Unavoidable delays. I was going to post sometime last night, but two things stopped me. 1) I was tired and bummed, so I didn’t have the energy; and 2) something about the game nagged at me. Something that seemed awfully familiar. The good news, I figured it out. The bad news, it woke me up at 4 am and made it difficult to get back to sleep. The day pretty much collapsed from there. So, I was going to write up my game notes, but it doesn’t seem worth it now. Game notes are more valuable when there are more games to be played, and there is something to take from them into the next game. There is no next game. I’m just going to boil them down to some key bullet points. For accuracy, I’m using the box score and play-by-play along with the Shot Chart
The refs were whistle happy in the first half, with 20 fouls called. Some questionable calls, but I wouldn’t say bad calls. Unfortunately for Pitt, most of the fouls called on them were when OSU players were in the act of shooting. OSU got half of its points in the first half on free throws (13-14 on FT). Considering they held OSU to only 6-20 (30%) shooting in the first half, they should have let the player shoot. In the second half, the refs called only 14 fouls (with 4 fouls called with about 2 minutes left as Pitt was trying to foul).
Defensively, Pitt was amazing in the first half. OSU was held without a field goal for over 9 minutes during a stretch of the half. The fact that they did this without Brown for more than half of the half — foul troubles — made it more impressive. Even the first 12 minutes of the second half, Pitt was still doing a decent defensive job. OSU was 7-15 from the field in the second half at that point, which was still below their 51.4% average.
Pitt took 17 3-point shots, and made only 3. For the game, Pitt had 58 field goal attempts, which means nearly 30% of Pitt’s shots were 3-pointers. Take out the 3-point shots and Pitt FG% jumps from 36.2% (21-58) to 43.9% (18-41). By comparison, Oklahoma St. only attempted 8 3-pointers for the game, and made half. You have to wonder just how many better shots could have been taken. The 3 extra points it generated, doesn’t seem worth it.
Page took and missed the first shot. As always, that set the tone for his shooting night. He went 2-11 in the game. The Shot Chart does not paint a pretty picture. Page only attempted 2 drives/lay-ups to the basket, and 9 jumpers. He was getting open looks, but they kept hitting the rim.
Krauser was not much better. He was 6-17 overall, but 0-6 from beyond the 3-point line. 4 of his 6 baskets came on drives and lay-ups. On jump shots he was only 2-12.
The perimeter shooting was beyond not there, it was practically non-existent for Pitt. This meant that OSU could drop more guys into the paint to prevent passing inside, defend Troutman and Taft, and inhibit drives to the basket from Krauser, Page or Brown. OSU was able to do this the entire game. Pitt’s shooting percentage bears this out.
Pitt won the rebounding battle 33-30, but that is deceptive. The splits for each half shows Pitt was outrebounded in the second half 15-13, and on the defensive rebounds, 15-9. OSU had no offensive rebounds in the second half — which isn’t too surprising since they shot 64% in the second half to limit the number of opportunities. For the game, Pitt was outrebounded on defensive rebounds 24-17. Troutman had 8 rebounds (4-4), but Taft only had 4 (3 were offensive, and all came in the 1st half)
7:45 left in the game. Pitt had just gone on a 6-0 run to tie the game at 42, and OSU called a 30 second time out. Over the next 6 minutes, OSU goes on a 17-5 run to go up 59-47, ultimately winning 63-51. In that period OSU went 8-9 from the floor. In that same period, Pitt committed 3 turnovers and shot 2-6. This is what was familiar, and what I finally recalled was similar — Pitt’s collapse against UConn in the Big East Championship. UConn went on a 21-7 run in the last 8:25. At roughly the same point in the game, OSU takes over and runs away with the game. They both happened in much the same way, with the other team suddenly hitting everything.
This makes me wonder. Did Pitt just run out of gas? Pitt has been a wonderfully conditioned team, but they played 36 games this season.
Look at their minutes for the season. Four of the starters played over 1000 minutes. Page and Brown both played in all 36 games. Page averaged 35.6 minutes/game (1281 minutes) and Brown was at 34.6 minutes/game (1237). Krauser missed 4 games because of injury, but in 32 games averaged 36.1 minutes/game (1155). Troutman missed one game, and averaged 29.2 minutes/game (1022). Taft — the youngest player — who was in all 36 games, but didn’t start until after 12 games into the season, averaged “only” 25.6 minutes/game (923).
The field goal percentage for the year was 47.1%, and average points per game was 67.9. Starting at the end of February, game #28, the loss to Syracuse — Pitt had only 2 out of those 9 games where they shot at or above the season average and scored above it. In 5 of the last 9, Pitt shot below 40%. Sure, part of it has been better competition at the end of the season, but the drop off is quite dramatic. I just have to wonder if it all caught up with the players. I’m not using it as an excuse, I’m just trying to understand how this team had fallen so far in shooting.
I don’t know what else to say at this point.
