Okay, so as the match-ups for the ACC-Big Ten Challenge were being leaked this morning, it became clear that Pitt wasn’t going to land one of the heavyweights from the B1G. That’s not surprising. Pitt will not be considered in the preseason as one of the top 5 or 6 teams in the ACC. So, Wisconsin, Michigan, Michigan St., Ohio St. and Indiana weren’t going to be likely opponents. Among the best of the rest there would have been Iowa, Illinois and Purdue. But Iowa and Purdue got leaked and their opponents were not Pitt.

So, more and more likely it was going to be a Pennsylvania battle.

And indeed it will be. Penn State comes to the Pete on Tuesday, December 3.

Now the Nits will be better than they were this past year. They have a bunch of decent players coming back from injury, including Tim Frazier.

But, from helping the overall strength of Pitt’s non-con schedule it won’t do much.  So that’s the bad news. Also John Johnson won’t be eligible to play for Penn State for that game.

I’m still relatively happy with the game. There really was no reason for Pitt and Penn State to stop playing basketball. Other than the fact that Penn State was really tired of being embarrassed. Hopefully this will be the spark to renew this as an annual game.

Go figure, Pitt puts forth one of its more lackluster efforts and a day later Pitt is ranked. How lackluster? It was the first game this season where Pitt failed to score more than 60 points. Yet, they still beat Kennesaw State by 16.

While the Owls hit a bunch of 3s to keep it tight early, Pitt put the game out of reach before the first half was complete. The constantly hitting 3s does give the guards something to improve.

“They played hard the whole game and hit open jump shots,” Pitt guard James Robinson said. “They were on. We didn‘t have one of our best defensive performances, and that‘s something we‘re going to have to work on heading into Big East play.”

Pitt held Kennesaw St. to sub-40% shooting overall. The problem was they let KSU go 9-15 on 3s (7-27 on 2FGs). So, yeah, that’s something to improve.

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The non-con football schedule is complete. Pitt was already scheduled to play Villanova, ND and at Navy. A MAC or some other 1-A from the lower tier was expected. Turns out it isn’t a totally horrible opponent.  The fourth non-con is another home game against the Lobos of New Mexico.

That means a seven-game home schedule in the first year of ACC play. There was already going to be excitement about that first year. With only one 1-AA team. No MAC (or Sun Belt) opponents. Notre Dame at home. Ticket sales for the 2013 season should be strong.

It’s still more than three years away until Pitt and Penn State play for the first time since Pitt shut out Penn State 12-0 in 2000 — wow. It will be a 16-year gap. Amazing. Hard to believe it will be that long. But I digress.

The renewal was only to be a single home-and-home. But that was before all the, um, changes that have taken place in Happy Valley over the last year or so. A new coach. An interim AD. The passing of a certain obstinate figure. And the continual badgering by Pitt’s AD have led to an extension of the series to four years rather than two.

Last year, the two universities signed a home-and-home agreement for the 2016 and 2017 seasons. Today, Pitt and Penn State announced a two-year extension of the original pact for 2018 and 2019.

Pitt will host the initial game at Heinz Field on September 10, 2016. The Panthers will play at Penn State on September 16, 2017. The new agreement will have the series returning to Pittsburgh on September 8, 2018, with a return trip to State College on September 14, 2019.

It’s welcome news for a rivalry game that should have never ended.

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A follow-up on the new/old ACC scheduling plan for football. Pitt now finds itself a game short for 2013. And having, once more, to start scrambling to find another game for next year.

When Pitt first put its 2013 schedule together, it was with the expectation of being in the Big East with 8 teams. It featured Villanova, ND, at Navy, at VT and NC State. Obviously, once Pitt got its invite to the ACC last year things changed. The NC St. was tossed and VT became a conference game. Not to worry. The ACC was going to a 9-game schedule so Pitt was set. Three non-cons, two at home. That’s a 6-game slate — perhaps 7 if Pitt got 5 home conference games — and all was well.

Now it’s trickier.

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The ACC is having some meetings up in Boston. Interesting tidbits:

Because of scheduling agreement w/Notre Dame, ACC will only play 8-game conference schedule, sources told @espn

— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyESPN) October 3, 2012

Cue outrage from Clemson and FSU fans over this decision, because, well at this point it seems that whatever the ACC does they feel they are being screwed by it. They complained about the ACC schedule and the non-con scheduling headaches. Then when they went to 9, it was about how they were losing money from not having the extra home game. So, I’m sure they will still find reason to complain.

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A fantastic piece by Luke Winn at SI.com that talks about the exploitable flaw in the RPI system. How it can be gamed, by numbers savvy coaches with their non-con to create a high RPI ranking without actually taking huge risks.

The NCAA tournament selection committee uses the RPI formula to assess teams’ non-conference strength of schedule (NCSOS). Two-thirds of RPI’s NCSOS is based on the raw winning percentages of a team’s opponents, and the other third is based on the raw winning percentages of opponents’ opponents. A team vying for an at-large NCAA tournament bid is best off having a respectable NCSOS rank and a number of wins over RPI top-25, top-50 or top-100 teams. While the selection committee has stated that RPI is just one of many tools it uses, the fact remains that schedule strength is viewed predominantly through the RPI’s lens.

The problem is that it’s a warped lens. Seventy-five percent of the RPI formula is about strength of schedule (SOS), and because the RPI uses the flawed metric of raw winning percentage to assess SOS, it fails to provide a true measure of the quality of opponents.

Here’s how that works. If you schedule decent to good mid- and low mid-majors. That is teams that can be expected to do well in their own conference, you puff up your own RPI because they end the year with 18 to 20+ wins. Even if most of those wins came in the MEAC or such.

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With the announcement last week of ND coming to the ACC, lead to the discussion of schedules. On the football side, there was the acknowledgment that Pitt-ND games will change from a yearly game to a once-every-three (or two)-years action. That would open the door to putting Penn State on the schedule with more frequency. And indeed, following AD Steve Pederson’s comments suggesting it, the acting PSU AD echoed the growing possibility.

[David] Joyner, Penn State’s acting athletic director, told the Tribune-Review on Friday he hopes to visit Pederson in Pittsburgh during the football season. Any face-to-face discussions wouldn’t be just about resuming the once-great rivalry, but Joyner acknowledged it would be a significant part of his visit.

“There certainly is a philosophical meeting of the minds,” Joyner said. “It would be very interesting to look to see if we can make it happen, to have more games in the future.”

The Big 10 just had their planned annual games with the Pac-12 fall apart because of the Pac-12 playing 9 conference games annually, and teams like Stanford and USC that regularly play ND. The Big 10 still plays 8 conference games, but Big 10 Commissioner Jim Delaney has been publicly saying that the Big 10 schools need to do a better job on non-con scheduling.

Almost certainly Pitt will be playing PSU in basketball soon. If not in the ACC-Big 10 Challenge, then as a scheduled non-con.

So there’s that, but what about WVU?

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The Big East decided to screw Pitt in the SEC/Big East Match-up this year. The ACC, however, is being a lot cooler about things for their own marquee non-con conference cross-over.

Syracuse and Pitt are expected to be a part of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge in 2013 when they are members of the ACC. There was initial talk of not including them because they were new — but that was never going to fly. The ACC hasn’t officially decided how it will decide the 12 teams that will go against the 12 from the Big Ten. But one proposal that will be discussed is to pair the top 12 RPI teams from the previous season in the ACC with the 12 Big Ten teams. If that’s the case, the bottom teams will get frozen out.

Doesn’t that simply make more sense when one side has more teams than the other? To take your best teams? These are match-ups for conference pride and bragging rights. If you can avoid sending the DePauls, Providences and Wake Forests you do it.

So, yes. Joe Starkey noticed the poll I ran just after the Freeh Report and  a week before the Paterno statue was removed. Just part of his overall piece he wrote why Pitt should play PSU.

The topic lit up the airwaves, where the overwhelming sentiment was to renew at least for the two games. The blog PittBlather.com received more than 600 replies to a poll asking whether fans still want to see Pitt-Penn State.

The No. 1 answer (29 percent) was yes, depending on “what steps Penn State takes in light of the Freeh Report.” That was followed by 25 percent saying yes unconditionally and 21 percent saying absolutely not.

Now, Joe Starkey did me the unnecessary courtesy of e-mailing me several days before his column with some questions about the poll, and letting me know he was planning to mention it. (Not the content of his column, just that he was going to mention it.) So I knew something was coming.

Do I agree with what he said? That Pitt should play PSU “first in the name of collegiality”? No. To put it bluntly, screw that.

Playing the game to guarantee a sell out? Um, isn’t that just about the money? That’s not far removed from the reasons Penn State’s powers did what they did with pretending Sandusky wasn’t doing obscene acts with minors in their own football building. That’s the worst reason to play.

Overall, I am still undecided about my feelings on those games in four years. My impulse is still to play. The history. The connections within my family. That all means a lot, and comes into play. It colors my perspective rather strongly in favor of playing PSU.

But when I think about the actions by the powers at Penn State. All to protect the legacy of Paterno. To protect their reputation. To protect their cash cow. It becomes a bit harder to justify resuming playing PSU. Even for only a couple years.

A few links/stories not directly related to Pitt but putting out there.

Northwestern has been Under Armour-ized. It’s not good. It’s not Maryland bad, but in the Big 10 it is radical.

Want to see how a lot of teams will probably (or should) schedule in the ACC when they go to a 9 game schedule? Virginia Tech is a good example.

The 2015 Akron game that was listed on Tech’s website under future schedules has been canceled.

The Hokies’ nonconference schedule in the next few years looks like this:

2013: vs. Alabama in Atlanta, vs. Marshall, vs. Western Carolina

2014: vs. William and Mary, at Ohio State, vs. Western Michigan

2015: vs. Furman, vs. Ohio State, vs. East Carolina

2016: vs. Wisconsin, vs. Liberty, at East Carolina

By being pushed back, the East Carolina series would have one more home-and-home cycle in 2017 and ’18.

The Hokies also are scheduled for a trip to Wisconsin in 2017 to satisfy that home-and-home agreement…

Every year has one marquee non-con. VT relies a little heavy on local 1-AA foes for an extreme patsy for my tastes. The third game isn’t bad. Especially with the always dangerous ECU team out there.

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Still no Pitt basketball schedule. Most of the hold-up has been presumed to be because of the quest to find a halfway decent team to play at home after Pitt foolishly counted on playing in the SEC/Big East challenge. It also seems that the Preseason NIT hasn’t quite figured out the way they want to set things.

The other holdup is the preseason NIT, a four-game event. Pitt will play two of the following teams at the Petersen Events Center: Robert Morris, Fordham and Lehigh.

Given Pitt’s annual series with Robert Morris, I am guessing event organizers will do everything they can to make sure RMU is one of those teams to play the Panthers.

If the other team is Lehigh, the Panthers will be in for a tough game. Lehigh upset Duke in the first round of the NCAA tournament in March and returns its best player – C.J. McCollum, who decided to return to school rather than enter his name in the NBA draft.

If Lehigh is the opponent it could end up being one of the most important games of the year. Teams in the preseason NIT have to go 2-0 in pool play to advance to the semifinal round at Madison Square Garden.

Should Pitt be upset, the Panthers would not get to play two of the following three BCS opponents (Michigan, Kansas State and Virginia) at the Garden and instead would have to settle for two more games against mid-major or low-major teams at the Petersen Events Center.

That could be disastrous for Pitt. It would be entirely possible then that the Panthers would not play one BCS conference opponent in non-conference play.

Yes, it’s a risk for Pitt to play Lehigh, but given the rest of their non-con it seems worth it. Pitt will need bumps to its non-con and Lehigh — beyond simply the games at MSG — would help. Just something to add to the urgency.

Need to clear some tabs. Too many building up and I know that it will only get tougher to get to in the coming weeks.

Pitt may have a new basketball commit after this weekend. Jamel Artis out of Baltimore has indicated he intends to give a verbal after the Peach Jam in South Carolina. Which just happens to be an event Coach Jamie Dixon is attending.

Though Pittsburgh will soon be an Atlantic Coast Conference institution, Artis did indicate “I always wanted to play in the BIG EAST,” when asked specifically about the conference. Jamel on criteria for choosing a school: “Honestly, guys I can trust — coaches and players. Guys that play hard every night, that are going to give it a 100%. And I just want to win…win a championship.”

Artis considers himself a “point forward”, and for good measure, as he possesses significant passing ability for a player standing 6’7” and weighing 220 pounds. Of dropping dimes, the East Baltimore product that calls that city’s Belair section home said “I take a lot of pride in that. That’s one thing I do best.” In addition to finding people, Artis can hit mid-range jumpers, solidly pat the rock, and has a decent feel for the game.

He also understands conditioning is an issue — Jamel laughed and agreed when asked if the food at Vermont Prep packed on a few extra pounds. He cited three other points of needed improvement, as “I have to stop clutching” his jump shot, and “I have to rebound more”. In terms of lateral quickness, Artis revealed “I’m quick at times, but I can get a little quicker.”

His own description of himself and this scouting report from ESPN.com makes him appear to be exactly the kind of player that has developed and thrived for Coach Dixon.

Artis is a long athletic wing that can get to the rim with slashes in transition as well as in the half court set. He is a good ball handler, rebounder and multiple position defender as well. He must get stronger and extend his shooting range but has very good upside.

Artis has gotten a good amount of interest but not a lot of offers.

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Pitt and Penn State are scheduled to play a home-and-home pair of football games in 2016 and 2017. A possible thaw in the long-standing stalemate in what was once a great annual rivalry game. Add in the fact that the Big 10-Pac-12 annual cross-over plan that was scheduled to begin in 2017 has now fallen through. Well, you could make a pretty good case that Pitt and Penn State might actually be able to resume the annual in-state rivalry game.

This home-and-home came about before the Penn State cover-up of the Sandusky molestations came to light. A cover-up to protect the image of the football program at Penn State. Now, Penn State is promising reforms. Changes, in no small part from the recommendations of the Freeh Report. But as Dan Wolken notes, how can there be real change when Penn State begins their new season in seven weeks?

That creates a question for Pitt and Pitt fans. Should we still want Pitt and Penn State to meet in football? Do we want to play a program where the leaders so willingly betrayed its self-righteous ideals to protect the image of itself. That it not only hid a pedophile right within in its midst, it gave license the beast to continue to use his relationship with Penn State football to bring in more boys to victimize.

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I repeat my feeling that Pitt was really, really foolish to count on the Big East to give them a game in the SEC/Big East Challenge. I don’t care what vibe they got from the conference. What assurances they thought they had. It was poor planning, and coupled with Big East incompetency entirely avoidable.

As such, they have been scrambling for a month to get a good (power conference with NCAA Tournament chances opponent) home game in a very specific window (right around the first weekend of December) of the non-con. Needless to say, it hasn’t gone so well. That leaves Pitt looking to find a mid-major of quality.

So, um, the Horizon Leauge, huh?

Pitt is still trying fill a major home date after not getting an expected home game in the Big East-SEC Challenge. The Panthers would be wise to lock in a home game with Horizon League favorite Valparaiso. There have been talks between the two and Pitt may not get a better RPI game on the nonconference home schedule.

I guess the upside is that Pitt probably wouldn’t have to give a return game.

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