For an eagerly anticipated renewal tonight of the reliably delicious Pitt-Connecticut hostilities, the critical factor might be something as mundane as baggage.

Not so much whether Pitt's will arrive in Hartford, Conn., on time, but what the host Huskies will be doing with the stuff they dragged back from Washington over the weekend.

Jamie Dixon's team left for Connecticut pretty seriously preoccupied with Connecticut's swift and mercurial transition game, and it appears the best hope for slowing it down might be the mental baggage the Huskies should still be lugging after blowing a 19-point lead at Georgetown.

Not many Jim Calhoun teams will race out to a 40-21 first-half lead and fail to tuck it away among his 800-plus coaching victories, but that's what happened over the weekend in the nation's capital. That's why a nationally televised episode tonight is, as much as anything, a matter of what Calhoun's team does with the baggage. Do they check it and forget about it, or do they carry it onto the floor at the sold-out XL Center?

Pitt's hoping for a bunch of carry-on bags.

"We definitely want to slow the tempo," said junior forward Gilbert Brown, fresh out of a film session the other day. "If we have a half-court game, that plays more to our strength, so defensively we've got to have the 3-4-5 guys crashing and then we've got to beat their bigs down the court."

"A lot depends on how the game starts. The first five minutes are key, and I think our starting five knows that."

You might wonder when Dixon will include Brown in that starting five, because, for the moment, Pitt can't match Connecticut bigs-for-bigs, if you must. After 6-foot-10 center Gary McGhee, Pitt goes 6-5, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2. Another couple of dozen minutes from the 6-6 Brown, which has had an energizing impact on the Panthers in the past four games, might be less than sufficient tonight.

The fact is, there's pretty much no combination of bodies Jamie Dixon can put out there to avoid Pitt's first Big East Conference loss if the Huskies run the way they want to.

"Before we played Syracuse I told them that was the best transition team we'd play," Dixon said, "but after watching Connecticut, um, this is the best transition team we've played. They were in a tied game against Seton Hall when they scored 10 straight transition points, five baskets. The thing is, their big guys probably run better than Syracuse's."

That said, Dixon is hardly The Boy Who Cried Transition.

Transition defense is not something Pitt's gifted head coach puts on the menu when the potential ingredients dictate as much. It's part of Pitt's bedrock preparation.

"We do a defensive transition drill every day, every practice, before every game," Dixon said. "It's always an emphasis and it's probably why we're pretty good at it. Because we do it no matter what. From the first practice until we're done."

As it happens, transition defense has to start with prudent offense, in a sport where offense and defense can be perfectly seamless. Basketball remains devoid of the cliche -- on both sides of the ball. All hail the round ball.

"We have to take great shots so they don't get the advantage on the break," said junior guard Brad Wanamaker. "They execute in transition off the other team's mistakes."

There's probably no better transition executioner than Jerome Dyson, a 6-4 senior from Potomac, Md. Dyson is not only Connecticut's leading scorer, he might be faster end-to-end than any player in the best college basketball conference in America. Moreover, he's not afraid to start a break off a made basket.

"He just gets guys on their heels and he's gone," Dixon said. "He's not stopping. A lot of guys will pull up, but not him. He's going. That we know. It's not one guy who's responsible for stopping him. We always say, 'Build a wall, five strong; know your responsibility and carry it out.'"

Equally lethal in transition is senior forward Stanley Robinson, who appears to finally be polishing his game into something resembling the lottery pick some expected he would be. Robinson can not only run at Connecticut's pace, he just happens to be 6-9.

Robinson had a game-high 16 points at Georgetown and added eight rebounds.

"We've got to make him take tough shots," Wanamaker said. "We've got to get into him and make him put the ball on the floor."

That's good advice for any circumstance tonight, when Pitt has an opportunity to start 4-0 in the Big East and Connecticut can limp away 2-3. Pitt has to make the Huskies dribble, and hope maybe they trip on the baggage.

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