Pitt coaches sat at courtside in March and scouted Richmond in an NCAA tournament first-round game against Wisconsin at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee before the Panthers played Central Florida in their first-round game. Any notes taken from that game -- one that Wisconsin won 76-64 -- can be thrown in the trash.

		Matchup: No. 10 Pitt (8-0) vs. Richmond (4-3), 7 p.m. today, Petersen Events Center. TV, radio: ESPN2, WPBG-FM (104.7), WBBG-AM (970). Pitt: Coming off 73-42 victory against Coppin State. ... Has won eight consecutive games against Atlantic 10 Conference foes. ... Has won seven in a row at the Petersen Events Center. ... A win would give Pitt a 9-0 start for a third consecutive season. ... Led by junior G Carl Krauser (14.8 ppg, 3.4 rpg, 5.9 apg), senior F Chevon Troutman (14.5 ppg, 7.6 rpg) and sophomore C Chris Taft (13.4 ppg, 7.3 rpg). Richmond: Coming off a 96-81 victory against UAB. ... Has also beaten Seton Hall, Elon and South Florida. ... Losses have come against Virginia, Wake forest and Virginia Commonwealth. ... The 96 points scored against UAB were the most under third-year coach Jerry Wainright and the most since scoring 97 against Radford in 1997. ... Junior Jermaine Bucknor is the Atlantic 10 co-player of the week after netting 22 points against UAB. He set career highs in field goals (8), 3-point field goals (5) and assists (5). ... G Daon Merritt leads the Spiders in scoring with 14.7 points per game. Hidden Stat: Pitt and Richmond have played one other occasion. The Panthers beat the Spiders, 47-24, during the 1938-39 season.

They won't mean anything when Richmond visits the Petersen Events Center at 7 p.m. today for a non-conference contest against No. 10 Pitt.

Richmond coach Jerry Wainwright lost three 1,000-point scorers from that NCAA tournament team. Gone are Tony Dobbins, the first player in Atlantic 10 history to be named the league's defensive player of the year in consecutive seasons; Mike Skrocki, the team's leading scorer; and Reggie Brown, an athletic player and the team's third-leading scorer.

Gone with them is Richmond's defensive-minded style, replaced by an up-tempo offensive game.

"I think the biggest difference is the change of style," Wainwright said. "We're playing a lot faster, we're more athletic. We'll have 10 guys by the end of the season who will average in double-figure minutes."

Richmond, which averaged 64.5 points per game last season, is averaging 73.1 per game this season. The Spiders scored their most points in four seasons last week in a 96-81 victory against UAB, a team that advanced to the third round of the NCAA tournament team last season.

Richmond's defense last season was among the best in Division I, ranking eighth in scoring defense (59.5 ppg) and 18th in field-goal percentage defense (39.7). This season the Spiders are giving up almost 75 points a game and opponents are shooting almost 45 percent from the field.

"What was tough about it was all the guys we lost were perimeter players," Wainwright said. "Two of those guys were fifth-year kids. They were all interchangeable. They could do a lot of things for us. You lose a lot of things on the floor, but you also lose a lot of intangibles. There are no drills you can do for leadership when things go bad. We miss their ability as players, but we miss them a lot more in other areas. Our team is still trying to define itself in terms of leadership. We're still trying to communicate on the floor. We have a lot of good players who played a lot last season. The way I put it to people is they were lounge acts last season. Now they're headliners."

Richmond's leading scorer is sophomore guard Daon Merritt, who is averaging 14.7 points and 5.1 assists per game. Junior center Kevin Steenberge (13.9 ppg) and junior forward Jermaine Bucknor (13.0 ppg) also score in double figures.

Wainwright is testing his team's resolve with a difficult non-conference schedule. Richmond alread has beaten Seton Hall and lost to Virginia and Wake Forest. After Pitt, the Spiders head west to the Fiesta Bowl Classic where they will face Butler and either Arizona or Eastern Washington, and then play Colorado at home before league play begins.

Wainwright likes his team and believes the tough non-league schedule will toughen them up for A-10 play.

"It's not a total reconstruction," Wainwright said. "We have good players who played in big games last season. We've chosen not to ease them into anything. We're in NASCAR country down here, so I'll give you an analogy. I've got some good parts to my car. The only thing is the driver of the car could drive us into the wall."

Richmond has a history of playing well on the road. Under Wainwright, the Spiders have won three games against ranked opponents on their home floor: at No. 10 Kansas last season and at No. 21 Xavier and No. 17 Stanford the previous season.

Wainwright knows the odds are stacked against his team tonight at the Petersen Events Center, where the Panthers are 41-1. But then again, the Jayhawks don't lose at Allen Fieldhouse much, either.

"Like I told our guys last year before the Kansas game," Wainwright said. "No one gave the Christians much of a chance when they were thrown to the lions. Well, we have Christianity today. They looked at me like they didn't know what I was talking about, but it made sense to me.

"We have to hope to keep it a game and have a chance around the five-minute mark. If you can hang, you never know what can happen."