Coach Ben Howland is adamant UCLA and Pittsburgh won't be scheduling any home and homes anytime too soon. You can't stop the hands of destiny as one of the more interesting match-ups this tournament could have possibly dreamt up is the one that has the Bruins playing in this Thursday Evening against the Pittsburgh Panthers. The program Howland helped put on the map.

Coach Howland was asked about Pittsburgh at Monday's press conference. The following are some of his thoughts.

Howland: "As I've said before, we're not scheduling any home-and-homes with the university of Pittsburgh. Jamie Dixon, I consider one of my closest friends and is a big reason why I've been part of successful programs at Northern Arizona and at Pitt.

"At the end of the day, it's going to be two good teams playing one another. There are only two players at Pitt now that I was involved with. Aaron Gray signed my last year there with us, and Levan Kendall, their starting four man, was a red-shirt freshman my last year. They are both very good players.

"They have a number of things going for them. One, they have more size than we do, especially in Aaron Gray. He's a great player, an All-American caliber center. Great hands, great skill level. Huge. He's at least 7-feet tall, barefoot.

"And then Kendall is 6-10, so those guys are really big and long. Kendall is a very good player, very smart, very good defender, very good shooter. Sam Young comes in and is a very hard match-up. He's an outstanding player.


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