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Tuesday, January 07, 2003

By Chuck Finder, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

College basketball's balding rock star played Pitt last night. It was his first performance in the Uptown-Oakland vicinity in 14 years, minimum. That's a long time between Dickie V shows, bayyyybee.

	Vitale ESPN's evangelist of dunks, dribbles and diaper-dandies

"The mid-1980s?" Dick Vitale tried to remember after an ESPN "Big Monday" broadcast last night, while getting escorted from the crowds of autograph seekers and out the Petersen Events Center, a subject he'll get to in a minute. "The Jerome Lane Era. The Charles Smith Era. Demetreus Gore. Let's see if I can name them all. Curtis Aiken ...

"I did a Pitt-Syracuse game at the Civic Center." OK, so it was the Civic Arena then. And, the best Pitt archaeologists can unearth, it was probably a 1988 telecast in which Syracuse's Matt Roe lit up the Panthers. He was a Prime Time Player that night, in the Dickie V parlance.

Vitale is the star of these ESPN road shows, and the college kids flock to him. Last night, students wearing the trademark gold Zoo T-shirts swarmed around the floor, standing behind his courtside broadcast position and holding placards that he later autographed. With less than four minutes left in a game that No. 6 Pitt eventually won, 72-55, against No. 5 Notre Dame, the TV audience saw Vitale put on a Julius Page headband, a Zoo T-shirt and huddle between two lovely coeds, as they were called back in the day.

"This is my 24th year," he later said between handshakes with Aiken, former Villanova and NBA player Doug West ("shooting that jumper in Altoona," Vitale recalled) and Pitt trustee John Conomikes. "I bet I've done over 1,000-some games. It's been so much fun. I'm 63, and the kids ... they make me feel like a teenager."

Of Petersen Events Center, Vitale gushed: "Great environment. I had a lot of fun. The fans are absolutely wonderful. The arena is absolutely fantastic. First class. It's going to help recruiting."

Of the Panthers, he wasn't so effusive: "They're in there with a bunch. I think there are about 20 teams with a chance. It's really wide open. However, they've got one area that scares me. Brandin Knight ... he's got to improve at the free-throw line. If you're trying to get to the Final Four, you've got to win games taking free throws at the end. Even tonight, they were 11 of 25. That's not going to get it done."