The Pitt men’s basketball team has put itself in a tough position, and the players know it…. The Pitt men’s basketball team has put itself in a tough position, and the players know it.

They must win.

The Panthers have lost three of the last five games, and their next two games are not pushovers — on the road at UConn tomorrow and at home on Jan. 29 against Syracuse.

“This is a big game,” Chris Taft said of the Uconn one. “We have to win.”

(No. 16) and Syracuse (No. 7) will feast on Pitt guard Carl Krauser if he continues to turn the ball over at the rate at which he has been doing it.

In four Big East contests, Krauser had 26 turnovers (6.5 per game). He had eight in the 65-62 loss to St. John’s Tuesday night.

His turnover late in the game against St. John’s allowed the Red Storm to tie the game. Pitt could have run the clock down and even scored a bucket to seal the game. Instead, St. John’s scored three points on a bucket and a collected foul.

Head coach Jamie Dixon, in a press conference yesterday, expressed his confidence in his junior point guard, saying that he is working on it in practice. He also explained that turnovers are always going to happen in a game.

“Every player is going to have turnovers,” Dixon said. “It’s just eliminating those, making solid decisions throughout.”

Krauser will continue to run the point for the Panthers, despite the costly mistakes. If Krauser continues struggling, Dixon could exercise an option to move Krauser to the two-guard position and give the point-guard responsibilities to freshman Ronald Ramon, who has showed, thus far, that he can hold onto the ball.

He has a total of nine turnovers all season long in 119 minutes, as compared to Krauser’s 63 in 236 minutes.

Dixon has put Ramon and guard Antonio Graves at the point in games and in practices but will stick with Krauser for the time being.

“Obviously, Carl is trying to improve in all areas,” Dixon said. “We all recognize that it is an area that needs to be improved.”

Ramon looked at Krauser’s play in a different light.

“We can’t look at it as he’s committing a lot of turnovers,” Ramon said, adding that Krauser does much more than give the ball away.

Ramon explained that Krauser gets the team involved (26 assists in Big East play) and is a leader on the court. He makes sure that the young, inexperienced players, like Graves and Ramon, are in the right spot, doing the right thing.

“That’s how I see it,” Ramon said.

And despite the three upset losses, the team has done fairly well in other areas of the game.

The defense, which has been a stronghold in recent years for Pitt, is holding teams to an average of 59.2 points per game (64.5 against the Big East).

Offensively, Pitt has shocked many by making 42.2 percent of its shots from beyond the 3-point arc. Pitt ranks fifth in the nation for these kinds of shots.

Graves leads the team, shooting 51.7 percent from the 3-point line. Ramon, who was highly recruited as a long-distance shooter, is connecting on 41.1 percent of his 3-pointers.

He, along with the rest of the team, is over St. John’s. They had a player meeting after the game and talked about the fact the team has to regroup.

“St. John’s is already in the past,” Ramon said, adding later, “No matter what happens, we have still have to try and stick together, and fight through.”