PHILADELPHIA — C.J. Fair and Brandon Triche went back and forth, arguing amid laughter about who beat Pittsburgh more in their college careers. Triche first questioned if he’d ever beaten the Panthers before Fair interjected and reassured that he beat Pitt at least once.

“I know when I played I’m not sure if we beat them,” Triche said. “I’m trying to think.”

“No we beat ‘em,” Fair chimed in. “I know I did.”

Triche: “I don’t know, your senior year…”

Fair: “Nah, nah, nah, our first time beating Pitt was…”

Triche: “Your senior year…”

Fair: “No, was it sophomore … your junior year, ‘cause that was our best year.”

Triche: “Oh yeah yeah yeah, junior year.”

Fair: “But we didn’t beat them in like seven or eight years.”

Triche: “Yeah before then.”

It turns out the two former Syracuse starters underestimated their success against the Panthers — a fair assumption given Jamie Dixon’s all-time success against Jim Boeheim. It turns out Triche’s SU teams were 2-3 against Pitt, while Syracuse teams Fair was on, three of which Triche shared, went 4-2 against the Panthers.

Thursday will bring the next installment in the ACC rivalry but with an old Big East flavor in July. The Syracuse alumni team, second-seeded Boeheim’s Army, and Pitt’s alumni team, No. 3 seed The Untouchables, square off in the Super 16 of The Basketball Tournament at 7 p.m. at Philadelphia University.

The back-and-forth finally ended and the only thing Triche didn’t interrupt was Fair’s description of the Pitt teams that Jim Boeheim and the Orange have come to dread.

“Pittsburgh, you always know what to expect with Pittsburgh,” Fair said. “They have a tough team, they’ve got some bigs all over the court, they got big guards, big wings.”

The Untouchables boast several prominent players from the Big East Panthers, including Gilbert Brown, Bradley Wanamaker, Gary McGhee and Levance Fields. In Sunday’s Round of 32, Wanamaker’s buzzer-beating layup to end regulation saved The Untouchables from an upset at the hands of Bucknell’s alumni team before the former Panthers eked out a two-point win in overtime.

It’s the same style of Pitt team that gave Syracuse fits — gritty, big on the inside and anything but flashy. It’s something every member of Boeheim’s Army aside from Willie Deane knows all too well. The addition of a ringer for the Army, whether it be James Southerland or someone else, will add a much needed three-point threat to spread the floor against a team that made a living on the inside in college and still seemed to do the same in the first two rounds.

Pittsburgh has taken down Syracuse in the teams’ last five matchups, including three times in the 2015-16 season. But no players from either team are from the past five college matchups and the cast of characters from the grind-it-out games preceding the end of the old Big East will fight to stay alive for the $2 million.

“It’s gonna be a battle,” Fair said. “We just gotta want it more and fight it out.”

Published on July 21, 2016 at 9:20 am

Contact Matt: mcschnei@syr.edu | @matt_schneidman