College basketball howls like an ever-thickening blizzard of numbers pounding the entry way to March, and as Pitt finished another splendid winter near the warm hearth that is the Petersen Events Center the other night -- the Panthers are 80-8 there all time -- the one number worth pondering as the Panthers venture toward Madness might be this:

7.

Seven is the number of wins Jamie Dixon needs between here and destiny to become the all-time Division I record-holder for most wins after four seasons as a head coach, eclipsing the 107 rung up by Everett Case at North Carolina State during the Truman Administration.

Dixon will be the first to tell you that March is not about him, but the problem is, seven is very close to Pitt's numerological talisman right now, whether anyone associated with these accomplished Panthers wants to say it out loud or not.

Senior center Aaron Gray had a lot to say out loud at halftime Tuesday night against West Virginia, coaxing his teammates out of a three-point deficit toward a scalding second half that put them back in a first-place tie with Georgetown in the Enormous East Conference.

"Tyrell Biggs is very valuable for us," Gray said after Biggs came off the bench for seven points and an assist in eight hectic minutes. "That's the kind of thing we need to go deep into March."

And what, exactly, is "deep into March?"

That's what nobody will say exactly. But I'll say it.

7.

Seven wins in any combination, seven wins that erase Everett Case from College Basketball's Big Book of Ridiculously Obscure Records in the name of Jamie Dixon, and this Pitt team will be remembered with enduring fondness. Seven in a row starting Saturday at Marquette would not merely capture a tournament championship next week in Gotham, but vault the Panthers clear through the Sweet 16 ceiling, a place only one Pitt team in history has gone in the NCAA tournament.

"We're exactly where we want to be," Dixon said after the Pete had disgorged its final men's basketball crowd of the season. "We talked about it all summer, all fall."

In the harsh realities of modern entertainment culture, everything Dixon's done to put this team in this exact position, and everything they have talked about all summer and all fall won't be so well remembered by some if they are not where they want to be among the voices of spring -- on the way to Atlanta, the place several visiting coaches have predicted for them at the same microphone into which Dixon spoke.

Seven wins between here and destiny, even with a loss at Milwaukee and another in the Big East title game, puts Pitt in the national championship game Monday night April 2. Naturally, the Panthers could do this the hard way -- lose Saturday, lose Thursday in New York, then start a win streak that ends with cutting down the nets in the Georgia Dome, an eventuality that likely will get them forgiven for winning only six times between now and then.

"This shows how dangerous we can be," Levon Kendall said with one regular-season game remaining. "When we click on defense, we get good looks on offense."

Pitt's march through some of, most of, or all March will depend how well it plays defense and how well its nine-man rotation performs top to bottom. I'm still not convinced the Panthers can shoot confidently enough to carry them through two NCAA tournament rounds. Yeah, they shot 70 percent in the second half Tuesday night at home, but they also managed only three field goals in 18 trips up the floor at home against Louisville in one ugly stretch Feb. 12. If I had to guess which of those shooting touches would show up against a quality opponent on St. Patrick's weekend, I'd lean toward the bricklayers, especially from the free-throw line.

"Usually, when someone's going bad at the line, he misses hard, with really bad misses," Dixon said on this critical topic. "Aaron is not shooting as well [from the line] as he feels he should, but he's too good a shooter not to get better, especially as a guy with such a good touch that he steps out and hits 15-footers. I have confidence that it's going to turn around.

"Obviously it's something we want to do better at, so that needs to be talked about."

Pitt started the week ranked 11th in the Big East in free-throw shooting, 211th among 336 Division I schools, and didn't help things by hitting only 58 percent from the line the other night. Gray was 2 for 9, dropping his free-throw percentage for the season to a ghastly 53 percent.

When your version of a go-to guy is missing every other foul shot, 7 looks like an equally difficult shot.