“Those guys felt the burden,” Knight said. “They didn’t want to be the team that the program was going to lose steam from. I kind of put it on them at times. Your comparison isn’t us or conference teams. Your comparison and your legacy will be what you guys do. All of the negative things people say, use it as motivation. You guys can write your own ticket. You can write your own history. And they did.”

That collective sense of being overlooked came from individual experiences and journeys.

Point guard Levance Fields was the New York player of the year as a senior in high school, but he didn’t attract the kind of suitors a player of that stature would. Ashton Gibbs, Tray Woodall and Gary McGhee were all three-star recruits. Starting guard Jermaine Dixon toiled in junior college for two years. Even Jamie Dixon, for all his success, was someone whose promotion to head coach five years earlier was met with tepid applause in some circles and sharp criticism in others.

“That was almost everybody’s story when you think about from top to bottom, from LeVance to Brad Wanamaker to DeJuan Blair, guys who could have played at a Carolina or one of those big-time schools if we got the opportunity,” Gibbs said. “We never did, but at the same time, we knew we were just as good or even better than those teams. Every day, we tried to prove it.”

For as much as they felt overlooked, there was a measure of self-delusion to it. Six of Pitt’s players that season, all of whom were among its top seven scorers, were four-star recruits who were ranked among the top 100 prospects nationally in their class. In an interview 10 years after that team’s run to the Elite Eight, Jamie Dixon was surprised to see that Blair was a top-50 player coming out of Schenley High School, as that didn’t fully fit with the identity of the team he joined.

For whatever the Panthers had, however, they always focused on what they didn’t. They weren’t McDonald’s All-Americans. They weren’t pursued by the Dukes, North Carolinas and Kentuckys of the world, the programs at the top of a hierarchy they sought to topple. Even with success came a certain level of anonymity. Greg Hotchkiss, the team’s sports information director, can remember getting questions from media members who thought Tyrell Biggs, pictured with fellow seniors Fields and Sam Young, was Blair on the cover of the team’s media guide that season.

As the Panthers began the season ranked fifth and eventually rose to No. 1, how does a team that thrived on disrespect adjust if it’s facing little of it? Even if it was somewhat contrived, they found ways to maintain the grudge that fueled them.