BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin's Greg Gard read aloud from the scouting report on Pittsburgh.
"They're going to turn it into a football game," he contended. "It's going to be real physical — all of their players are extremely big and thick and mature."
One other thing.
"We have to be cognizant of what they're trying to do," he stressed, "and not get rattled."
One more thing.
Those were Gard's observations on Pitt — 12 years ago.
Gard was on top of his scouting game, too, because the Panthers were exactly what he said they would be in the 2004 NCAA Tournament. They were physically tough and intimidating.
The Badgers found that out the hard way during a second-round matchup in Milwaukee.
The Panthers broke open a hotly-contested tussle — 10 ties and 11 leads changes — with back-to-back dunks from Chris Taft and Julius Page during a 7-0 run that appeared to rattle Wisconsin in the end.
It was Carl Krauser's aggressive drive and basket that broke a 52-52 deadlock and it was Jaron Brown's clutch offensive rebound and free throws that spelled the difference in Pitt's 59-54 win.
Devin Harris had 21 points and Zach Morley had 12 for a Wisconsin team that won the Big Ten tournament championship and had a chip on its shoulder because of its No. 6 seed.
The concession was playing 90 minutes from campus at the Bradley Center.
But the penalty was drawing the vastly under-seeded Panthers, who were the Big East regular-season champs and had more wins than anybody else in Division I yet still drew only a No. 3 seed.
Their four losses had come by a total of 10 points, including two overtime defeats. So they were playing with a bigger chip on their shoulder for having to play the Badgers in their backyard.
By winning, Pittsburgh was able to avenge a loss to Wisconsin in their only other meeting in the NCAA tournament. That was in 1941, and the Badgers went on to win the national championship.
The 2004 Pitt team never got to play for one.
It lost in the Sweet 16 to No. 2 seed Oklahoma State.
Still, Pitt's record, 31-5, made for an auspicious head coaching debut by Jamie Dixon, who had been promoted from within the program after Ben Howland left for UCLA at the end of the 2003 season.
Dixon, then 38, was Howland's top assistant and disciple. But his only previous head coaching experience was at TeAute College in New Zealand. You could make a movie out of such a storyline.
Dixon would be the right guy for that since he was raised in North Hollywood and was a member of the Screen Actor's Guild. As a youngster, he had roles in TV commercials for Rice Krispies and others.
Before going to New Zealand to hone his craft as a coach, Dixon extended his playing career with a stint for the La Crosse Catbirds of the Continental Basketball Association. Small world.
Dixon, now completing his 13th season as Pitt's head coach, and Gard, now entering his second week as Wisconsin's, should have plenty to talk about in St. Louis prior to Friday's first-round game.
Both are friends with UW football coach Paul Chryst, who was hired away from Pitt to return to his alma matter. Beyond that, Dixon and Gard should be content with their NCAA tournament seeds.
Not that contentment is ever associated with the profession, especially in March.
After the first 18 games, the No. 7-seeded Badgers were 9-9 and 1-4 in the Big Ten. Their streak of 17 consecutive trips to the Big Dance was definitely in jeopardy. Would they make it 18?
After winning 14 of their first 15 games — the only loss coming to Purdue in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge — the No. 10-seeded Panthers lost 7 of their last 11, putting them on the bubble. Getting back to the Dance was a challenge for Dixon after failing to make the field last season, one of only two years during his tenure that Pittsburgh was left out.
"I've seen a couple of their games," said Wisconsin guard Zak Showalter. "I know (James) Robinson is a good point guard. Other than that, I haven't really paid attention to them too much.
"I do know they always have big strong centers and power forwards."
That meshed with Bronson Koenig's and Vitto Brown's historical perspective of the Panthers.
"Watching them in previous years," Koenig said, "they've always been really tough."
"Pitt always seems like a blue-collar, hard-working team," Brown said. "We're the same way."
That personality may have attracted Sheldon Jeter to the Badgers during the 2012 recruiting process after he led Beaver Falls High School to the Pennsylvania Class AA state final as a senior.
Jeter, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Player of the Year, received a scholarship offer from Wisconsin and took an official visit to Madison. He would have been in Showalter's and Sam Dekker's class. But he chose Vanderbilt over the Badgers, Penn State and South Carolina. The Nashville experience didn't turn out well for Jeter, who spent a year at a junior college before transferring to Pitt.
The 6-foot-8, 225-pound Jeter, one of five players from the Pittsburgh area on the Panthers' roster, can guard multiple positions. As one of Dixon's top reserves, he's averaging eight points and five rebounds.
To fill a personnel void, the Panthers opened their door to graduate transfers and landed three of them: Sterling Smith (Coppin State), Alonzo Nelson-Ododa (Richmond) and Rafael Maia (Brown).
Smith, a 6-4 guard, and Maia, a 6-9 forward, have started 23 and 24 games, respectively. But their minutes have been limited. The 6-9 Nelson-Ododa is the back end of the rotation.
Pitt's leading scorer is 6-9, 225-pound Michael Young, a third-team All-ACC selection. Young ranked among the conference leaders in scoring (16), rebounds (7) and field goal percentage (.539). With 101 career starts, Young is the one of the most experienced players in the lineup. He has scored in double-figures in 29 games and had 20 or more points on nine occasions.
Young, a native of Duquesne, Pennsylvania, went to St. Benedict's Prep (Newark, New Jersey), where he roomed for one season with Jamel Artis, the second-leading scorer for the Panthers.
Young and the 6-7, 215-pound Artis both had 19 points in Pittsburgh's 88-71 loss to North Carolina in the ACC tournament quarterfinals. The Tar Heels shot 59 percent from the field. The game was tied at 45 with 15:52 left when North Carolina got separation with an 11-0 run. Pitt's backcourt of James Robinson and Cameron Johnson were a combined 5-of-18 from the field.
In the Panthers' previous game, a 72-71 win over Syracuse, Johnson had a career-high 24 points, including four triples. Robinson had 12 points, four assists and two steals.
The 6-3, 198-pound Robinson, a product of DeMatha Catholic, has 162 assists this season and 600 for his career. He has started 134 of 135 games.
In Pitt's convincing 76-62 victory over Duke, Robinson had 14 points, seven assists, three rebounds and just one turnover in his final home appearance at the Petersen Events Center. The Panthers had five players in double-figures, including Ryan Luther, who came off the bench to score 10 points. It was Pitt's first victory over a ranked opponent in seven attempts this season.
Attacking the glass is characteristic of most Dixon-coached teams. In the ACC, the Panthers ranked No. 2 behind North Carolina in rebounding margin. They're 17-4 when outrebounding a foe.
Wisconsin and Pittsburgh last played in 2006 with the No. 7-ranked Badgers knocked off the No. 2 Panthers, 89-75, at the Kohl Center. It was the first regular-season game in UW history between two teams ranked in the Top 10 of the Associated Press poll. Alando Tucker had 32 points and Brian Butch had 27.
When these programs resume their series Friday in St. Louis, it should be a spirited, tug-of-war; a low-scoring, possession-by-possession grinder.
"In my opinion," Nigel Hayes said of the winning recipe in the NCAA tournament, "you're not going to add any plays or you're not going to try any new schemes.
"It's just a matter of the will and the want of the players."
Friday's winner will face the winner of No. 2 seed Xavier and No. 15 seed Weber State.
"Wisconsin-Pittsburgh — interesting game," pondered ESPN analyst Jay Bilas on Sunday. "I think Wisconsin is going to wind up winning that game behind Nigel Hayes, Bronson Koenig and a freshman named Ethan Happ that has got some of the best footwork of a big guy that you'll ever see."
When Koenig was asked if the Badgers would be playing with a chip on their shoulder after a humbling loss to Nebraska in the Big Ten tournament, he said, "I don't really think it gives us a chip on our shoulder. Hopefully we can have some positive takeaways from that game and learn some things.
"We just know that we can't ever let any team play harder than us because we can lose to anyone and we can also beat anyone in the country."
A lot of teams can say the same things this March.
