Pitt, No. 21 Notre Dame finally set to battle

[IE]

When Notre Dame coach Mike Brey spoke to his players Tuesday, he never mentioned the program's 34-game home winning streak.

He never addressed the 15 consecutive Big East victories at Joyce Center -- equaling the fourth-longest run in conference history.

Instead, he offered another trend.

"The only streak I talked about with our team was not 34 and not 15 in the league," he said, "but five in a row. They have beaten us five in a row."



Pitt will try to extend its recent success against Notre Dame (19-5, 9-3) when it plays the No. 21-ranked Fighting Irish at 7 tonight in South Bend, Ind.

Pitt (19-6, 7-5) has won its past two games at Joyce Center, both eight-point victories. But the Irish haven't lost at home since falling to Marquette on Feb. 25, 2006. They went 18-0 at home last season and are 14-0 this season.

That's a tough chore for an up-and-down Pitt team with only two wins -- against Big East also-rans South Florida and St. John's -- in its past seven road games.

Pitt and Notre Dame didn't play each other last season.

"They've got a good crowd; They are doing great," Pitt guard Ronald Ramon said. "We've just got to go out there and compete and make sure we play defense."

Notre Dame, which has won six of its past seven games, is the highest-scoring team in the conference (80.2 ppg), powered by Big East Player of the Year candidate Luke Harangody. The Irish also lead the conference in rebounding and 3-point accuracy.

"They are very experienced," Dixon said. "They are defending better. They are rebounding better. It's a team that is playing very well. They can really get it going (offensively), but I think they are doing other things as well, too, that make them a really good team."

Pitt looks to counter with junior forward Sam Young (17.9 ppg), who should present a match-up problem.

"I don't know if one guy on our team can guard him," Brey said. "We have to have a couple different guys involved." Tonight's nationally televised game ends a two-year span without a Pitt-Notre Dame basketball game. Their most recent meeting was Pitt's 100-97 double-overtime victory at Petersen Events Center on Jan. 4, 2006.

Since that classic, Pitt has faced Marquette and West Virginia six times apiece and Georgetown five times. The Panthers have played 50 Big East games and 84 games overall, since last tangling with the Fighting Irish.
Long time, no see
Since its last meeting with Notre Dame on Jan. 4, 2006, Pitt has played every other Big East team at least twice. Here is the number of meetings, counting the Big East Tournament, since the most recent ND game:
Marquette 6
West Virginia 6
Georgetown 5
Three tied at 4
Notre Dame 0
"It seems like we haven't played them in five years," Brey said. "That (100-97 double-OT) game is so long ago. ... Maybe it's good we do miss Pitt lately because they have owned us."

The extended absence between the old Big East West Division rivals comes after a stretch in which the Panthers played Notre Dame 14 times in a six-year span, ending in 2006. They played each other at least twice every season from 2000-05.

Pitt, which enters tonight's game unranked in The AP poll for the first time since December 2005 didn't always have its way with the Irish. The Panthers dropped five out of six regular-season meetings against Notre Dame after Brey, a former assistant to Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, took over in 2000-01.

"The old West Division rivalry was a good thing," Brey said. "When I first got here, it was really good to us. Our second year (2001-02), our sweep of them probably kept us in position to get a (NCAA) bid, because they were a top-10 RPI team. Now, lately, they certainly have had the upper-hand."

 

[IE]

Blair has tall order against the Irish



The last time DeJuan Blair played against one of the top centers in the Big East, he got the better of Georgetown's Roy Hibbert in a 69-60 Pitt victory at the Petersen Events Center. When Pitt travels to Notre Dame tomorrow night, Blair will get to test his skills against not only the top center in the conference but perhaps the top player.Notre Dame sophomore Luke Harangody is the leading candidate for Big East player of the year and is being mentioned as a national player-of-the-year candidate. He is averaging 20.4 points per game, 23.1 in Big East games.

"I like to step up to challenges," Blair said after practice yesterday.

"I look [at] every game as a challenge, but this is a bigger challenge. It will be like Georgetown. It's going to be fun. I love it."

Blair practiced yesterday for the first time since spraining his left knee against Marquette but said he is definitely going to play against the Fighting Irish.

Blair has a history of knee injuries, having had major reconstructive surgery on both knees while at Schenley High School. And even though this sprain was a minor setback, he was worried during the Marquette game.

"If you saw the game, I went straight to the bench," he said. "I was a little nervous. I took a charge and his knee came to the side of it. It could have been worse. It was just a little sprain. If it's not torn, I'm not going to worry about it."Blair will need to be at full strength to deal with Harangody, who has been a dominating force throughout the Big East. In the past few weeks, Harangody has scored 32 points against Connecticut, 29 against DePaul and 31 against Providence.

"He's really an interesting player," Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. "He does some things that are unconventional in the post, the way he plays offensively and defensively. He can score facing the basket and on the block. He uses his quick feet. He's similar to DeJuan in a lot of ways. He's improved since he was a freshman, and we'll see the same kind of improvements in DeJuan [next season]. He's a guy to emulate because of his improvement."

Blair and Harangody are similar in stature. Blair is 6 feet 7 inches and weighs 265 pounds. Harangody is 6-8, 251. Harangody averaged 11.2 points per game last season, right around where Blair, a freshman, is this season.

In addition to his scoring, Harangody is second in the Big East in rebounding with 10.3 per game. Blair is third with 9.4 per game.

"Harangody is good, he's tough and he plays hard," Dixon said.

Harangody has transformed the Irish from a finesse 3-point shooting team to a rugged team that is similar to Pitt in many ways. The Irish lead the league in rebounding margin and have dominated their opponents in that category.

Blair had 15 points and nine rebounds against Hibbert more than a month ago but has been inconsistent since the Georgetown game.

Blair scored seven points Feb. 7 against West Virginia and had six Friday against Marquette, his lowest output since he scored four Jan. 19 against Cincinnati.

Blair's up-and-down play has prompted speculation that he has become worn down by the long college season.

"A lot of people are saying I've hit a wall because I haven't had any double-doubles in a while," he said. "That's nothing big. I'm trying to get back to that. But I'm worried about winning. I don't care if I score.

"As long as I play defense and get rebounds, we have enough players who can score. I just go out there and rebound and play defense."

Senior guard Ronald Ramon said Blair is going through something all freshmen encounter their first season.

"It's a period of time where everyone on the team has to come together," he said.

"We have all the confidence in the world in DeJuan. He's going to play his best games coming up. Everyone has to go out there and execute and make sure we concentrate on defense."

? ? ?

NOTES -- Junior point guard Levance Fields did not practice yesterday, but he is expected to play against Notre Dame. Fields had an X-ray of his left foot taken yesterday that showed the previously fractured bone was not reinjured during the Marquette game. "It'll always been up in the air," Dixon said of Fields' status. "It's not so much the bone. Other things come with not playing. It's a normal thing. There will be soreness and discomfort. He felt soreness, but not on the bone. As the game went on and afterward it was far more painful to him. We saw the X-ray and he felt a lot better knowing that the bone is healing."

 

[IE]

Rebounds will tell story for ND-Pitt


SOUTH BEND -- The game's Golden Rule is quite simple -- score more points than the other guys and you win.

Easy.

But tonight's game between No. 21 Notre Dame and Pittsburgh likely will turn on what happens when the ball bounces off the rim and the tough stuff starts.

The Irish lead the league in rebounding offense (43.4). No team in the 16-team conference is better than the Panthers in rebounding defense (32.2). Notre Dame ranks first in the league in rebounding margin (plus-8.5). Pittsburgh is second at (plus-6.6).

Something has to give.

"It's going to be a big key to the game," Notre Dame's Zach Hillesland said. "It's just a matter of us out-working them on both ends and having a desire to go to the glass."

That's something Pittsburgh has done as well as any team in the league over the last decade. Coach Jamie Dixon's squad keeps pounding and crashing and crashing and pounding while tracking loose balls. The Panthers do it with a front line considered small by today's standards -- 6-foot-6 Sam Young and 6-7 DeJuan Blair. Still, there's sometimes no substitute for something as basic as hard work and hustle.

"Shear size is not going to get it done for you on the backboard," said Irish power forward Rob Kurz. "They've got a lot of guys who are physical and strong and athletic and go after the ball relentlessly.

"You have to have a will for the ball."

Notre Dame has out-rebounded its last five opponents and has not lost a game in which it has been out-rebounded by the opposition since Georgia Tech posted a plus-1 advantage in mid-November.

Honoring Carr

The oldest Irish basketball player (Kurz) still was some 16 years away from birth when a certain someone was becoming the greatest player to ever wear a Notre Dame uniform.

Austin Carr will be honored at halftime tonight, but he needs no introduction to the current team.

"We always hear about it," Tory Jackson said of Carr's collegiate accomplishments. "He's basically the one that got it started for people like me, opened doors for people like me."

Notre Dame will honor Carr for his induction November into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. Carr wanted Irish coach Mike Brey to present him in Kansas City, Mo., but Brey and the Irish were in the U.S. Virgin Islands for the Paradise Jam.

A member of the school's all-century squad, Carr remains the school's all-time leading scorer (2,560), and also owns the NCAA Tournament record of 61 points scored in 1970 against Ohio. A consensus All-American his senior season, Carr averaged 34.6 points during his three seasons, second-best in college history. He currently serves as color commentator and director of community relations for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Bad breaks

Pittsburgh seemed set to cruise into Christmas break in fine fashion. The Panthers were ranked as high as No. 6 in the nation and had just beaten Duke in overtime at Madison Square Garden to move to 11-0.

But the Panthers' season turned the wrong way that night in New York when they lost senior Mike Cook for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. Watching Cook crumple was tough for Kurz, a fellow Philadelphia native who has known Cook since the seventh grade.

"I felt terrible for him," Kurz said. "He's a great kid."

Eight days after Cook went down, senior point guard Levance Fields, the team's emotional epicenter, broke a bone in his left foot in a lopsided loss at Dayton and missed 12 games. Fields returned in Friday's loss to Marquette, but managed just 1-of-7 from the floor in 20 minutes. The foot still bothered him earlier this week when he and Blair (sore knee) both missed practice. That left Pittsburgh with too few healthy bodies to get much done three days before tonight's key conference game.