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Sunday, January 27, 2002

The extraordinary season for the Pitt basketball team has come down to this: It's no longer a question of whether the Panthers can contend in the Big East Conference, but whether they can win the Big East.

And this: It's no longer a question of whether the Panthers will be invited to the NCAA tournament, but of how high they'll be seeded and where they'll play.

Pitt soared to 18-3 yesterday at Fitzgerald Field House with a 67-56 dusting of Georgetown. It was easier than the 11-point margin of victory indicated. Once the Panthers settled, after falling behind, 27-17, there was little doubt about which team would win.

"We showed a lot of poise, heart and character to get down by 10 and not lose our composure," Coach Ben Howland said.

Once a victory against the mighty Hoyas would have been a cause for rejoicing. But the Panthers took it matter-of-factly. And why not? Hadn't they won at Georgetown a week earlier? Hadn't they beaten 12th-ranked Syracuse three days after that.

The early-season notion that the Panthers were some kind of fluke is no longer even a consideration.

"Ben's got a very good team," Georgetown Coach Craig Esherick said. "You have to be good to win 18 games.

"They're the best team in the league, no question about it. I think Miami's pretty good, too."

It should be noted that Georgetown has yet to play Connecticut, which was 6-0 and in first place in the East Division, and Syracuse, which was 5-1 and in first place in the West Division.

Most certainly, the Panthers are contenders to win the league championship. They lack the classic big-time player, but little else. They play defense, they rebound, they scrap and they believe.

They've turned Fitzgerald into the fun showplace it hasn't been for more than a decade. It's like old times when the likes of Charles Smith, Jerome Lane, Brian Shorter, Jason Matthews and Sean Miller raised the Panthers to among the elite in Division I.

It's all a powerful formula, which Howland figures to exploit the remainder of the way as the schedule becomes decidedly easier. Pitt has eight remaining regular-season games with which to add to its victory total. It also will get chances for wins in the Big East and NCAA tournaments.

No Pitt team has won more than 25 games. Chances are good this team can exceed that total.

So there's not a dark cloud hovering over the Pitt program, which Howland has raised from the scrap heap in less than three seasons?

Wrong.

Think about it. The team picked to finish sixth out of seven teams in the Big East West Division and the team lacking anything approaching an NBA prospect is nationally ranked and headed for the NCAA tournament, which means it has one thing that dozens of Division I teams are seeking: a coach who has shown he can win even in the worst of conditions.

Howland has emerged as one of the hottest commodities in the coaching profession.

In the world of college athletics, where coaching contracts are near meaningless scraps of paper, there's probably a half dozen schools already eyeing Howland as the successor to their soon-to-be fired coach.

Howland's an honorable man. When it comes to character, he stands near the top of the coaching profession. He's not the kind of man who would easily walk away from a commitment.

But he also sits near or at the bottom of the salary scale among Big East coaches.

When his contract was extended by two years after the team's surprisingly advanced to the finals of the Big East tournament last season, Howland described the pay raise that came with that extension as "a little bit."

Is there a man alive who can resist the temptation of the big money some Division I programs throw around? The salaries of college basketball coaches are not regularly in seven-figures like those of their football brethren. But they're getting there, and if Howland is near being low man in the Big East he's a prime candidate to be lured away.

Athletic Director Steve Pederson believes that when you find a good coach you hang on to him.

Toward that end, Pederson should be at least in the early stages of discussing a new contract with Howland, one that includes not "a little bit" of a raise but a very significant one.

If Pederson doesn't act soon, another school will.

Bob Smizik can be reached at bsmizik@post-gazette.com.