament without that many numbers?

Is Pitt already too tight for the NCAA Tournament or merely all business.

Pittsburgh had its news media availability midmorning Thursday, and the Panthers presented a serious and stoic public face.

Guard Levance Fields closed his eyes for a minute or two at the podium, as if meditating, while taking questions. Forward Sam Young did not crack a smile. And in the locker room, the rest of the Panthers were mostly quiet, watching other tournament games on television. All business, on the Pitt end.

“Our goal is to survive and advance,” Fields said.

Louisville, meanwhile, met the news media on Thursday afternoon. The Cardinals were all smiles, loose and full of laughter. In the locker room, guard Edgar Sosa took over for a local television station, posing questions to his teammates while others howled in the background. The Sosa Show, he called it. Funny business, for the Cardinals.

I guess it depends on whether Pitt succeeds.

A puff piece on Levance Fields. And another piece that happens to bring up that the court is the same place where he broke his foot. Also mentions again how serious Pitt is about the whole thing.

They hope to change that this year, in large part by not overlooking their early opponents. In fact, when a reporter here asked if they would be watching Louisville, another No. 1 seed from the Big East Conference who is playing the first two rounds here, forward Sam Young cut off the question before it was finished with a hearty “No.”

“We’re way too mature to make that foolish mistake again,” he said, noting that Pittsburgh did that last year and in this month’s Big East tournament. “A lot of times when you get a high seed, you look too far ahead.”

Finally, senior Tyrell Biggs gets a little love in USA Today.

There’s also the Real Sports story on Coach Dixon. I haven’t seen it because, well, I don’t have HBO. It was movie channels or a sportspack. Obviously, I went with sports. Hopefully it will be posted to that site in due time.

Gary McGhee gets a lot of abuse from the fans for not developing as much as hoped/expected in his sophomore year. Some actively rooting for him to transfer. Still, even McGhee gets love back home. He says all the right things (and yes, I know the story writer took some liberties with, well, reality).

“I’m having a great time,” McGhee said on a borrowed cell phone as he passed through security. “We have a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. It’s a great experience.”

The 6-foot-10, 250-pound sophomore and Highland grad is averaging 1.3 points and 1.7 rebounds in seven minutes per game. He’s valuable for his defense, rebounding and ability to spell All-American DeJuan Blair off the bench.

McGhee said practicing against Blair each day has helped improve his game.

“He makes me better every day,” McGhee said.

Steady improvement has been the hallmark of McGhee’s career. He grew from a somewhat pudgy 6-foot-7, 255-pound freshman at Highland into the man mountain he is today.

He averaged 20.6 points, 11.6 rebounds and 4.2 blocks during his senior season with the Scots. That was enough to earn him 2007 Herald Bulletin Player of the Year honors.

His playing time has been sparse thus far at Pitt, but he could see time Friday.

“I hope I get out there,” he said. “I’m just going to work as hard as I can and help out my teammates.”

He’s got the cliches, down pat.

Levance Fields gets a full backstory piece from SI.com. It’s a little surprising. We get the full bits on Sam Young and DeJuan Blair, but Fields has never gotten the full puff piece for anything other than his game.

The neighborhood still tugged at Fields, though. One night, Xaverian president Sal Ferrera drove Fields home, but when he reached the student’s block, Fields would not get out. Drug dealers were standing on the corner. They wanted the hoops star to sell for them. “He had options,” said Ferrara, who arranged for Fields to live with a teammate’s family for two weeks. “He made the right choice.”

On the court, Fields also struggled. When Alesi sat his star player for three games, the coach said publicly Fields had caught the flu after a middling stretch, but, in reality, it was a cover. “He was suffering from the disease of ‘me’,” Alesi said.

Adds Fields: “I was being kind of a cancer to my teammates.”

The message clearly resonated with Fields. The Clippers, who were 12-11 before Fields sat, won all three games without him and parlayed Alesi’s gamble into city and state titles with Fields directing the team. “Great players have his selfishness,” Alesi said. “He had to gain composure.”

There were things Fields needed to learn when he went to Pitt. At the Panthers’ first weight-lifting session, Biggs, Fields’ roommate, noticed the stocky guard struggling through bench presses. Asking if he was OK, Fields reassured him, but then disappeared. Searching for him, Biggs saw vomit on a backroom door and then happened upon Fields throwing up into a bathroom toilet. “He’s hit the iron hard ever since,” said Biggs, a chiseled forward.

Fields was also back practicing with the team before they left for Dayton.

“I practiced today the whole time and I’m feeling pretty good right now,” Fields said right before he boarded the Panthers bus to go to the airport.

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said the development is excellent news for the Panthers because they’ll need a healthy Fields to make a run to the Final Four and perhaps win the national championship.

“He’s a tough player,” Dixon said. “He was out there today and looked pretty good, it is a very good sign because he seemed to be moving well and he didn’t seem be bothered much at all. We’ve had almost a week to rest it but I think the key now will be later today how it feels and how he feels once we get on the plane and later at the hotel. But it is a good sign if he’s saying he feels good now.”

The full week off may not have been intentional, but we we will go with the presumption that it will work out better with the big dance.

Their trip cut short in New York, where they routinely rule the Big East Tournament, the Panthers refreshed and rejuvenated for the upcoming NCAA Tournament.

“It (helps) more mentally than physically,” Panthers guard Jermaine Dixon said. “I mean, when we were in AAU, we’d play five or six games a day. So, it’s not that we’re tired physically.”

The mental exhaustion of a 31-game season — where 18 of those games came in the grinder of a Big East Conference that produced five of the top 12 seeds in the NCAA tournament — cannot be overrated. But for only the second time in seven seasons, the Panthers didn’t have a quicker turnaround to the NCAAs after reaching the finals of the Big East Tournament.

And of course, the usual: Blair needs to stay out of foul trouble (really? again?).

Blair has been cleaning up with being named an All-American by just about every media outlet.

Blair was named a first-team All-American yesterday by the United States Basketball Writers Association. He was joined on the first-team All-American team by Stephen Curry of Davidson, Blake Griffin of Oklahoma, Tyler Hansbrough of North Carolina and James Harden of Arizona State.

It marked the first time since 1974 that a Pitt player was named a first-team All-American by the USBWA. Former Pitt great Billy Knight earned the honor that season.

He was also named 1st team All-American by Sports Illustrated, as well. Sam Young was put on the 2nd team. Levance Fields placed on 3d team — which I’m really happy to finally see something for Fields.

Always with the (deserved) accolades for Young, Blair and Fields. The discussion of potential with Gil Brown, Wanamaker and Gibbs. Let’s not forget the defensive stopper and slashing threat in Jermaine Dixon. His hometown paper has a piece on him, where it turns out many in his own community don’t seem fully aware.

“It’s funny; I had couple people from high school talk to me like, ‘Oh my God, I saw you on TV, man. I had no idea,'” he said. “Some of my old friends, I’ll run into them and they’ll be like, ‘What’s up, Coop?’ like, maybe they don’t know. People always used to call me Coop, so I’ll have to be like ‘No, I don’t go by that anymore.'”

The nickname, short for Cooper, is part of the reason people do not connect the current Panther to the ex-Bengal. He grew up in a prestigious basketball family, the younger brother of both Washington Wizards guard Juan Dixon and former Providence College player Phil Dixon.

They share the same mother, Juanita Dixon, but Jermaine has a different father, Robert Cooper. Dixon said his older brothers (“my father figures”) pushed him to change his last name from Cooper for years. Shortly after leaving Blake, he finally had it legally changed.

But that only scratches the surface of Dixon’s quiet ascension to the Big East.

He’s thrived and is loving it at Pitt.

“It’s crazy,” he said. “It’s been crazy. It’s a dream come true. And no matter what happens, I will be right back here at Pittsburgh next year. Hopefully, I’ll be on the football field getting that ring.”

I mean, it would have been nice, but nothing has been accomplished yet.

A planned story was scrapped after Tuesday’s 81-73 upset loss at Providence. The magazine planned to do a lengthy story on the Panthers for early March and, according to Pitt media relations director Greg Hotchkiss, there was a “95 percent” chance it was going on the cover.

Pitt basketball has made regional covers of SI, but never the national release.

Not that there isn’t an excellent story on Sam Young to read. Sure there’s the usual stuff about his poetry, gymnastics and work ethic. Yet, this really fleshes things out a lot more including a quite a bit more insight into his generally loner stance.

Upon receiving his poetry assignment, Young doesn’t roll up his sleeves per se, but he locks in all the same. After spending nearly an hour staring at his computer screen, he has mustered just a few lines of verse, but they offer a window into how he views both the promise and perils of unfinished success:

Having yet to meet our potential, I love my team’s current credential
Not any team can do it; we fought in the fire to finally get to it
Pitt is on a mission and it’s no mystery, we only halfway done and already made history
We’re giving the university faith and gave hope to this town, it ain’t no way we can let them down

…

Yet, it is off the court where Young continues to make his biggest strides. These days he lets his playful side show more readily for his teammates, who still crack up when he does back-flips during practice or in his hotel room. He has even become something of a media darling. During a preseason photo shoot, Young picked up a sombrero and struck a goofy pose, and he hounded Greg Hotchkiss, Pittsburgh’s sports information director, for weeks until Hotchkiss got him a copy of the photo.

Even at a program that has long been defined by the hardscrabble ethos of the Steel City, Young has carved out a unique and lasting legacy. “We’re always going to use him as an example as a guy who improved and did it by working,” Dixon says. “Even today, I’ll ask the guys, who works the hardest in our drills? Who’s our best perimeter scorer? It’s always the same answer. It’s Sam.”

It’s well worth reading the whole thing.

Has anyone considered what will happen if the whole Cavanaugh to the Jets thing falls through? I mean everyone has all but packed his bags and put him on the next flight out of town. He hasn’t resigned yet, there is no official word. I’m just saying.

Now that Bob Smizik took retirement, it seems Ron Cook has assumed the mantle of crotchety,old, contrarian-for-the-sake-of-it columnist. He warns against expecting too much with a change of offensive coordinators because of the QBs still there.

But before you give Cavanaugh one final kick on his way out the door, ask yourself this: Was the conservative offense his fault or Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt’s? It was Wannstedt who insisted on a pro-style offense. Cavanaugh was just following orders.

Beyond that, any offensive coordinator is going to look like an idiot if the quarterback can’t execute plays. How much more creative could Cavanaugh have been with Bill Stull and Pat Bostick?

Stull never improved much last season. Down the stretch, he was bad in a loss at Cincinnati, bad against West Virginia in a game that star running back LeSean McCoy won, bad in the first half at Connecticut and dreadful in the Sun Bowl.

Bostick also has been disappointing. It’s not so much because he had a tough 2007 season as a true freshman, thrown into the starting lineup before he was ready because of Stull’s hand injury in the first game. It’s because Wannstedt and Cavanaugh thought so little of him last season that they burned his redshirt at Navy before they had to do it. They never would have done that if they considered Bostick a future star.

He kinda, sorta, concedes that his evaluation of QB talent is a legitimate issue. He tries to argue that it falls on the QBs and their lack of talent for failing to develop by citing Tyler Palko apparently being a fan.

That’s a crap argument. First of all, Palko was already further along in his development before Cavanaugh came on (and it conveniently ignores the misery of Palko’s first year under Cavanaugh’s direction). Palko is also the son of a coach, a film junkie and simply more talented.

Stull had been under Cavanaugh’s tuteleage the entire time at Pitt. That also means, Cavanaugh should have known what Stull could and could not do. As much as Stull regressed during the season, too many plays called for Stull to make throws that everyone else knew he could not make.

I don’t think anyone disagrees that Coach Wannstedt has a conservative influence on the offensive scheme. At the same time, what other scheme has Cavanaugh run other than a pro-style, West Coast offense?

As for the offense having issues regardless of who is the OC next year. I agree. I think most Pitt fans understand that unless the QB play takes a step towards real competency and consistency, the offense will struggle regardless of who is coordinating. It is still a change that needs to be made.

Interesting analysis of the rumored names for the OC by Paul Zeise. I appreciate the dripping sarcasm regarding “Pitt guys.” I hope he’s wrong about Van Pelt, though. He just does not have the experience to make me feel comfortable as a coordinator.

I think he overstates the drag on the hirings for potential short-termers of Noel Mazzone and Chan Gailey. That possibility of leaving after a brief stay didn’t stop him from hiring Phil Bennett as DC.

I guess the thing about Gailey is whether he permanently damaged himself in his spells as a head coach that killed his OC abilities. Did he come down with Paul Hackett disease where after some experience as a head coach he lost all feel and skill as an OC to call a game and teach. Remember, once upon a time, Hackett was a fine OC and teacher. Then — as Jets fans can attest — he never came back.

While on the subject of assistant coaches, a nice puff pice for Jeff Hafley and recruiting New Jersey. Talking about being the hardworker and insane hours, complete with bringing an air mattress to the office.

“That’s got to make an impression on you,” Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt said. “Either the guy is really committed, or he’s out of his mind – in some cases, both.”

Wannstedt promoted Hafley to Pitt’s secondary coach when Chris Ball left for Washington State last year. Hafley, a Montvale, N.J., native, immediately volunteered to focus his recruiting efforts on his home state, even though Pitt had landed only three New Jersey prospects in the previous four seasons.

“We had recruited New Jersey, but we just didn’t have one specific guy focused on it,” Hafley said. “You’ve got to get one guy to focus in on New Jersey.

“When I got hired, I said, ‘Coach, I’d like the shot to recruit New Jersey. It has great football, and they all know Pitt.’ “

And finally, the Octonion returns to answer the question, what happens when you give fruit hope? It’s the assigned reading for today.