NEW YORK -- Too bad Pitt could not have gotten a triple bye.

Too bad it was Gilbert Brown's night off.

Too bad the Panthers got all of one basket from the center position in Thursday night's Big East tournament quarterfinal, an affair in which Jamie Dixon's revered overachievers turned up too bad to be believed.

Deftly switching from a dreadful defensive team in the first half to a hapless offensive club in the second, No. 2 seed Pitt became the third team in seven hours to exit the tournament despite the coveted double bye.

Syracuse and Villanova also were shown the Madison Square Garden exits as Georgetown and Marquette advanced earlier in the day, but Pitt's performance was probably the most inept.

"I'm not going to say it was a great defensive game by them," said Brown from a slumped position in his locker after Notre Dame held Pitt to 45 points, its feeblest output of the season. "They really slowed down the tempo, and they shot really well in the first half, but we just couldn't get the shots when we needed them."

No, Brown didn't really have the night off. It was just his turn to be unproductive, a condition whereby he scores feverishly in one game and barely at all in the next. In the nine games leading to Thursday night, his scoring totals were: 25, 0, 23, 6, 16, 3, 13, 0 and 19.

So last night, naturally, he scored 3, one fewer than his turnovers in 18 stunningly ragged minutes. This isn't inconsistency; it's pathology.

But there's no real point in focusing on Brown, because Pitt's overall performance wouldn't have beaten Upper St. Clair last night, and it started with the criminally easy baskets the Irish got in the game's first 7:35.

"We were giving them a lot of open opportunities and they got a lot of easy baskets," said Ashton Gibbs who managed only two buckets in 33 minutes.

Here's the startling early timeline.

This quarterfinal started at 7:05. With only 86 seconds bled from the game clock, Notre Dame's Tory Jackson nailed the game's first three-pointer to put the Irish up 5-4. Pitt never led again. Over that first 7:35, Pitt did not get a single defensive stop, as Notre Dame scored on its first seven times up the floor in erecting a 15-7 lead.

The team that led the Big East in defense, the team that held Rutgers to 16 points in the first half last time out, literally watched the Irish score 18 in the first 10 minutes.

"You know it's going to be a low possession game," coach Dixon said with no exasperation whatever. "You know it's going to be a close game. It was just those few possessions. We were in a position to win the game, so I don't say we were frustrated at all.

"At the end of the day, we just have to shoot better."

Pitt never trailed by more than eight and closed to within three at the half, but the team that was down five with 54 seconds left and beat Louisville, the team that was down seven with 1:13 and beat West Virginia, the team that was down 10 in the first half and beat Syracuse on the road, the team that was down 13 to Duquesne and launched the biggest successful comeback in school history, well, that team wasn't in the Garden last night.

Pitt was 2 for 10 from three-point range, 6 for 20 in the second half, all while allowing Notre Dame to shoot 53 percent.

Even for all that, the Panthers still were within three, 46-43, with 2:07 remaining, and scratched to within a basket, 47-45, with 1:27.

And never scored again.

Even after being awarded consecutive possessions when Luke Harangody traveled with a defensive rebound, Pitt didn't get a decent shot on either. Jermaine Dixon missed badly from the left corner with 18 seconds left, and Harangody caught the rebound, walked the floor and sank both ends of a one-and-one to nail Notre Dame's sixth consecutive win.

Maybe it was because Notre Dame started that streak with a 15-point whipping of these same Panthers in South Bend that coach Dixon didn't appear more aggravated.

"... I'm very proud of how our guys played. We really focused and came out and did some very good things."

He didn't name any.

Pitt thus awaits its NCAA assignment and looks forward to it, as everyone knows Brown is about to score well into double figures.

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