He underwent a two-hour surgery Monday in New York involved removing a large disk fragment that had been pressing on a spinal nerve. The surgeons decompressed the area around the nerve.
"He was fresh out of surgery and still to come and coach us and give it his all meant a lot, so we just wanted to play as hard as we could for him," Lamb said.
The team went 3-5 in Calhoun's absence, and is 5-6 this season without the Hall of Fame head coach this season. He missed the team's first three conference games while serving an NCAA suspension.
Calhoun now has 871 career wins, sixth on the career list and just five behind Adolph Rupp.
Pitt had won four of the last five meetings with Connecticut, but the teams had not played since last year's 76-74 Uconn win in the Big East tournament.
The two teams have combined for 12 Big East regular season or tournament championships ithe past decade.
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