Pitt Drops Louisville 76-69 to Advance

Sam Young had 21 points and 12 rebounds, and hit a pair of free throws with less than a minute left in overtime to help Pittsburgh beat No. 13 Louisville 76-69 Thursday night and advance to the semifinals of the Big East tournament.

The seventh-seeded
The Pittsburgh Panthers fancy themselves as New York City’s basketball team.

So it is only fitting that they modeled their 2008 Big East tournament title run after the football team that stole New York and the country’s attention this season.

The seventh-seeded Panthers defeated top-seeded Georgetown, 74-65, on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden to give the Panthers their second tournament title. The Panthers also won in 2003.

They did it by following the story line and game plan that the Giants used to shock the Patriots in the Super Bowl last month.

“Levance Fields is a huge Giants fan and he came out and told the team, follow the Giants’ model,” said Pittsburgh guard Ronald Ramon of the Bronx, referring to the Panther point guard, who is a Brooklyn native. “They came out and played hard and came to win.”

The Panthers outworked and outhustled Georgetown, outrebounding the Hoyas by 41-29 and beating them in dives on the floor, loose balls corralled and the typical blue-collar nuances that have come to define Pittsburgh basketball.

The Giants’ comparison runs deep. The Panthers (26-9) had a solid but unspectacular regular season, just as the Giants did. Because Pittsburgh was only a No. 7 seed, it did not receive a bye and needed to win four games in four days. The Giants were a wild-card team and needed to win four games to win the Super Bowl. Georgetown (27-5) was not undefeated, as the Patriots were, but the Hoyas did enter the game a perfect 14-0 as a No. 1 seed in the Big East tournament.

Fields and New Jersey’s Brandin Knight, a former Pittsburgh star and now an assistant, hatched the analogy at the team hotel Friday night. Knight and Fields are the team’s resident Giants fans and got a laugh at recalling the similarities.

“Just like the Giants, nobody expected it to happen,” Fields said. “And obviously, we had the situation to do it and we did it.”

So it was fitting that when time expired Saturday night, it was Fields who chucked the ball in the air in jubilation. But the victory was a team effort, as five Pittsburgh players scored in double figures.

“Everyone stepped up,” Coach Jamie Dixon said. “Every guy made plays. I don’t even know where to start.”

The Panthers (26-9) have seemingly been annual Garden bridesmaids, making six of the previous seven Big East finals, but were 1-5 in those games. This title proved particularly sweet for the seniors, who had never won a Big East championship.

Heavy legs did not slow the Panthers, who became the second team to win four games in four nights to win the Big East tournament. They joined the 2006 Syracuse team, who rode Gerry McNamara to the title.

“We were in this situation my freshman year, but we ran into Gerry McNamara, and it was his time,” Fields said. “Now, this is our third trip here, and it my time and my teammates’ time.”

Ramon led the Panthers with 17 points and Sam Young added 16 to earn the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award. DeJuan Blair scored 10 points and grabbed 10 rebounds.

Georgetown got 17 points from Roy Hibbert, who was limited by foul trouble. He had only one rebound at halftime and sat for long stretches of the game.

For two teams that do not play particularly aesthetically pleasing basketball, the final minutes were straight out of central casting. After building a 13-point second-half lead, Pittsburgh hit just enough free throws to stave off a Georgetown comeback. The Panthers finished the game 22 of 44 from the free-throw line, including a hideous 19 of 36 in the second half.

The Panthers showed that they had coalesced as a team since the recent return of Fields, their starting point guard, from injury. They showed that they would be bringing their typical brutish, bullying style of basketball to the N.C.A.A. tournament.

“It definitely gives us a confidence booster going in,” Young said. “It definitely gives us a lot of motivation going in. And I feel like right now we’re playing our best basketball.

Georgetown came into the Big East tournament with some stigma as to whether their regular-season conference title was more serendipity than good play. The Hoyas were the beneficiaries of so many fortunate bounces and whistles that Louisville Coach Rick Pitino called them “lucky” after the Hoyas beat the Cardinals to clinch the regular-season title on the season’s final weekend.

They again showed that their deliberate style of play makes them vulnerable when they fall behind by double digits. When asked how the loss would impact the N.C.A.A. tournament for the Hoyas, John Thompson III said, “I got to digest it before I can answer that question.”

The Panthers were more direct in their N.C.A.A. tournament assessment.
“We’re not done yet,” Fields said. “We want more.”
Just like the Giants.

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Levance Fields, who had six assists Saturday night, is one of the nation's steadier hands at the point.

Panther Revival: From Nearly Dead to a No. 4 Seed
It was 86 days ago, on Dec. 20 of a young and promising season, that Pitt upset an undefeated Duke team here at Madison Square Garden. Junior point guard Levance Fields hit what would go down as one of the most cold-blooded shots of the year, a step-back three-pointer with 4.7 seconds left in overtime, to beat the Blue Devils 65-64. It established the Panthers as a legitimate top-10 team -- they jumped from No. 11 to No. 6 in the next Associated Press poll -- but coach Jamie Dixon called it "the most bittersweet night in my coaching career."

The reason: senior forward Mike Cook, who might have finished as the team's second-leading scorer, had crumpled to the floor during the win with a torn ACL, lost for the season. There was speculation that after beating Duke, the rest would be downhill for the hobbled Panthers. What happened nine days later in their next game only strengthened that theory: Fields fractured his left foot in an 80-55 loss to Dayton and did not return until Feb. 15. The basketball gods were being especially cruel to Pitt -- said Fields, "We were mad, and we didn't understand why things were happening to us like that" -- and did not relent even after Fields was back in the fold. By Feb. 24, Pitt had fallen to 7-7 in conference play, all the way out of the polls, and on the fringe of NCAA tournament bracket projections.

So what does one make of the scene at the Garden late Saturday night, after Pitt's fourth win in four days to take the Big East tournament title as a No. 7 seed? There was Fields, dribbling out the clock on a 74-65 win over Georgetown in the championship game, then launching the ball skyward before his teammates, including Cook, mobbed him on the floor. And there was junior forward Sam Young, the tourney's MVP after scoring 16 points in the finale (and 70 since Wednesday), soaking in the celebration. Young said later that it "felt like I just won a million dollars."

What the Panthers had done was return to their comfort zone on 7th Avenue and 32nd Street and revive their season, going on a surprise run that may elevate them all the way to a No. 4 seed in the NCAAs when the field is announced Sunday night. With this Big East tourney crown, the win over Duke, and the argument that their 26-9 record would be 28-7 or even 29-6 had Fields not been sidelined for a month and a half, Pitt has a compelling case to jump onto the bracket's fourth line. Such a position would have seemed unfathomable as of a week ago.

This rise was not built on a new style of play, but rather a return to the blue-collar identity that had faded during the Panthers' swoon. On Saturday against the Hoyas, that grittiness was on full display: Pitt barreled its way to the foul line for 44 attempts compared to Georgetown's nine, and the Panthers won the offensive rebounding battle 19-7, with freshman forward DeJuan Blair grabbing 10 on his own. Young even had three blocks -- all of Roy Hibbert shots -- to go with his MVP-clinching night. "For whatever reason, I didn't think we were playing as aggressive as we needed to, say 10 games ago," said Dixon. "But when we got all our guys back, we have just been more physical, more aggressive, and just more like we normally are, I mean, more like Pitt."

At the center of this renaissance is Fields, the stocky Brooklyn floor general who earned 13 attempts at the charity stripe en route to scoring 10 points. He may never get mentioned in the same breath as North Carolina's Ty Lawson, Texas' D.J. Augustin or UCLA's Darren Collison, but Fields is one of the nation's steadier hands at the point. Over four games in the Big East tournament, he had 22 assists against just four turnovers -- an incredible 5.5-to-1 ratio -- making it clear just how much better Pitt is when Fields is running the show.

While standing outside of his locker room around midnight, with a piece of the championship net stuck behind his right ear, Fields mentioned that he had the option to heal for the remainder of this season rather than return in February. "I knew the risks and consequences of sitting out," he said, "but I chose to come back even earlier than projected, and that turned out to be a good thing."

Good indeed, for without Fields this hometown party would not have been possible. The question now is, was this celebration just that -- a nice streak of wins in a friendly setting for a team heavily populated with New York-area players -- and nothing more?

The Big East tournament title game is not new territory for Pitt; it has reached the final round in seven of the past eight years. Nor is the NCAA tournament a foreign place; the Panthers have been in the dance for each of the past six seasons. What they haven't managed to do this decade, however, is make it past the Sweet 16. The possibility here is that this Pitt team is uniquely on the upswing, haven already taken its beating from the basketball gods and built itself back into a contender. This time, they left the Garden with no bittersweet emotions, only hope that their best work is still ahead.

After all, keeping your blood sugar level within your target range can help you live a long and healthy life with diabetes

Diabetes management: How lifestyle, daily routine affect blood sugar
When it comes to diabetes management, blood sugar control is often the central theme. After all, keeping your blood sugar level within your target range can help you live a long and healthy life with diabetes. But do you know what makes your blood sugar level rise and fall? The list is sometimes surprising!

Food
Healthy eating is a cornerstone of any diabetes management plan. But it's not just what you eat that affects your blood sugar level. How much you eat and when you eat matters, too.

What to do:

Be consistent. Your blood sugar level is highest an hour or two after you eat, and then begins to fall. But this predictable pattern can work to your advantage. Simply eating about the same amount of food at about the same time every day can help you control your blood sugar level.
Even out your carbs. Carbohydrates have a bigger impact on your blood sugar level than does protein or fat. Eating about the same amount of carbohydrates at each meal or snack will help keep your blood sugar level steady throughout the day.
Coordinate your meals and medication. Too little food in comparison to your diabetes medications — especially insulin — may result in dangerously low blood sugar (hypoglycemia). Too much food may cause your blood sugar level to climb too high (hyperglycemia). Your diabetes health care team can help you strike a balance.

Exercise

Physical activity is another important part of your diabetes management plan. When you exercise, your muscles use sugar (glucose) for energy. Regular physical activity also improves your body's response to insulin. These factors work together to lower your blood sugar level. The more strenuous your workout, the longer the effect lasts. But even light activities — such as housework, gardening or being on your feet for extended periods — can lower your blood sugar level.

What to do:

Get your doctor's OK to exercise. This is especially important if you've been inactive and plan to start exercising regularly.
Adjust your diabetes treatment plan as needed. If you take insulin, you may need to adjust your insulin dose before exercising or wait a few hours to exercise after injecting insulin. Or your doctor may suggest other changes to your diabetes treatment plan.
Exercise good judgment. Check your blood sugar level before, during and after exercise, especially if you take insulin or medications that can cause low blood sugar. Drink plenty of fluids while you work out. Stop exercising if you experience any warning signs, such as severe shortness of breath, dizziness or chest pain.

Medication

Insulin and other diabetes medications are designed to lower your blood sugar level. But the effectiveness of these medications depends on the timing and size of the dose. And any medications you take for conditions other than diabetes can affect your blood sugar level, too.

What to do:

Store insulin properly. Insulin that's improperly stored or past its expiration date may not be effective.
Report problems to your doctor. If your diabetes medications cause your blood sugar level to drop too low, the dosage or timing may need to be adjusted.
Be cautious with new medications. If you're considering an over-the-counter medication or your doctor prescribes a new drug to treat another condition — such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol — ask your doctor or pharmacist if the medication may affect your blood sugar level. Sometimes an alternate medication may be recommended.

Illness

When you're sick, your body produces hormones to help fight the illness. These hormones raise your blood sugar level by preventing insulin from working effectively. This can help promote healing — and wreak havoc with your diabetes management plan.

What to do:

Plan ahead. Work with your health care team to create a sick-day plan. Include instructions on what medications to take, how often to measure your blood sugar and urine ketone levels, how to adjust your insulin dosage, if you need insulin, and when to call your doctor.
Stick to your diabetes meal plan. If you can, eating as usual will help you control your blood sugar level.
Check the sugar content of over-the-counter medications. Many cough syrups and other cold preparations are high in sugar. Ask your doctor or pharmacist for advice.

Alcohol

The liver normally releases stored sugar to counteract falling blood sugar levels. But if your liver is busy metabolizing alcohol, your blood sugar level may not get the boost it needs. If you take insulin or oral diabetes medications, even as little as 2 ounces of alcohol — the equivalent of two drinks — can cause low blood sugar.

What to do:

Get your doctor's OK to drink alcohol. Alcohol can aggravate diabetes complications, such as nerve damage and eye disease. But if your diabetes is under control and your doctor agrees, an occasional alcoholic drink with a meal is fine.
Choose your drinks carefully. Light beer and dry wines have fewer calories and carbohydrates than do other alcoholic drinks. If you prefer mixed drinks, stick with sugar-free mixers — such as diet soda, diet tonic, club soda or seltzer.
Tally your calories. Remember to include the calories from any alcohol you drink in your daily calorie count.

Hormone levels

As your hormone levels fluctuate during your menstrual cycle, so can your blood sugar levels — particularly in the week before your period. Menopause may trigger fluctuations in your blood sugar level as well.

What to do:

Look for patterns. Keep careful track of your blood sugar readings from month to month. Soon you may be able to predict fluctuations related to your menstrual cycle.
Adjust your diabetes treatment plan as needed. Your doctor may recommend changes in your meal plan, activity level or diabetes medications to make up for monthly blood sugar swings.

Stress

If you're stressed, it's easy to abandon your usual diabetes management routine. You might exercise less, eat fewer healthy foods or test your blood sugar less often — and lose control of your blood sugar in the process. The hormones your body may produce in response to prolonged stress may even prevent insulin from working properly, which only makes matters worse.

What to do:

Look for patterns. Log your stress level on a scale of one to 10 each time you log your blood sugar level. A pattern may soon emerge.
Take control. Once you know how stress affects your blood sugar level, fight back. Learn relaxation techniques. Prioritize your tasks. Set limits. Most importantly, take good care of yourself.
The more you know about factors that influence your blood sugar level, the more you can anticipate fluctuations — and plan ahead accordingly. If you're having trouble keeping your blood sugar level in your target range, ask your diabetes health care team for help.

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Diabetes nutrition: Including sweets in your meal plan
Diabetes nutrition focuses on healthy foods, but sweets aren't necessarily off-limits. Here's how to include sweets in your meal plan.
Diabetes nutrition focuses on healthy foods. But you can eat sweets once in a while without feeling guilty or interfering with your blood sugar control. The key is moderation.

The scoop on sugar
For years, people with diabetes were warned to avoid sweets. But what researchers understand about diabetes nutrition has changed.

It was once assumed that honey, candy and other sweets would raise your blood sugar level faster and higher than fruits, vegetables or foods containing complex carbohydrates. But many studies have shown this isn't true, as long as the sweets are eaten with a meal and balanced with other foods in your meal plan. Although different types of sweets can affect your blood sugar level differently, it's the total amount of carbohydrate that counts the most.

Of course, it's still best to consider sweets only a small part of your overall plan for diabetes nutrition. Candy, cookies and other sweets have little nutritional value and are often high in fat and calories. You'll get calories without the essential nutrients found in healthier foods.

Have your cake and eat it, too
Sweets count as carbohydrates in your meal plan. The trick is substituting small portions of sweets for other carbohydrates — such as bread, tortillas, rice, crackers, cereal, fruit, juice, milk, yogurt or potatoes — in your meals. To allow room for sweets as part of a meal, you have two options:

Replace some of the carbohydrate in your meal with a sweet.
Swap a carb-containing food in your meal for something with fewer carbohydrates.
Let's say your typical lunch is a turkey sandwich with a glass of skim milk and a piece of fresh fruit. If you'd like two cookies after your meal, look for ways to keep the total carbohydrate count in the meal the same. Trade your usual bread for low-calorie bread with fewer carbohydrates or eat only half the sandwich. Adding the cookies after your meal keeps the total carbohydrate count the same.

To make sure you're making even trades, read food labels carefully. Look for the total carbohydrate in each food, which tells you how much carbohydrate is in one serving of the food.

Consider sugar substitutes
Artificial sweeteners offer the sweetness of sugar without the calories. Artificial sweeteners may help you reduce calories and stick to a healthy meal plan — especially when used instead of sugar in coffee and tea, on cereal or in baked goods. In fact, artificial sweeteners are considered "free foods" because they contain very few calories and don't count as a carbohydrate, a fat or any other food in your meal plan.

Examples of artificial sweeteners include:
.Acesulfame potassium (Sweet One, Sunett)
.Aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet)
.Saccharin (SugarTwin, Sweet'N Low)
.Sucralose (Splenda)
But artificial sweeteners don't necessarily offer a free pass for sweets. Many products made with artificial sweeteners, such as baked goods and artificially sweetened yogurt, still contain calories and carbohydrates that can affect your blood sugar level.

The same goes for sugar alcohols, another type of reduced-calorie sweetener often used in sugar-free candies, chewing gum and desserts. Check product labels for words such as isomalt, maltitol, mannitol, sorbitol and xylitol. Although sugar alcohols are lower in calories than is sugar, sugar-free foods containing sugar alcohols still have calories. And in some people, as little as 20 to 50 grams of sugar alcohols can cause diarrhea, gas and bloating.

Reconsider your definition of sweet
If you're craving sweets, ask your registered dietitian to help you include your favorite treats into your meal plan. He or she can also help you reduce the amount of sugar and fat in your favorite recipes. And don't be surprised if your tastes change as you adopt healthier eating habits. Food that you once loved may seem too sweet — and healthy substitutes may become your new idea of delicious.

Aetna Announces New Online Tool for Customers

Aetna Inc. has launched a brand new search site for its customers. It will allow customers to find search results based on their own health records. They will be able to get information on medical costs, diseases, local doctors, and more, all pertaining directly to their own medical records.

The new search site is called SmartSource, with the software coming from Healthline Networks.

In step toward personalized online medical information, Aetna plans to announce Wednesday a new service that draws upon a patient's own medical history to help answer questions about symptoms and treatments.

The Aetna offering, called SmartSource, has been tested by the company's 35,000 employees. It will be offered to employers that provide worker health benefits through Aetna, in a gradual introduction across the country that will begin in August.

The company, which has 16.8 million enrollees, plans to provide the service free to its customers, saying it wants to help people manage their own health care. Aetna hopes the service can help it recruit and retain employer-customers worried about the costs of care.

With the online offering, Aetna will be entering an arena in which WebMD is the leader for consumer medical information and where medical providers like the Mayo Clinic and the Harvard Medical School are also players. The Web giants Google and Microsoft are also laying plans to let consumers link electronic medical records and online research.

But one of the biggest challenges in linking online research to personal health data has been a widespread reluctance to share health information that might fall into the wrong hands or be abused, affecting job opportunities and insurance premiums.

"The underlying challenge is - 'Do you trust the insurance companies?' " said Mike Davis, a health technology analyst with the HIMSS Analytics consulting firm.

Addressing the trust issue, Meg McCabe, Aetna's vice president for online programs, said, "We make sure the information is secured and shared, based on the member's purposes."

The information will not be used to raise or lower premiums or reject membership applications. "That would not be a good business decision," Ms. McCabe said. "We need to develop a relationship with our members based on trust."

Using a medical search engine developed by Healthline, a medical database software developer, Aetna is piecing together medical profiles that are based on records of each insured member's illnesses and diagnostic tests and that also make assumptions about their health concerns as reflected in their search topics.

Andrea Rosenberg, a quality supervisor in an Aetna call center in Phoenix, said she had used the system to conduct research about her 5-year-old daughter Hayley's ear infections and her own allergy symptoms.

Like the millions of working mothers - a segment who are major online searchers for health information - Ms. Rosenberg said she had searched other health Web sites but found that the Aetna site provided information that was "more specific" to her situation. After looking it over, she took Hayley to see the family pediatrician. As for her allergies, she decided to stick with nonprescription medicines from the drugstore.

Health plan members have been slow to add their information to personal health records offered by many insurers, at least until a family member gets sick. But Aetna and some other health insurers, including UnitedHealth and WellPoint, have made an end run around this obstacle by creating rudimentary health profiles based on medical claims data.

Aetna says it has gone further by using the profile to help tailor the SmartSource searches.

"I don't know of anybody else who is matching members' claims information with a search engine to help them look for medical content," said Julie Snyder, a technology and health care analyst at Forrester Research.

But some industry experts say that medical claims data have limited utility, providing only "an echo of the events that go on in your care," according to Wes Rishel, a senior health care analyst at the Gartner Group technology consulting firm. "Also, at any time, the information is 15 to 45 days old."

Dr. Rishel said more useful data would eventually come directly from the person's doctors and hospital visits. Google and Microsoft are trying to get that information, although he predicts it will take "about two years" to reach that goal.

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About: Aetna Inc..

Aetna, Inc is an American diversified health care benefits company, providing a range of traditional and consumer directed health care insurance products and related services, including medical, pharmacy, dental, behavioral health, group life, long-term care, and disability plans, and medical management capabilities. it is a Fortune 100 member.

Extra...........

Aetna Inc. announced Wednesday that it has partnered with a San Francisco's Healthline Networks Inc. to offer to its members a pilot version of a search engine that personalizes database search results.

The tool mines information from Aetna's databases and delivers search results based on a patient's gender, age, ZIP code, health care plan and employer.

The search engine is available for use only by Aetna members and can provide information about local doctors participating in the plan, treatment options and medications that would make sense given the searcher's medical history and estimated health care costs.

Aetna (NYSE: AET), which is based in Hartford, Conn., and has operations in Pleasanton, made made the application called Aetna SmartSource available first to its own 35,000 employees. It will be rolling out to large employer groups throughout 2008.

to make sure you are as engaged as possible in managing your health care."

Technorati : Aetna, New Online, San Francisco's Healthline Networks Inc