Pittsburgh 76, Connecticut 68

A whole month without posts in the middle of the season? Inexcusable, though I'll try: law school and my NBA blog are taking up most of my time. I'll try to do better down the stretch. And what better way to get back into it than a matchup of top-five teams battling for Big East supremacy?

The big story from this one lay in the stat lines from Pittsburgh's DeJuan Blair and Connecticut's Hasheem Thabeet: 22 points and 23 rebounds for the former; five points and four rebounds for the latter. Complete domination of the matchup from start to finish, starting with Blair flipping Thabeet onto his back, professional wrestling style, early in the game (highlights here).

I'm not willing to go as far as to say that that play set the tone for the evening, but it certainly summed up the matchup between this two well-regarded big men. Blair was tougher and stronger (and better) than Thabeet all night, capping the evening with a game-sealing block of Thabeet - a "stuff," really, with Blair essentially ripping the ball out of Thabeet's hands.

The ESPN highlight reel linked above focuses almost exclusively on the Blair-Thabeet matchup, and if you watch it, you'll see a diverse offensive arsenal from Blair that I frankly didn't know he had. Jump hook, turnaround jumper, lefty layin after a drop step. Even the one time Thabeet got the best of him, blocking an ill-advised fadeaway, Blair retrieved the ball and went right at Thabeet, driving into the land before stepping through for lefty layup. And the foul.

Another thing I hadn't seen before from Blair was his outlet passing. He threw at least three terrific outlet passes last night, including the one at the end of the highlight that followed his block of Thabeet.

Finally, I was very impressed by his conditioning. He's 6'7", 265, which is a lot of DeJuan Blair to be carrying up and down the court for 38 minutes. But that's how many minutes he did play, a game high, and he wasn't exactly just going through the motions out there. These were 38 minutes of rebounding and jumping and battling for position; 38 minutes of work. Blair is short for his position, which means he has to rely more on strength than a taller man would. Blair exerted himself for nearly the whole game, and was still fresh enough to register that block on Thabeet in the closing minute.

As for Thabeet, he seems like a consensus lottery pick, and while it's hard to quibble with his height and weakside shot-blocking ability, particularly in what should be a relatively shallow draft, I'm just not sure. I've now twice watched him be completely neutralized and outplayed by an opposing big man (December vs. Greg Monroe and Georgetown is the other), and while he had a respectable nine points and 11 rebounds against Notre Dame, it's worth noting that Luke Harangody had 24 and 15 for the Irish.

It just seems like every time Thabeet goes up against somebody halfway decent, he gets shown up. Sure, he can put up 25 and 20 with nine blocks against Seton Hall like he did the other day, but so what? The competiton in the pros is going to be tougher than it is now.

As far as Connecticut goes generally, losing Jerome Dyson for the year with a knee injury obviously hurts their depth, but anything that gives freshman Kemba Walker more court time can't be all bad. I really like this kid. Lightning-quick, good passer, plays within himself. With Walker, A.J. Price, and Craig Austrie, the Huskies should get plenty of production from their backcourt.

As for Pittsburgh: I'm impressed. Sam Young's a lot better than I thought he was, and I've grudgingly come to accept that if Levance Fields is not an elite point guard, he is the kind of point guard you can win a championship with. Takes care of the ball and steps up when it matters (witness the two threes he hit down the stretch last night -- his first two made field goals of the game.) I also think that the Panthers are better defensively than they have been in recent years. Pitt, of course, had a strong defensive reputation under Ben Howland, and when Howland left for UCLA and his assistant Jamie Dixon took over, that reputation carried over. But it seemed like Pitt's defense had actually gotten worse each of the past several years, as though the emphasis on defense decreased the more time elapsed between Howland and the program. They seem better on that end this year. Maybe that will translate to some March success.

Pittsburgh 70, Georgetown 54

I'm ack in DC for a few days and checked out this one with my cousin and a few friends. After Georgetown so thoroughly outplayed UConn in Storrs earlier in the week, I was expecting a better game than I got. If it weren't for DaJuan Summers hitting some very difficult shots -- he had 15 at halftime and finished with 22 -- it wouldn't have been much of a ballgame. As it was, the Panthers had it well in hand by the last several minutes. I was sitting right by the Pitt section -- those folks travel well. And they've been rewarded -- the Panthers are the nation's new number one team for the first time in history, after North Carolina's stunning loss to Boston College in Chapel Hill last night (so much for the undefeated season I had been predicting).

Sitting up in the 400 level -- "the Hill" as its known in the Verizon Center, a nod, of course, to Capitol Hill -- it was hard to appreciate just how dominant Pitt's DeJuan Blair was, so it was something of a surprise afterward to see his stat line of 20 points and 17 rebounds. His counterpart, Greg Monroe (who I raved about recently) had a decent game by the box score with 15 points and eight boards, but Blair thoroughly outplayed him. I don't want to say that Monroe needs to become more physical because I think his future is on the wing, but for Gerogetown's purposes, I'm sure they'd like him to bang a bit more.

Speaking of Monroe and Blair, after last Monday's performance against UConn, I was curious to see where Monroe ranked on the NBA draft sites, nbadraft.net and DraftExpress. Neither site had updated its mock draft since the game when I first checked, and neither site had Monroe listed.

I kept checking, and while I didn't find Monroe on nbadraft.net right away, I did find that Monroe had moved from off the board to number three overall on DraftExpress, while UConn's Hasheem Thabeet -- the 7'3" junior who Monroe badly outplayed -- had dropped a few spots, from (I think) five to eight. I can't tell if DraftExpress has updated its mock since Saturday, but Monroe is still at three and Thabeet is still at eight, with Blair at 20. I'll keep an eye on it to see if it moves further.

Over on nbadraft.net, and again, I don't know when the update occurred, Monroe is 20th, Thabeet's third, and Blair is 29th.

These rankings really don't mean anything, but I thought it was interesting to see Monroe debut so high on the DraftExpress board and to see him jump Thabeet.

You can catch Georgetown in action tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern at Notre Dame on ESPN. The Irish were surprise losers to St. John's on Saturday.

-I want to follow up on this post: Louisville lost at home to UNLV before squeaking by Kentucky on Edgar Sosa's bomb (video in link). I still think Louisville could be in a lot of trouble, but it would be even worse without a single respectable non-conference win. Sosa might've saved the Cardinals season with that shot. Anyway, the 'ville opens conference play on Wednesday at South Florida, then enters their toughest five-game stretch of conference play: at Villanova, home vs. Notre Dame, home vs. Pittsburgh, at Rutgers, at Syracuse. This just seems like a volatile group and a bad start could really be curtains for them.