Pitt has the Wright stuff to stave off the Raiders

With all due respect to the winter holiday season, this, in fact, is the most wonderful time… With all due respect to the winter holiday season, this, in fact, is the most wonderful time of the year.

Let’s face it: It doesn’t get any better than 32 NCAA Tournament games in two days, occupying the entire CBS Network from noon to midnight this Thursday and Friday. This is a basketball lover’s time to join in the millions of Americans who let their work suffer as they fester in their bracket busting.

Speaking of busting, we have Pitt (27-7), limping in after setting a Big East Championship record for fewest points in the title game after the Panthers were lambasted 65-42 last weekend by Georgetown. After two games of apparently righting the ship, Pitt slipped back into its woeful shooting ways, ending an abysmal 16 for 61 from the field on the night.

Now the Panthers have new life, getting a No. 3 seed in the loaded West region, resulting in a first-round date with 14th-seeded Wright State tonight. It’s now time for Pitt to adopt the necessary motif for March Madness – survive and advance.

But can the Panthers do it?

Will Pitt get past Wright State on Thursday?

Yes, but man, this will not be an easy one.

Wright State won the Horizon League, which might not mean much to those who haven’t seen how good Butler is this year. The Raiders beat Butler in the championship last week, looking impressive in doing so.

True – Wright State played on its home floor in the conference championship, but the Bulldogs are a No. 5 seed in the tournament, and the Raiders looked awfully good in taking the Horizon crown from them.

What Wright State (23-9) has that Pitt doesn’t, at the moment, is a player that is very capable of putting the ball in the basket on a regular basis.

DaShaun Wood (19.8 points per game) is nothing short of phenomenal. I’d take him on my team any day. I want to pass him the ball because I know it is going to get me an assist – this guy can score and sometimes, all it takes is one who can do it to knock you out.

That said, Wood can only get this team so deep into the game. I’d say that Aaron Gray has no choice but to make the chippy shots he missed against Georgetown because there is no tomorrow for this team if he doesn’t. Look for Pitt to stay slightly ahead for most of the game before posting a nine- or 11-point win.

How far will Pitt get?

Can I wait and answer it after the first round? No? Alright, I’m going to stick with the hip pick and say the Sweet 16, but no farther.

Pitt should get past the Raiders and that means a second-round matchup with either the Virginia Commonwealth Rams (27-6) or, your favorite but never mine, the Duke Blue Devils (22-10). It’s becoming too commonplace to pick the Rams to upset the Blue Devils – I see it in almost every bracket. It’s too trendy and too risky. Duke can play well when it wants and I think that will be the case to advance to the round of 32.

I like Pitt against Duke because of how Pitt is built. The Blue Devils have some size, but they don’t have a go-to-scorer. Pitt doesn’t either, but the Panthers aren’t built to need one. Duke needs to have somebody take the big shots late in the game, and that has been tough to find this season.

Turnovers have been a problem for Duke, and the biggest thing keeping the Blue Devils in games has been their solid defense. I see a low-scoring game, but this Duke team doesn’t have the talent of most Blue Devil teams – just the name across the chest – and that won’t be enough against a Pitt team that, save last year, tends to play very well in the second round.

Then come, likely, the UCLA Bruins, a terrible matchup for the Panthers. UCLA (26-5) has an easy path to the Sweet 16, given that neither Indiana nor Gonzaga, the teams in the 7-10 matchup, can get within 15 of the Bruins. Ben Howland’s team also, keep in mind, will play all of its games, including the third round where Pitt would enter the picture, in the state of California.

Pitt can’t beat UCLA unless the Bruins’ guards have an atrocious night from the floor, which is possible but unlikely.

Who got the biggest snub being left out of the NCAA Tournament?

There’s a tie and both are Big East teams. One team was left out for reasons I’ll never understand, the other because the officials in the Big East Tournament blew it hardcore.

Syracuse (22-10) easily belonged, going 10-6 in the conference with wins over Georgetown, Villanova and Marquette on the road. The Orange did play a meek out-of-conference schedule, but some of their losses (Oklahoma State and Wichita State) looked OK at the time, before those teams fell off.

Syracuse shouldn’t be punished because those teams tanked. It’s not as if the coaches weren’t also duped in ranking them so high at the time of the game.

The other is West Virginia (22-9), which didn’t have the resume Syracuse had, but would have gotten in with a win over Louisville in the Big East quarterfinals.

The thing is, the Mountaineers did win when they went up by two with only seconds left.

A clear-as-day traveling violation on the Cardinals’ Edgar Sosa went uncalled, leading to the tying bucket and the Mountaineers’ ultimate demise two overtimes later.

The refs blow the whistle on that three-step drive and West Virginia gets in. How do you explain that to your kids if you’re John Beilein?