Jed Jacobsohn, Getty Images It has been thumbs up for UCLA men's basketball coach Ben Howland, who left Pitt after four seasons and made two Sweet 16 appearances with the Panthers.

It was a laborious Saturday for the top-seeded teams in the NCAA tournament. Pitt and UCLA were among the bevy of highly seeded teams to survive and move on, and now all eyes will be on the Bruins and Panthers for a West Region semifinal game Thursday at HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif., pitting pupil against teacher.

UCLA is coached by Ben Howland, a former coach at Pitt from 1999-2003, and the mentor to Pitt's current coach, Jamie Dixon. It will be the first meeting between the two schools since Howland bolted for the West Coast.

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Howland and Dixon, who remain close friends and speak on a regular basis, said the only way they would play each other is in the NCAA tournament. Dixon downplayed the opportunity to play his mentor after Pitt beat Virginia Commonwealth, 84-79, in overtime Saturday night, but his players know he is looking forward to getting the chance to play Howland and the Bruins.

"I think coach Dixon is looking forward to it," Pitt junior Mike Cook said. "He may seem like he's cool about it, but he's excited."

It is fitting in some ways that Pitt will face UCLA in this NCAA third-round game. Dixon advanced to his first Sweet 16 in 2004, the season after Howland left for UCLA. It was a terrific coaching job by Dixon, but he did it with a team that was tailor-made for a deep run in the NCAA tournament. He had three of Howland's starters and several key reserves returning.

Pitt made the NCAA tournament the next two seasons, but was knocked out early. The Panthers lost in the first round in 2005 and in the second round last season when No. 13 seed Bradley pulled off an upset, a loss that denied fans a potential Pitt-UCLA matchup in the Elite Eight. (Bradley went on to lose to Memphis in the Sweet 16, and Memphis lost to UCLA in the fourth round.)

Dixon and Pitt got back to the Sweet 16 Saturday night with a team that he can call his own. Only senior forward Levon Kendall played under Howland, and that was only as a practice player in 2002-03 when Kendall was taking a redshirt. Everyone on the team except for Kendall and senior center Aaron Gray were recruited and signed by Dixon as the head coach.

In an interview a month ago with the Post-Gazette, Dixon revealed that one of the reasons Howland left Pitt was because he didn't feel like he could sustain the success he had attained during his four seasons as coach. He felt like he had taken the program as far as it could go.

Dixon made it known that he thought there were greater heights for the program to achieve.

"To be honest, Ben didn't think we could sustain it," Dixon said during an interview in his office Feb. 21. "He took less money to go to another job, what most people would consider a better job. I've always seen more in [Pitt] than other people did. I have higher expectations than anybody for this job. I know no one thought we could do what we are doing."

It was a candid moment for Dixon, who had just won his 100th game as Pitt's coach a night earlier. It was a unique view into the world of Dixon. If that milestone victory did not get him out from under Howland's shadow, the victory Saturday night surely did.

Gray said he and his teammates are aware that Howland did not believe Pitt could be a successful program in the long run, and said it will serve as some small motivation Thursday.

"A lot of credit goes to coach Dixon and the way he has managed this team," Gray said. "The level he has kept the University of Pittsburgh ... we don't get a lot of blue-chip recruits. We get a lot of guys who are willing to work hard and get better. The coaches deserve a lot of credit for what's happened here."

Gray signed his letter of intent when Howland was still Pitt's coach in November 2002. Gray said he spoke with Howland after Howland accepted the UCLA job and does not have any hard feelings toward him for leaving Pitt.

"I talked to him," Gray said. "He told me his situation and why he had made the choice he had made. The position I was in, the only thing I could do was wish him luck. There's no hard feeling or anything like that."

Kendall was a little more emotionally invested with Howland. He was a freshman taking a redshirt season in 2002-03 and he and all other players on the team had been led to believe that Howland would be staying put at Pitt.

"It was a little shocking," Kendall said of the way Howland left. "I was a little disappointed. It seemed like he was going to be there for a while. But that's the nature of the game. That's a hard job to pass up. Things are going very well for him. We've had success as well. We've moved on. There's no grudges or anything like that."

Kendall has not talked with Howland since he left for UCLA. When he traveled down the West Coast from his Vancouver, British Columbia, home this summer with some friends, he stopped at UCLA to catch up with Howland, but Howland was not on campus. He did talk with some of Howland's assistants coaches who also were assistants at Pitt.

"I'm looking forward to seeing him," Kendall said. "It will be a good matchup. It will bring a lot of attention. It will be fun to play those guys."