Thanks for the games in the Steel City, Selection Committee, but Panther point Brandin Knight (28 points and 16 assists in two contests) has his own portable homecourt advantage. No, not older bro Brevin, who’s on the road with the Memphis Grizzlies. And definitely not the Oakland Zoo, a poor (make that destitute) man’s Cameron Crazies.

BK’s crew, a.k.a. the Knight Court, is a tight-knit, low-profile network of Pitt students from East Orange, N.J., his hometown. The Court rolls 10 deep, including several grade-school pals and the only female, his girlfriend, Michelle Gonzalez. They call him Diddy Bop, Diddy for short. They have no pregame rituals -- who needs superstition when you’ve got faith? “He’s poised regardless of who’s there,” says buddy Tariq Jamal-Francis. “In high school we used to say, ‘Don’t worry about it: Brandin out there.’ ”

	Cruz: Brandin Knight & the Panthers are on the prowl. Palmer Steve Blake makes it all work for Maryland. Keown: Jared Jeffries is turning it on for the Hoosiers. Wickersham: Keith Bogans is back on his game, making the Cats a scary team. Gustafson: Trevor Huffman is out to prove the Golden Flashes are the real deal. Kirkpatrick: Channing Frye is quickly becoming the beast of the Big Dance.

“All those guys are like my brothers,” Knight says. Especially Tariq, who has known BK since second grade. When Tariq’s mom moved to Newark, he moved into Brandin’s third-floor attic bedroom so they could ball together at Seton Hall Prep. When Knight picked Pitt, he got the coaching staff to take Francis on as the team manager. Now BK and Riq share The Yard, their big old house on top of a hill, where elementary school pal Walter Nicholson and ex-Jersey foe Khyree Battle have been living with them for two years.

When Knight developed a rep for his whining ways, his brothers from the Court laid out the long view for him: You’re a freshman. You’re starting in the Big East. You gotta take some lumps. Now he’s a junior, and they bug him about every turnover and missed jumper. They’ll also crack on him whenever possible, calling him “pigeon-toed, big-headed and skinny.”

Last year, BK and crew spent Final Four weekend in Philly, where their pal Vonteego Cummings, then with the Warriors, gave the guys Sixers tickets to see Charles Barkley’s jersey retired. This year? Pitt’s on a collision course with Duke, and the Court’s praying for a possible rematch between Jersey boys Knight and Jason Williams in the Elite Eight. In the ’99 state championship game, BK’s Seton Hall Prep turned J-Dub and his St. Joe’s squad into J-Drubbed. Final score: 60-36. “Ooooo, I try not to talk about it around Diddy,” says Riq. “But we lovin’ that possibility right now.”

Riq doubts the rowdy Court will ever make it courtside. But they’re always near when it counts. “I got to get them as close to me as I can,” Knight says. “It’s good that I’ve got people in my corner who criticize, instead of sitting around telling me how great I am.”

Because these days, those are a dime a dozen.

This article appears in the April 1 issue of ESPN The Magazine.