Nobody likes a close call, especially when your team is as highly ranked as the Pitt… Nobody likes a close call, especially when your team is as highly ranked as the Pitt Panthers.

Don’t complain, though. The way this college basketball season has gone, you should just be glad the Panthers are still unbeaten.

Sunday’s eight-point win over a slightly below-average Auburn team proved that Pitt is going to have to exorcize some old demons if it is to make this a season to remember.

Jamie Dixon’s club shot a horrific 10-of-19 from the free-throw line – missing six straight at one point down the stretch – and committed 18 turnovers before pulling away late.

The knock on Pitt for years has been the free-throw shooting. What is astounding is that so seldom does it actually end up costing the Panthers a game – each clank of the rim usually only makes the last two minutes even tenser.

How long can Pitt push the envelope, though, before free throws become costly?

What is going on with the Big East? Marquette loses a bad game but then DePaul wins a big one.

Welcome to college basketball, kids. It’s not for the faint of heart, nor will it make sense to most viewers.

Marquette looked to be the best team in the league for the early part of the season by the strength of a big neutral court win over Duke last month. The Golden Eagles followed that up, though, with an unthinkable home loss to North Dakota State, a team in its third year of playing at the Division I level.

DePaul lost by 20 to Bradley to open the season. In their next game, the Blue Demons failed to crack 40 in a 49-39 loss to Northwestern. Somehow DePaul regrouped to shock No. 5 Kansas, the first team to knock off defending national champion Florida this season, 64-57, last weekend.

This is the motif of the Big East – great wins and bad losses. When your conference is full of solid teams that are poised to beat up on each other, there is always one letdown for every solid win. I wouldn’t count on any of these teams developing a clear identity until conference play begins and the intensity picks up with every game.

Is Pitt starting the right lineup?

If we’ve noticed one thing about Pitt basketball from all of last season and the first eight games of this season, it doesn’t matter who starts. Dixon will make an adjustment to figure out what is or, more importantly, what is not working.

Remember, Pitt enjoyed all of its success last season with John DeGroat starting all of the regular season. The Panthers have enough tools to make the necessary adjustments to their lineup; starting only means a primetime introduction beneath the twirling lights at the start of each home game.

Keep in mind, Ronald Ramon is one of Pitt’s best players, yet he doesn’t even start. That doesn’t mean he can’t be out there at the critical junctures in the game, though. If Jamie Dixon needs a 3-pointer, who do you think is going to be taking the shot?

Why can’t Pitt make free throws?

I recall a Ben Howland press conference after a game in which free-throw shooting nearly cost Pitt the game. Since this question has been around ever since the Panthers started to win, he was well-prepared with an answer.

“Look, they make them in practice, what more can I do?” he said.

He’s right. There is no clear-cut explanation as to why Pitt continues to struggle at the line.

My take has always been that the Panthers play such a physical brand of basketball that the opportunity to go to the free-throw line is unique – it is a chance to relax. You don’t have to run, you don’t have to get into a defensive stance and you don’t have to ban bodies beneath the hoop fighting for a rebound.

It’s the only safe haven out there in a system that is as hard-nosed as the Panthers’.

So it is only natural that the players become too relaxed and don’t focus on their mechanics – the concentration, the bending of the knees or the follow-through.

The answer could just as easily be nerves, but find me proof of that. As frustrating as this problem is for Pitt, there is only so much a coach can do to prepare his players for the actual game situation.

Geoff Dutelle is a senior staff writer for The Pitt News. E-mail him your Pitt basketball questions at [email protected] and they may be answered in next week’s edition of “Q’A with Geoff Dutelle.”