Erratic Pitt rewarded for playing possessed

The road for the Panthers will be difficult.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The NCAA selection committee rewarded Big East tournament champion Pittsburgh for March. For November and December, too.

Only the second team to win four Big East tournament games in four days, the currently unranked Panthers (26-9) — seeded only seventh in own their conference tournament — were seeded No. 4 Sunday in the South region and will face Summit League champion Oral Roberts (24-8) in Denver on Thursday.

Only three years ago, Pitt was nationally ranked at No. 22, yet was the lowest-seeded of the six Big East teams in the NCAA field and wound up a No. 9 seed playing in distant Boise, Idaho. Part of the reason? Pitt’s weak non-conference schedule.

This season, the Panthers’ run of beating three ranked teams in Louisville, Marquette and Georgetown in as many days in Madison Square Garden may have bumped them up from the No. 8 or No. 9 seed that was predicted only a week ago.

Their closing stretch of seven wins in eight games that included the tournament also helped, especially given that Pitt wasn’t certain to make the field after losing six of 10 at midseason. So did their competitive early season non-conference schedule, which included Duke at Madison Square Garden, Oklahoma State, and Dayton and Washington on the road.

“A lot of teams don’t want to be in certain brackets or with certain teams, but we really don’t care who’s in our way,” freshman center DeJuan Blair said Sunday. “We’re going to go play and, hopefully, the best is yet to come.”

Even after losing small forward Mike Cook (knee) for the season in December and point guard Levance Fields sitting out seven weeks with a broken foot, Pitt mounted its best late-season roll since it won nine straight going into the 2003 tournament. Then, the second-seeded Panthers were upset by Marquette in the Midwest regional semifinals.

“Slowly and surely, I saw us become a team,” Big East tournament MVP Sam Young said. “I never, ever put a limit on this team, and I never said we’re not going to get this far or we’re not going to do this. I thought we were capable of doing anything.”

The road for Pitt, and it is that, won’t be an easy one.

The Panthers are traveling to the Mountain or Pacific time zone for the third time in the last four NCAA tournaments, and must play on Thursday rather than Friday. They will be off today and may not practice in Pittsburgh, possibly traveling and practicing in Denver on Tuesday.