PITTSBURGH - Three years ago, Pittsburgh didn't leave town to play its first-round NCAA tournament game. The year after that, the Panthers made the short flight to Boston, a city they visited almost annually as a Big East member.

So while the Panthers initially cheered and hooted Sunday night upon finding out that they're headed to Boise, Idaho, for Thursday's NCAA game against No. 22 Pacific (26-3) of the Big West Conference, reality began settling in Monday.

Rather than being a No. 2 or No. 3 seed, as they were in the last three seasons, they're a lightly regarded No. 9 that isn't supposed to get past Pacific - much less top-seeded Washington, their likely opponent should they reach the second round of the Albuquerque regional.

The Panthers are one of only five teams to reach the round of 16 in each of the last three seasons, but it will be a major surprise to many if they win a single game in this tournament. They're not even nationally ranked, dropping out of the Top 25 on Monday for the first time in 60-plus weeks.

To point guard Carl Krauser, that's only one more reason why Pitt has every reason to pull off a major surprise far, far from home.

Pitt's best games have come in hostile conditions at Boston College, Connecticut and Syracuse, according to Krauser, and he expects a similarly inspired performance Thursday despite Pitt's late-season slide of four losses in six games.

He is also encouraged because the Panthers (20-9) will be much better rested than they were in the previous three seasons, when they went into the NCAA tournament directly off playing in the Big East final. This time, they didn't even make it past their initial Big East tournament game.

"I'm just glad we're in Idaho, away from everybody, so we can go out there and just worry about basketball," Krauser said. "It's going to be a good experience for us, traveling to a place we've never been before."

Senior forward Chevon Troutman seems less excited about the 2,100-mile journey - he talked of "going to weird places and playing weird teams" - but knows the Panthers have little room to complain.

Not only did Pitt lose four times at home - it had only one home-court loss the previous two seasons combined - the Panthers finished fifth during the Big East regular season. They won or shared the conference regular-season title in the previous three seasons.

Still, Pitt's lower-than-expected seeding may not necessarily be a negative. Big East rival West Virginia is seeded seventh but faces a possible second-round game against No. 5 Wake Forest (26-5) if it gets past Creighton - arguably, a tougher matchup than Pitt would face in No. 8 Washington (27-5).

Pitt center Chris Taft, who has been as inconsistent as the team he plays for, remains convinced that the Panthers could be a Final Four team.

"Everybody on the team thinks like that," he said. "It's do or die right now. We've got to push ourselves hard, and we've got to do what we need to do."

Pacific (26-3), a team loaded with international and junior-college players, is like Pitt in that it prefers a half-court game that plays to its inside strength. Pitt seems to have more problems with quicker, athletic teams that prefer to score from the outside.

The 6-foot-10 Taft (13.4 points, 7.4 rebounds) and 6-7 Troutman (15.3 points) will mix it up inside with the 6-foot-9 Christian Maraker (13 points per game) and 6-9 Guillaume Yango (13.3 points). Point guard David Doubley makes 42.7 percent of his 3-point attempts.

Pacific beat Providence of the Big East 66-58 in last year's NCAA tournament before losing to Kansas 78-63. Pitt beat Central Florida (53-44) and Wisconsin (59-55) before losing to Oklahoma State (63-51), its third consecutive defeat in the round of 16.