BOSTON — DeJuan Blair? Great player. Not the one that will take the Pitt Panthers to the Final Four.

Sam Young? Superb talent. Not him either.

Pitt will survive or burn out with The General.

That's the sometime nickname of Levance Fields, Pitt's senior point guard and the most important player in the Panthers' universe. The stocky 5-foot-10 guy from Brooklyn and from the long list of big-time New York City point guards, is the one who runs the show for the top-seeded Panthers, the one who will be staring down Xavier tonight in the TD Banknorth Center.

Just ask him.

"DeJuan, Sam, those guys are our two horses, our stars," Fields said. "When the game's on the line, I'm going to have the ball. The biggest thing for us is confidence. I feel confident when I have the ball and I want to take that last shot. And my teammates and coaches feel the same way. They want me to have the ball."

If you feel a bit put off by Fields' bravado, well, two things: He's from Brooklyn, so he doesn't care; and he's got a pretty solid resume to back those words up.

Just look back to Sunday in Dayton, Ohio. Oklahoma State was throwing all it had at Pitt, hitting shots all over the court. Down by a point with 3:30 to play, Fields turned it up a notch.

He drove and kicked out to Young for the go-ahead 3-pointer. Next trip down, a put back by Fields. Next one, a Fields 3. Game over.

Or go back further, to last season. Fields suffered a broken foot on Dec. 29, 2007, and missed 12 games. He returned for the Panthers' final 13 games and led them to a Big East tournament title, but he wasn't the same confident leader.

"He just wasn't his usual self," said Brandin Knight, Pitt's assistant coach and one of the school's all-time great point guards.

"Everyone feeds off him, so we were just out of sync. He never said a word, never told anyone he was hurting, but he obviously was."

Pitt is 82-16 with Fields starting. The Panthers were 7-5 without him last season. That's pretty simple math.

And those numbers might have been rattling around Fields' head on March 4, Pitt's senior night at the school's Petersen Events Center on campus.

After watching — and shedding a few tears over — Knight's No. 20 being raised to the rafters, Fields landed hard on his back and suffered injuries to his back and groin.

"The first thing that went through my mind was, 'Not now. Not again,'" Fields said. "I mean, the regular season is important, but everyone knows the NCAA Tournament is the most important time of year.

"But this is my last year. I knew I was going to have to fight through it. And I'm fine now. We're all 100 percent."

And so he has. He didn't look so sharp against East Tennessee State, harried by the 16 seed's press. Xavier will certainly try to disrupt Fields tonight, but teams don't get many cracks at cracking Fields.

"He's really just starting to get better, 2-3 weeks later," said Knight, Fields' natural confidant on the coaching staff. "But he's one of those guys. You know, some guys will say, 'I'm hurting, so I might not play my best.' They have that built-in excuse.

"Levance doesn't do that. He knows that the guys are looking to him, so he just brushes it off."

Tonight's game may not come down to the wire. Blair and Young may do enough damage to the Musketeers to alleviate the need for a crunch-time assist, or dagger shot.

If it does, though, if the Panthers need a lift down the stretch to get to their first Elite Eight since 1974, you know who's going to bring it.

Look to The General. The Panthers always do.