You can almost feel the pulsating technological echo around these Pitt Panthers -- the very people who have detonated one concussive dead-of-winter blast of basketball excitement after another.

Twitter's all atwitter, texts are flying at them by the score, their inboxes are bursting at the cyberseams, and the instant message that has gone most viral has to be that the Big East coaches who chose Jamie Dixon's team for ninth got it right in one spectacularly wrong-headed way.

Pitt's ninth all right.

In the nation.

Not tucked between Providence and St. John's somewhere on the conference's backstairs.

So tonight to the Petersen Events Center come the Georgetown Hoyas, bringing what Dixon described this week without qualification as a starting five as good as anyone in the country.

Including the Lakers?

But the point is, no one would or should or probably could say such a definitive thing about Pitt, despite its eight consecutive wins, despite the fact that Dixon has the best winning percentage ever in the best conference in America, despite the fact that Pitt has virtually owned the whole of this new American century in the Big East.

It's all because, unlike Connecticut, unlike Villanova, unlike Georgetown, unlike Syracuse, Pitt has not taken the Big East banner to the Final Four in this century.

And, see, that right there is the problem.

Not that Pitt hasn't been to the Final Four since before Pearl Harbor, but that we're even bringing it up, because the Panthers who'll walk onto the floor tonight at the Pete, the Panthers who haven't lost in six weeks, these Panthers can't be ready to flourish in a national discussion of top-10 politics and advanced bracketology.

Can they?

"I think we can," said Ashton Gibbs, the indefatigable sophomore who turned 20 just yesterday. "Everybody in our locker room is unselfish; there are no big egos, and, as long as everything that goes on in there is about the team, I think the sky's the limit."

More likely there's a ceiling around here somewhere, maybe even one to be bumped into tonight up there around 6-foot-11 Georgetown dominator Greg Monroe, but some people wouldn't be surprised if Pitt's emotional aptitude, even with such a callow roster, soon matched its stunningly effective physical energy.

"Our main message to them after the Louisville game [the pyrotechnic overtime victory Saturday] was that we didn't follow through on our defensive assignments," Dixon was explaining this week. "I took a lot of the blame for that, but the players felt like they had a lot of responsibility, and I thought that was significant.

"When they come out to practice, you can see by their actions, by their effort, by their focus that they are demanding improvement of themselves, and they've had the advantage of seeing the benefits of their focus."

This is the way in which the story of the 15-2 Panthers, unbeaten through five conference assignments, might be inextricably linked to the bad news that foreshadowed the winter. Jermaine Dixon, the head coach's only experienced senior, was out indefinitely with a foot injury, and Gilbert Brown, his go-to forward, was slapped with academic discipline and therefore unavailable. Dixon and Brown missed the first 11 games, but in the vacuum something perfectly unpredictable and potentially volatile was happening.

"You don't want to say it was an advantage necessarily," the coach said, "but when those two guys went out, a lot of guys took advantage of a situation in which there was a lot of room to improve. And that has carried over even now that they're back. Guys are still seeing themselves improve. They feel themselves getting better because of the way they're being pushed in practice by people like Dwight Miller and J.J. Richardson and Chase Adams."

For the moment, Pitt seems to revalidate itself every time the lights go on. It has been a short road and somehow an incredible distance from a place where this team was beating Wofford at home by three on Nov. 13. That Pitt has advanced all the way to serious national scrutiny and throbbing local enthusiasm is a wonder, but, further, an unexpected challenge.

"There's definitely been a lot of support, which is the great thing about Pittsburgh in general and especially from the Oakland Zoo," Gibbs said. "It's been great to have that support system. The thing is, you don't want to get too confident. My parents have always taught me, if you stay humble and work hard, good things will happen. It's exciting right now; I'm getting a lot more texts, but you can't lose focus on what we're trying to do. It's all about winning games."

For now, all these guys can do is walk comfortably in maturity's ready glossary. Getting comfortable in maturity itself is an even better place to be.

Check out Ray Fittipaldo's Pitt B-Ball blog and Paul Zeise's Pitt Stop videos about football exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.