First loss forgotten in a hurry

Normally the airplane ride home from a stinging loss is reserved for sulking, but by the time… Normally the airplane ride home from a stinging loss is reserved for sulking, but by the time the Pitt basketball team took off from Louisville after suffering its first defeat of the season on Saturday, anything that happened in that game was left on the tarmac. Above them? Only Syracuse. That kind of mindset is crucial in this year’s Big East conference, with eight teams currently ranked in the top 25 and a Big East title contender on the schedule nearly every night. No Big East team can afford to dwell on a loss, or celebrate a win, so much as to suffer a crippling hangover. So No. 4 Pitt’s convincing win over No. 8 Syracuse, 78-60, at the Petersen Events Center last night was as good a sign as any that Pitt’s grueling Big East schedule won’t affect its play from game to game. ‘Saturday’s loss … we played good, we just came up short,’ said DeJuan Blair. ‘Levance [Fields] did a good job of having us forget about it. Everybody’s going to lose in the Big East, it’s just unfortunate we were No. 1 going into Louisville. But it shows how we bounce back from losses.’ To hear that would certainly please Pitt coach Jamie Dixon, who has prided the Pitt program the last seven years on that type of next-game-only focus. ‘We’re ready every night. A trademark of our program is how we respond off a loss,’ said Dixon. ‘You never get too high or too low, and that’s a big part of our program.’ Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim believes the same thing, of course, and says player experience is a part of why his team came up short last night despite beating then-No. 12 Notre Dame by 19 points on Saturday. Syracuse doesn’t play any seniors, whereas Pitt starts three. ‘We’re still young a little bit,’ said Boeheim. ‘I just thought tonight we were in the game and, yet, we were still frustrated. You play Georgetown and Notre Dame and come here … We had tremendous effort against Notre Dame, but you’ve just got to have tremendous effort every night. If you don’t stay out of foul trouble and don’t make your free throws, you’re not even going to be in the game.’ Figure that to be what the Pitt players were thinking about this morning, or even last night, for that matter. Pitt goes on the road again this weekend to Morgantown, W. Va., to play West Virginia on Sunday. You can bet last night’s win will have nothing to do with how Pitt plays in that one. ‘After the game is over, you just have to forget about it,’ said Blair. ‘In a couple hours we’re going to be worrying about West Virginia. You just have to keep going. Sometimes you’re going to come up short, but if you play your hearts out you’re not going to be too mad. A lot of teams take what happened in the last game into the next game, but we do a good job of forgetting. That’s why we’re a good bounce-back team.’ Fewer fouls In Saturday’s 69-63 loss at Louisville, Pitt was tagged for 26 personal fouls, and both Tyrell Biggs and Blair, who played just 20 minutes, fouled out of the game. Last night’s game against Syracuse, for the most part, wasn’t called as closely even though there was arguably just as much physicality. Pitt was flagged for 15 fouls, but still wound up in the double-bonus with 3:32 still to play in the second half. Syracuse also had 15 fouls, and Paul Harris, the team’s leading rebounder with 8.6 per game, sat out a big chunk of the second half with four fouls and eventually fouled out with 3:15 to go. Forward Rick Jackson also ended up with four fouls, which Blair believed contributed to his 20 points and Sam Young’s 22. ‘We just took advantage of that. Jackson was out and [Arinze] Onuaku was out, too,’ said Blair. ‘With those two in they’re a powerful team, but without one of them they struggled a little.’ Steelers mania If you didn’t know the Pittsburgh Steelers won the AFC Championship over the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday, you could have guessed from the Steelers fanfare surrounding last night’s game. Several of the Steelers were there, and might have gotten as much face-time on the Jumbotron as any one of Pitt’s players. Joking aside, kicker Jeff Reed and receiver Santonio Holmes, the MVP of Sunday’s AFC Championship, got cheers for several appearances on the big screen, as did quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. What’s more, the Pitt production crew spliced Steelers highlights into one of Pitt’s introduction videos.