Boca Raton, Fla. - The Pitt baseball team (7-4) could not withstand a late-game push from Florida Atlantic as the Panthers saw a 7-1 lead disappear as the Owls went on to take the 10-7 win over the Panthers Wednesday afternoon.First baseman David Chester (Collinsville, Okla./Seminole CC) led the Panthers offensively hitting 3-for-4, while adding three RBI and a run scored. Third baseman Joe Leonard (Dawson, Pa./Connellsville) was 3-for-5 with a run scored.In the first inning, Pitt's bats were hot, as the first three hitters in the rotation reached base on a single. Junior Sean Toole (Edwardsville, Pa./Lackawanna CC) reached on a fielder's choice and drove in leadoff hitter Danny Lopez from third for the 1-0 lead.Florida Atlantic answered back, tying the game at 1-1 at the end of the first as Pitt starting pitcher Josh Smith (West Lawn, Pa./Wilson West Lawn) gave up one run on one hit.Pitt again ...

NEW YORK -- Notre Dame easily handled Pitt without its best player two weeks ago. Now the Fighting Irish will face the Panthers with their superstar looking like he's 100 percent healthy again.Luke Harangody, the Big East's leading scorer who has been slowed by a bone bruise in his knee, scored 20 points and grabbed 10 rebounds Wednesday night to lead No. 7 seed Notre Dame past No. 10 seed Seton Hall, 68-56, in a Big East tournament second-round game at Madison Square Garden.The Irish will face No. 2 seed Pitt at 7 p.m. Thursday in a quarterfinal round game.Harangody missed the first game against Pitt, but the Irish handed the Panthers one of their worst losses of the season, 68-53. Notre Dame had an easy time with Pitt because its shooters were able to get open for uncontested shots. The Irish shot 50 percent from the field, 56 percent ...

PITTSBURGH - Pitt’s wrestling team will send six to the upcoming NCAA Championship to be held March 18-20 in Omaha, Neb.The Panthers earned five automatic qualifiers following its Eastern Wrestling League Championship, and picked up an at-large bid to redshirt senior Eric Albright at 149.Joining Albright (York, Pa./Red Lion Area/Virginia) will be Anthony Zanetta at 125, Tyler Nauman at 141, Zac Thomusseit at 184, Matt Wilps at 197 and Ryan Tomei at 285.Zanetta (Pittsburgh, Pa./Keystone Oaks), a true freshman at 125, has recorded a 33-8 record on the season. In his first championship, he will meet up with Andre Gonzales (22-11) of Cal State Fullerton in the first round.At 141, Nauman (Middletown, Pa./Middletown) will be making his second consecutive trip to the NCAA tournament. As a sophomore, Nauman (33-3) is seeded No. 10 and will face Cole Schmitt (20-16) of Wisconsin.Albright (20-15) picked up Pitt’s lone at-large spot and will ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Junior Cory Berliner earned Big East Weekly Honor Roll accolades, after posting a perfect 2-0 weekend on the mound. Berliner recorded the first nod of the season for the Panthers.Berliner (3-2) tossed two complete games and gave up just two earned runs in 14 innings, as Pitt returned from the Morehead State Invitational with a 3-1 record. Berliner also held her opponents to a stingy .160 batting average and struck out six batters.On the season, she leads the squad with eight appearances in the circle and has put in 42.2 innings of work.As a whole, Pitt’s pitchers lead the league with a 1.71 team ERA, and are third overall in holding opponents to a .212 bating average.The Panthers travel to Tampa for the USF Under Armour Classic, March 12-14. The Panthers will face Drake (9:30 a.m.) and Quinnipiac (11:30 a.m.) on Friday. Then, they have games against Central Michigan ...

Ray Fittipaldo:Welcome to the Pitt basketball chat live from the Big East tournament. Fire away with questions.PittFanDave:Hi Ray. I saw your Q&A post today regarding Dixon's use of timeouts. When I saw the topic, I thought for sure it would be in reference to his end of game timeouts against Providence. The Friars tied the game with 35 seconds left, and Dixon calls a timeout with the ball under the opposing basket. A move that I hate since it allows the defense to get set up. I much prefer to see them get the ball past half court before calling that timeout to set up a play. Ok, not the end of the world, we still have shot. I was blown away when he called another timeout after we got the ball past half court. Now we are at risk of a 5 second call if we have trouble getting ...

Butler saved a spot by waxing Wright State, which made any number of teams on the bubble happy. Well, not Charlotte and Connecticut, who removed themselves from consideration with bad losses that capped ugly ends to their seasons. Cincinnati and Seton Hall tried, very hard, to reach the same fate by managed to pull out wins in at the Garden over bad teams, and live to see another day.Finally, North Texas and Oakland won their conference championships and the automatic bids that go with them. This changes nothing on the bubble, but congratulations just the same.Here?s where we stand through Tuesday?s action:Automatic Bids (12): East Tennessee State (Atlantic Sun), Winthrop (Big South), Old Dominion (Colonial), Butler (Horizon), Cornell (Ivy), Siena (MAAC), Northern Iowa (Missouri Valley), Murray State (Ohio Valley), Wofford (Southern), North Texas (Sun Belt), Oakland (Summit), St, Mary?s (West Coast).In (1): Gonzaga.Locks (28): Duke, Maryland, Wake Forest, Clemson, Florida ...

Leave a Comment by PAT STEVENSNEW HAVEN, Conn. – Gerard Coleman (Tilton/Providence) had the day’s high of 43 points as the fourth annual National Prep Championships are underway, this year from Albertus Magnus College. Big East signees Isaiah Epps (Pittsburgh), CJ Fair (Syracuse) and Austin Carroll (Rutgers) all helped their teams to victories that have them slated for Wednesday’s semifinals and potential championship game. Epps and No. 1 seed Hargrave Military Academy meet No. 5 Northfield Mount Hermon and Fair and Carroll lead No. 2 seed Brewster Academy against No. 6 St. Thomas More, with the championship set for 7:30 p.m.Read on for more on the opening day of the National Prep Championship, including recruiting updates on Cleveland Melvin, who has plenty of Big East interest and plans a Big East visit in the near future, and Bryon Allen, who is likely to take a Big East official visit this ...

Leave a Comment *********Follow NBE Sports on Twitter: http://twitter.com/NBESports*****After a thrilling doubleheader Tuesday to close the first day of action of the 2010 Big East Tournament, we roll on into Wednesday with four more games as the action will continue to heat up into the weekend at Madison Square Garden.Here is Wednesday’s schedule (and your chance to get tickets to the games):9) South Florida vs. 8] Georgetown, Noon.13) St. John’s vs. 5) Marquette, 2 PM.Big East Basketball Tournament Tickets – Session 3 March 10 2010 (USF vs GTown & SJU vs. MU)10) Seton Hall vs. 7) Notre Dame, 7 PM.11) Cincinnati vs. 6) Louisville, 9 PM.Big East Basketball Tournament Tickets – Session 4 March 10 2010 (SHU vs. ND & UC vs. UL)The rest of the schedule this week (and your chance to buy tickets to see the ...

NEW YORK -- The first four games of the Big East men's basketball tournament took place Tuesday afternoon and evening. Four more games are on tap today and two more Thursday afternoon before Pitt finally takes the court for its quarterfinal-round game at 7 p.m. Thursday.More than half of the tournament's games will be played and 10 of the conference's teams will be eliminated before the Panthers even set foot inside Madison Square Garden. But don't expect the Panthers to get stale or lose focus. Not after what happened last season.Pitt was the No. 2 seed for that tournament and a prohibitive favorite to advance to another Big East championship game. The opponent in the quarterfinal round was West Virginia, a team the Panthers had easily handled twice during the regular season.But a lackluster effort led to an uncharacteristic early exit from the tournament for Pitt after being upset by ...

Submit your Pitt basketball questionA quick programming note: my weekly live Pitt basketball chat will not be on Tuesday next week, and will instead take place Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. live from New York, site of the Big East tournament.And I'll be blogging from New York exclusively on my Pitt basketball blog on PG-Plus. Membership in that site is only $3.99 per month or $36 per year. Q: Jamie Dixon called timeouts after Pitt scored and just before the under eight-minute media timeout in the last two homes games. Against Providence it seemed to be a bit of a momentum killer and it really didn't matter against Rutgers. Our group of three at the games believes it is to add additional rest at this part of the game. He took one of the timeouts with approximately three seconds left before the media timeout. Have you ever talked about this with ...

This is a Pitt blog and we will certainly get back in the swing of things around here next week when Pitt Spring Football begins, but in the mean time, let me take a few moments to expand the parameters of this to include one of my other beats - women's basketball.The Pitt women's team will, for the first time since 2006, not be in the NCAA Tournament and it isn't because they aren't talented enough to be there. They are and they should be there but they aren't going to be there because they lack a very critical intangible that every championship level team has - call it toughness, call it leadership, call it heart, grit, desire - whatever you want to call it, the Panthers - unlike their counterparts on the men's side - wilted every time things got tough this year.That's a shame because the last two seasons, ...

NEW YORK – Seton Hall remains alive in the Big East tournament and alive for an NCAA tournament berth. But they didn’t make it easy on themselves. The No. 10 Pirates blew a 29-point second-half lead and advanced to the second round of the Big East with a 109-106 victory over No. 15 Providence after Friars freshman Duke Mondy missed a potential game-tying 3-pointer at the buzzer. “Luckily Mondy missed and the ball came off,” Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez said. “To get an open 3-point look when you’re down three with 6, 7 seconds to go, you can’t ask for much more than that,” Providence coach Keno Davis said. Both teams eclipsed the previous record for most points in a regulation game. Seton Hall beat Syracuse, 103-70, in the ...

PITTSBURGH — The University of Pittsburgh women’s tennis team got back in the win column with a dominating 7-0 performance against Norfolk State earlier today. “After two quality practices on our spring break, our team had a strong showing against a good Norfolk State team today,” said head coach George Dieffenbach. Each of the Panthers’ (4-2, 1-2 Big East) doubles teams walked off with wins on the day. Elizabeth Adams (Reading, Pa./Wilson High School) and Shannon Benic (Fox Chapel, Pa./Oakland Catholic) took No. 1 doubles with a convincing 8-0 win over Astbury/Brooks. Sabrina Visram (Windermere, Fla./Lake Highland Prep) and Gabi Catanzariti (Pittsburgh, Pa./Sewickley Academy) were 8-2 winners over Graff/Tsapayi while Karma Parbhu (Omaha, Neb./Millard North) and Adela Aprodu (Hamilton, Ontario/Hamilton) were 8-3 winners over team Foster at No. 3 doubles. Entering singles play with a 1-0 lead, the Panthers kept the pressure on and swept all six matches in straight ...

NEW YORK -- Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim beat out Pitt coach Jamie Dixon for Big East coach of the year honors today. It's the first coach of the year award for Boeheim since 1991.The Big East also announced player of the year and rookie of the year honors. Wesley Johnson of Syracuse was voted player of the year and Lance Stephenson of Cincinnati was voted rookie of the year.Pitt will open Big East tournament at 7 p.m. Thursday in a quarterfinal game against Notre Dame, Seton Hall or Providence.

PITTSBURGH - Pitt’s baseball team (7-3) will travel to Florida for four games this week, including a three-game series with Fordham in the Palm Beach Classic. In addition the Panthers will take on Florida Atlantic on Wednesday, March 10.The matchup with Florida Atlantic will take place on their home field at 2 p.m. Wednesday. Pitt and FAU have met just one other time with the Owls holding the 1-0 series lead.Pitt’s three-game series with Fordham, March 12-14 will be a part of the Palm Beach Classic with game times set at 6 p.m. Friday, 6 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. on Sunday. The Panthers and Rams have met only twice in the schools’ history with Pitt holding the 1-0-1 advantage.Coming off a 2-2 weekend at the Caravelle Resorts Invitational, the Panthers will look to build on their strong start to the season at 7-3 on the year.   procad("http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/CSTV.PITT/SPORTS.MBASEBL.SPECREL;sect=mbasebl;pos=story;sz=300x250;dcopt=ist;",0); ...

Leave a Comment *********Follow NBE Sports on Twitter: http://twitter.com/NBESports*****Georgetown strikes on the 2010 late recruiting trail by adding a small forward commitment today. The Hoyas had hosted an official visitor from the 2010 class over the weekend when they wrapped up their regular season with a 74-47 demolition of Cincinnati in the Verizon Center.Despite no scholarship seniors on the roster, the Hoyas have at least four scholarships available for the class of 2010 and possibly five if Greg Monroe opts for the NBA Draft after his sophomore season. John Thompson III added a pair of signees in the fall period with letters of intent coming from Nate Lubick and Markel Starks. Now the Hoyas look to kick off an expected busy spring recruiting period with their third commitment of the 2010 class with a verbal commitment from Aaron Bowen.We have previously profiled in our premium section the ...

Championship Week is here, and with it, the annual countdown from every Division I team to just the 65 that will make it to the NCAA tournament. We?ll work the problem every day here at Basketball Prospectus, starting with the teams that have locked up bids, automatic or otherwise, and working down through the bottom of a highly unimpressive bubble, and we?ll do it right up to Sunday at 6 p.m. ET, when the field for March Madness is announced.This may be a much simpler process this year, as not only do we have a weak field to begin with, including significant stratification, but many teams simply played their way out of the discussion over the past few weeks. Remember when the Atlantic 14 was going to get six bids? They?re at three and holding because of how poorly Dayton, Rhode Island and Charlotte played down the stretch. The Big ...

I used to do surgery, on girls in the '80s. But gravity always wins. So now I stick to mailbags: Andrew from California writes: The Yankee, I mean Pinstripe, Bowl will place the No. 4 Big East team against the Big 12 No. 7. Here are what the matchups would have been over the past years: 2005 -- USF (6-5) vs Missouri (6-5); 2006 -- USF (8-4) or Cincinnati (7-5) vs Missouri (8-4); 2007 -- USF (9-3) or Rutgers (7-5) vs. Colorado (6-6); 2008 -- Rutgers (7-5) vs replacement. 2009: Rutgers (8-4) or UConn (7-5) vs. Iowa state (6-6). It's OK most years. We will see. Brian Bennett: Thanks for that research, Andrew. A couple of things to remember about the New Era Pinstripe Bowl, its official name now. While the matchups might not be sexy every year, this basically replaced the ...

Leave a Comment Last night SNY had a special where they took a look at the Top 10 All-Time players of the Big East. It was an entertaining hour program with in-studio commentary by the coverage crew at SNY, including former Big East Player of the Year and Pitt Panther Charles Smith, former Big East head coach Tim Welsh, Lenn Robbins of the NY Post and SNY college basketball expert Brandon Tierney and hosted by Gary Apple.Nine of their top 10 were also included in the top 10 of NBE’s All-Time Top 50 Big East players of all-time that we released in the fall of 2008.Here is SNY’s Top 10 with the NBE ranking in parenthesis:10) Kerry Kittles (9) 9) Richard Hamilton (7) 8] Walter Berry (5) 7) Alonzo Mourning (14) 6) Allen Iverson (3) 5) Pearl Washington (6) 4) Ray Allen (8) ...

You remember that bowl game planned for Yankee Stadium in December? It has a name. Please welcome the New Era Pinstripe Bowl.The New Era Pinstripe Bowl will be held on Dec. 30, 2010, and televised nationally by ESPN.A press conference announcing the name will be held at 10 a.m. at Yankee Stadium. The name comes from the game’s four-year title sponsor, headwear and apparel manufacturer New Era Cap Company, Inc.The bowl will match the third-place Big East team with the sixth-place Big 12 team, after the BCS teams from each conference are excluded from consideration. Both teams will stay in Manhattan, the Big East team at the Grand Hyatt and the Big 12 team at the Sheraton New York.The bowl’s Web site, newerapinstripebowl.com, will be launched later today.According to the press release I got sent:There is a four-year agreement extending through 2013 for the Big East and Big 12 ...

I don’t see Pitt’s seed changing unless they win the Big East Tournament.  Based on various projections I’ve seen, here is my half-assed, amalgamated projection of the top four lines.#1 — Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse, Duke#2 — WVU, K-State, Ohio St., New Mexico#3 — Villanova, Purdue, Pitt, Wisconsin#4 — Michigan St., Baylor, Tennessee, BYUOthers that could move up the line to #4 or possibly #3 with a big conference tourney: Maryland, Temple, Vandy, Texas A&M and Georgetown.The top two lines look rather solid in my view. Meanwhile a Hummel-less Purdue and oddly unraveling Nova squad seem more precarious at the #3 seed.Even if (god forbid) the team goes out in the quarter-finals, Pitt would still be a #3 seed. MSU seems like the most likely to be able to move up a line given the relative openness of the Big 11’s conference tourney as compared to the SEC and Big 12.I ...

We'll finally know the NCAA Tournament field on Sunday evening when the selection committee announces the 65 teams. With that highlight of the college basketball season fast approaching, let's take one last look at our projected NCAA field along with our top 25 teams.The top four on The List remain unchanged from last week as Kansas stays at No. 1 and is followed by Syracuse, Duke and Kentucky. West Virginia moves into the No. 5 spot. The biggest gainer of the week is Tennessee, which moves back onto The List at No. 20 after falling out of the rankings last week. Vanderbilt takes the biggest tumble, dropping from No. 19 to off The List.As always, we lean on the objective data, taking into account Ken Pomeroy?s Pomeroy Ratings at kenpom.com, the Jeff Sagarin ratings for USA Today at usatoday.com, RealTimeRPI at realtimerpi.com, Team Rankings at teamrankings.com and Kyle Whelliston?s State ...

Norm Roberts and Fred Hill will be coaching for their futures when they step on the Madison Square Garden court Tuesday for the first round of the Big East tournament. Roberts, the St. John’s coach, and Hill, the Rutgers head man, are both on the hottest of hot seats and face highly uncertain futures. St. John’s (16-14) is the No. 13 seed in the tournament and drew a tough first-round opponent in No. 12 UConn (17-14), which hasn’t won a Big East tournament game since 2005. The Red Storm and Huskies tip at 2 p.m. No. 14 Rutgers (15-16) faces Lance Stephenson and No. 11 Cincinnati (16-14) at 9:00 p.m., after No. 10 Seton Hall (18-11) takes on No. 15 Providence (12-18). Read the full story here . **Rutgers senior center Hamady N’Diaye ...

Pitt did not have anyone who made first-team All-Big East, and a Pitt player will not win conference player of the year when that award is handed out this afternoon. But someone from Pitt did win the award most coveted by coach Jamie Dixon.Sophomore guard Ashton Gibbs Monday was named the Big East's most improved player. It was the sixth time in the past 11 years that a Pitt player has won the award.The most improved player award is important to Dixon because he believes it signifies how well players develop once they enter the program."It's a great honor," Dixon said. "It's well-deserved. The most improved player award is probably the most important honor in the conference to us. When we recruit kids, we tell them how much better they can become as students, as players and help them grow as people. We do make the promise to families that ...

Submit your Pitt basketball questionA quick programming note: my weekly live Pitt basketball chat will not be on Tuesday next week, and will instead take place Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. live from New York, site of the Big East tournament.And I'll be bloggiing from New York exclusively on my Pitt basketball blog on PG-Plus. Membership in that site is only $3.99 per month or $36 per year. Q: In your opinion which coaching job has been more impressive: Jamie Dixon taking a team unranked in the preseason and picked to finish ninth in the Big East to a second-place finish in the Big East tournament and probable No. 3 NCAA seed or Jim Boeheim taking a similarly unranked preseason team picked to finsh sixth in the league to the regular season Big East title and national No. 1 ranking? My opinion is Dixon because the Panthers also beat three teams ...