The NYC media finds its two themes for the game tomorrow.

There is the previously discussed: Blair and Kennedy are close friends and played together at Schenley.

Then there is the Pitt has battled injuries, but keeps winning.

After losing two more players who play minor roles, and the Panthers’ roster reads like a sign-up sheet in the emergency room. Yet Pittsburgh has pushed ahead behind Dixon’s optimism and his mantra of no excuses, even though the extenuating circumstances are plentiful.

“Even when guys went down, he believed,” Ramon said of Dixon. “He believed in guys who hadn’t done this before. He kept teaching and put his trust out there and believed in us even more. He didn’t say we’d just do the best we can.”

There have been adjustments, which only add to the tale.

The team’s practices have become more finesse than physical, with the fear of losing another player being far too real. Dixon even had to bring aboard a Division II transfer, Ryan Tiesi, who scored 4.2 points a game for Bellarmine University last season, just to have enough bodies to practice effectively.

Dixon said that other coaches, friends of his, told him that he might as well forget about the rest of the season. “But I had seen our guys in practice and knew we had answers,” Dixon said. “You have to go with your heart. I felt we had the players to make it work.”

Pitt does need a road win. Beating USF hardly counts, and no one wants to lose two in a row.

Pitt, stinging from a 62-59 loss at Cincinnati, is 1-2 on the road in Big East games. The Panthers will need a victory at St. John’s to avoid losing two games in a row for only the sixth time under Dixon, spanning 153 games.

“This is a great time to show people that we can win on the road,” said Benjamin, averaging 16.0 points per game since moving into the starting lineup for injured Levance Fields. “You have to win games on the road and this is a good time to win one.”

Also, schedule and record-wise, this and the Rutgers games are must wins. Pitt is heading for a brutal second half — ‘Nova, @UConn, WVU, Providence, @Marquette, @ND, L-ville, Cinci, @Syr and @WVU. Even at full strength it wouldn’t have been outrageous for Pitt to lose 3 or 4 of those games.

I’ve had this in my bookmarks since back in late December and I’m finally getting around to it now. What is this map with seemingly random markers on it? It’s the locations of Pitt football’s away football games since 1998. MapGameDay.com posted maps for all of the FBS teams and made them sortable by teams and conferences. The Wizard of Odds then compiled all of the data and made fancy graphs from that.

According to this, the farthest we’ve traveled in each compass direction.

North: @ Syracuse (’98, ‘00, ‘02, ‘04, ‘06) in Syracuse, NY
South: @ Miami (’98, ‘00, ‘02) in Miami, FL
East: @ Boston College (’99, ‘01, ‘03) in Chestnut Hill, MA
West: @ Nebraska (’05) in Lincoln, NE

Our amount of travel compared to other Big East teams?

And as a whole, the Big East travels less than every other conference except the ACC and SEC. Of course, the fact we only have 8 teams in our conference might lead to that.

I have been trying to catch up with reality after a long break away over Thanksgiving. That has meant a bit of neglect here on one of the most important weeks for Pitt football. I’m feeling a bit of guilt, so it’s time to kick off a little hate.

The ‘Eers are in the hunt for going to the BCS game. They benefited from the Big East scheduling them to have 3 of their final 4 games at home. Something most teams in a national title hunt would happily welcome. What team wouldn’t want to come down the final stretch and be in front of a home crowd? Apparently the team with a buckskin-clad mascot and like to stress their hale and hearty constitutions are a wee bit put off by having to play so many games in the cold. Seriously?

WVU athletic officials have brought this matter to the conference’s attention, according to coach Rich Rodriguez. He believes the fans deserve a better shake. “I would have preferred to have more Big East home games during the season in the month of October,” he said a week ago. “I think it’s the second year in a row we’ve had more games in November and December.”

Would he? Really? He would rather have more road games at this point for the comfort of fans? Fans who would otherwise be pissed at not having their team at home very much as they approach heading to the BCS Championship? Personally, while I grudgingly admire the coaching of Rodriguez — developing players for his system, teaching them and becoming the Yoda of the spread option — I think Rodriguez is more than a little bit of a whiner who would be complaining if the team had only one home game in November.

My fellow Fanhouser and unfortunate WVU alum, John Radcliff (who wrote the post linked above) has seen Mountaineer Stadium lose its edge in the last couple years. So, he seems to believe that it is the moneyed alum are responsible for bitching to the WVU officials.

Perhaps. Like I said, Rodriguez is a whiner by nature it seems. Whine, whine, whine.

Coach Rich Rodriguez is not exactly giddy about playing a game amid hunting season.

Not so much deer-hunting season — and a host of West Virginians and Western Pennsylvanians partake in that — but rather the period for tracking down prospective Mountaineers still in high school or junior colleges.

“This is the third year in a row West Virginia has missed a week” of the recruiting period, Rodriguez said yesterday. “When we only have six weeks of a recruiting-contact period, losing a week hurts.”

…

“I see a lot of people doing it,” he added of a rivalry finale. “I just don’t like playing it in December. Playing it this late, I don’t know if it’s that fun for our fans out there.”

Pathetic. Mountaineer fans not liking the cold. WVU officials complaining about too many home games late in the season. And a coach always complains about something.

Ahhhh. I feel better.

The title suggests plenty to cover, so let’s go.

During the last year or two, Pitt fans have been a bit upset at the Big East for making our conference home schedules so uneven. One year we’ll have the loaded side with Louisville, WVU, and Rutgers. Before this season we thought that the opposite year’s BE home games would be bad — not anymore (or at least this year).

We knew South Florida was going to be good, but I don’t think anyone could have predicted them to be “Top 5 good”. Cincinnati has seemingly come out of nowhere to become a ranked team with a great coach who knows how to get his players to play well. With this rotation we also get to see UConn, who might not be amazing but a team we seem to make into a National Championship caliber squad. Add in Syracuse, a team that we should be happy to play just because it might allow us to actually see a win at home, and it’s not all that bad. Now we just need to get that non-con schedule improved just a bit (or a lot)…

Speaking of the Pitt-Cinci game on October 20, kickoff is set for noon. TV coverage will be on ESPN Regional (WTAE locally) as the Big East Game of the Week.

This week’s game against Navy allowed Chas to talk with Adam from Pitch Right. The questions deal with Pitt’s numerous injuries, Pat Bostick and the offense’s troubles, our inability to do much of anything on first down, and a prediction. Good stuff.

Some fun from hoops alum Aaron Gray: at Chicago Bulls fan night, the rookies sang to the fans. A clip of Aaron’s performance can be found on OnlyTheBulls.com. (Sorry, my computer won’t let me embed the vid in this post — blame my somewhat outdated Dell.)

While perusing the Pitt online store, I came across this.

The description:

New for this season, our alternate home Vegas Replica Football Jersey by adidas

Expect to see them on the field some time this year (hopefully not Wednesday on national TV).

Update: Left in the comments by Tony in Harrisburg…

Solid stuff right there.

Two basketball posts in one day right in the middle of a football week — get over it. The full 31 game schedule was released today, including that headliner against Duke at MSG.

Wednesday, Oct. 31 PITT-JOHNSTOWN (Exh.)
Sunday, Nov. 4 INDIANA (PA.) (Exh.)
Friday, Nov. 9 HOUSTON BAPTIST
Saturday, Nov. 10 NORTH CAROLINA A&T
Sunday, Nov. 11 SAINT LOUIS
Thursday, Nov. 15 MISSISSIPPI VALLEY STATE
Friday, Nov. 23, BUFFALO
Tuesday, Nov. 27, BOSTON U.
Saturday, Dec. 1 TOLEDO
Wednesday, Dec. 5 at Duquesne (ESPN-U)
Saturday, Dec. 8 at Washington (FSN)
Saturday, Dec. 15 OKLAHOMA STATE (ESPN)
Thursday, Dec. 20 vs. Duke (ESPN) Madison Square Garden
Saturday, Dec. 29: at Dayton (ESPN2)
Wednesday, Jan. 2: LAFAYETTE (ESPN-U)
Sunday, Jan. 6: at Villanova
Wednesday, Jan. 9: at South Florida (ESPN2)
Saturday, Jan. 12: SETON HALL
Monday, Jan. 14: GEORGETOWN (ESPN)
Saturday, Jan. 19: at Cincinnati
Wednesday, Jan. 23: at St. John’s
Saturday, Jan. 26: RUTGERS
Wednesday, Jan. 30: VILLANOVA (ESPN2)
Saturday, Feb. 2: at Connecticut (CBS)
Thursday, Feb. 7: WEST VIRGINIA (ESPN2)
Tuesday, Feb. 12: PROVIDENCE
Friday, Feb. 15: at Marquette (ESPN)
Thursday, Feb. 21: at Notre Dame
Sunday, Feb. 24: LOUISVILLE
Wednesday, Feb. 27: CINCINNATI
Saturday, March 1: at Syracuse (ESPN)
Monday, March 3: at West Virginia (ESPN)
Sunday, March 9: DePAUL (WTAE)

The Big East announced the 18 game conference schedule. Every team in the conference plays each other once, and 3 home-and-homes. How do they decide those?

The conference said that the opponents a school plays twice were based on “natural interest, geography, rivalries and television contractual obligations.”

Well,  for Pitt obviously WVU is one of them. In basketball, Marquette-Pitt has been well on its way to being a “rivalry” as the games have been heated and tough in every meeting. So, naturally Marquette and Pitt only meet once. These are Pitt’s 3 home-and-homes.

Pittsburgh: Cincinnati, Villanova, West Virginia

WVU and ‘Nova make sense. But Cinci? WVU should have the home-and-home with Cinci but they end up with Providence and St. John’s as their other two? Huh? Yes, there’s things that make sense. Private, small, East Coast schools are a natural fit to play WVU.

As for the the other 12 conference games for Pitt.

• Away: UConn, Marquette, Notre Dame, St. John’s, USF, Syracuse
• Home: DePaul, Georgetown, Louisville, Providence, Rutgers, Seton Hall

I’m still trying to accept playing Cinci twice.

The unbalanced schedule throws team’s conference strength of schedule of of whack but we might be done with that starting with the 2006-07 season. I heard this mentioned by one of the play-by-play guys during Big East tournament coverage yesterday, but wasn’t sure if it was a done deal or just an idea. Well, some random newspaper from the middle of nowhere confirms the story.

A major change will boost the number of conference games from 16 to 18. Two years of an unbalanced schedule, where all schools did not play one another, generated many complaints.

“It’s not the best situation,” Louisville coach Rick Pitino said. “It’s not a league, it’s a corporation. It’s really two leagues.”

Marquette coach Tom Crean said the new schedule is going to be tougher, with more league games replacing breathers against the bottom tier of Division I schools.

So you play the other 15 Big East teams once plus an extra game against three of them which I have no problem with. We didn’t get to play Notre Dame this season and instead played a Florida A&M type team to fill out the schedule.

…and we’ll play two very tough games and one moderately tough game to finish out the Big East regular season.

Here’s what we’re looking at before the Big East Tournament:

Date — Opponent
2/24 — Georgetown
2/27 — West Virginia
3/3 — at Marquette

So let’s take a look at what’s on the schedule. The beginning of the end starts with a Georgetown team that is streaking and knocked Pitt off from the top of the B.E. Power Poll for the first time all year. The winner of Saturday’s game will not only be atop the power poll but will also likely be the #1 seed in the Big East Tournament.

To be honest, I don’t want Pitt to be the top seed because it means a noon tipoff up in NYC. In order for that to happen, we’d need to lose another game though; not a big fan of that option. A lose-lose situation — damn.

Back to this game though. A loss to Georgetown would make a ton of people uneasy. Actually, a sloppy game that we win will still make people a bit shifty. We need a solid game from every single player soon enough so that we can all calm down a bit. I’m not freaking out, just a little uneasy.

Then we host the Mountaineers and will avoid seeing this guy. Losing to them would be a big downer for a few reasons. First off, it’s WVU. West F#%&in Virginia. I hate losing to them and I’m sure you feel the same way. Losing to a team with an RPI below 50 doesn’t look too great and right now they sit at 53 according to ESPN but that could/will certainly change by next Tuesday. By the way, they aren’t a great team at home and the Zoo should have some fun with them.

Oh yeah, did I mention we really don’t want to lose just because they’re WVU?

To close out the regular season are the Marquette Dominic James’. They live and die by his shot which means depending on how the 2 1/2 weeks leading up to the game work out will determine this game’s importance. By that time we might have already wrapped up the reg. season title…or we could be fighting for the 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th spot. Either way, both teams will want to go into the conference tournament on a good note.

It should be a fun stretch before the greatest time of the year (gotta love filling out your brackets, don’t ya?). If I had to predict, I’d say we beat WVU and split with Georgetown/Marquette. After watching this Pitt team though it would be no surprise to see us run the table or go 1-2 (because we’re not losing to West Virginia).

Hey there, lots going on today. Spam commenting exploded for whatever reason today. Seems like I spent half the morning dealing with that. Cinci football may still be building itself to BCS level, but good news, they can be accused of sex, recruiting and possible videotape scandals like the big boys.

Pitt is unbeaten in conference road games so far this year. I’m torn about how good that should feel. Part of me was ready to denigrate it because it included Cinci, Seton Hall and DePaul. But when you consider that DePaul has knocked off ND, Marquette and Kansas at home, that win looks pretty good. Even in a down year, beating Syracuse on the road is pretty good. Villanova was a nice win, and doing the Hoopies at the concrete toadstool always is a strong statement.

In a season where no one seems to win on the road very much, no matter what conference, this is impressive. Or as fellow fanhouse bloogger MJD (who is also the weekend editor at Deadspin) put it, “I don’t care who you are, in what conference … that is manly. It speaks to Pitt’s veteran leadership, and their ability to play a number of different styles.”

Of course, all that positive feelings about how Pitt did on the road can go right out the window if Pitt doesn’t at least get a  split in the final 2 road games.

Georgetown has a road game tonight at Cinci, so there isn’t much hype yet for the Saturday, 2pm CBS game. One thing is certain, Pitt will see more of DaJuan Summers then they did back in January.

Georgetown has been on a roll since Summers picked up on some of the Princeton-influenced nuances in the half-court offense and bought in to the urging of coach John Thompson III that he could be a defensive stopper.

Summers played a total of 44 minutes in Georgetown’s first three games. In Saturday’s win at Villanova, he was on the floor for 35. Nearly a 40 percent shooter from three-point range until he missed all four of his long-distance attempts in Philadelphia, Summers was nonetheless clutch at the free-throw line, where he made seven of eight, and he blocked a career-high four shots.

…

In Big East games, Summers is averaging 10.4 points, 4.3 rebounds and nearly 30 minutes. He defends bigs and smalls - see the clamps he put on Towson’s Gary Neal in December, and the possessions during which he checked 6-2 Scottie Reynolds at Villanova.

Summers may not have the numbers to crack the Big East All-Rookie team in this season of the freshman, but if Kevin Durant, Greg Oden, Brandan Wright and Chase Budinger all take the money and run, he would be among the best sophomores in the nation next season.

In the G-town-Pitt game last month (PDF), Summers only played 21 minutes and scored only 4 points (1-5) and had 1 rebound.

I realize Pitt has played plenty of easy teams in the non-con in recent years. And that getting 20+ wins is no longer as hard as it used to be. Still, congratulations are in order for Coach Dixon in getting 100 wins and only 26 losses in just 4 seasons.

I know there is still a good amount of mixed feelings about Dixon, but there is a reason that he is considered one of the best young coaches out there right now. The only recruits left on this team that could be considered “Howland recruits” are Gray and Kendall, but they never played for him.

I agree Dixon is still learning some things — particularly with late game situations and putting a team away, but I also don’t see anyone doing a better job with this team over the past 4 years.

Dixon has been building this program as he keeps improving the recruiting. He has worked to improve the profile of the program in the community. The work he has been doing to develop and grow local basketball through the summer league and things like that. I don’t think that can be underestimated. It is the sort of thing that will pay dividends for years later for Pitt.  It’s a longview approach to helping Pitt improve the local basketball and recruiting base.

The four teams directly behind us in the Big East standings (Marquette, Georgetown, WVU, and Louisville) are going to be gunning for us in the next few weeks in order to knock us off from the top of the standings.

If Pitt is going to win the Big East Conference regular-season championship for the second time in four seasons, the Panthers are going to have to travel the most difficult road of any other team in the conference.

No. 7 Pitt breezed through the first half of the conference schedule, with the only hiccup coming at home against Marquette. The Panthers have seven Big East games remaining, including five games against the four teams directly behind them in the Big East standings.

Every team we will play during the rest of the regular season (and don’t forget that non-con game against Washington) has a record of better than .500 and the team knows they are going to always be set up playing the top teams twice. Because of TV deals and Pitt’s great record over the past few years, we’re always going to be playing great teams and the Big East, even in a down year, is still an above average conference.

“It’s a fair trade,” Dixon said. “I really believe that. Our conference is built on television. One thing I like about our conference is we admit it. We’re very free to admit that. I think that’s why our conference has been the best conference over the years. Without question, the exposure has been great for our team, our program but most importantly our school.”

By the way, this is Rivalry Week for the WWL and the Pitt-West Virginia match up fits in nicely to that. With WVU graduating their entire team last year and a somewhat down year for them, ESPN has the game slotted on ESPN FullCourt which means FSN Pittsburgh for people in the ‘Burgh.