Not living in Pittsburgh, I don’t know what the sports talk had to say about Pitt’s loss to OSU. I had some ideas — poor shooting, Krauser didn’t get the ball inside — but not enough interest. Well, one of the radio yakkers has a couple columns a week in the P-G. Today, a week later, he unloads.

Guards who can’t shoot did the damage in the Sweet 16.
…
But then selfishness entered the picture in the persons of Julius Page and Carl Krauser.

Let me boil down his blaming for you. Page was selfish for deciding he was the “go-to guy” and taking 11 shots in the game, making only 2. Krauser was selfish, didn’t pass to his teammates enough, and was only out to make himself look good. After blaming Page, and especially, Krauser, he sort of concedes a key point.

It’s true that opposing defenses started collapsing on Pitt after Syracuse provided the model in the aforementioned victory at the Petersen Events Center. Apologists for Page and Krauser ask, “Well, what other options were there?”

He does his best to minimize it, but how can you get the ball inside when the inside guys are contending with 3-4 guys around them to stop the inside pass?

Madden offers his strawman suggestions:

Presented now, in order of perceived preference, Pitt’s offensive options:

1.) Run their half-court offense from the outside in, letting Krauser make all the decisions.

2.) Run their half-court offense from the inside out occasionally, getting the ball down low early in the shot clock and letting guys like Brown and Chevon Troutman make the occasional decision.

3.) Run. Get the ball off the boards and fastbreak. Pitt ran liberally in landmark routs at Syracuse and Providence this season.

4.) Shoot from the outside. This obviously was Pitt’s worst option. Look at the shooting percentages of those who shoot from the outside. Page shot 37 percent on the year, Krauser 40 percent.

The first option didn’t work. So Pitt inexplicably went straight to its worst option.

So, basically, #1 and #4 are already off the board of his options. Well, let’s take #3 off as well, because, with the exception of the Providence game (which Madden cites as a prime example for this), that method nearly got them run out of the games with Notre Dame and UConn in January — closer to the competition faced in the NCAA (and judging by the way Providence bowed out to Pacific, that game would not be much of a benchmark).

That leaves #2. Guess what? Pitt was trying that, especially in the first half. Troutman, Brown and Taft, though, recognized the defense and kicked it out. The problem was that Page and Krauser weren’t hitting the jumpers. If the defense collapses inside, whether you start the ball there or pass it inside, you have to make the open jumpers. Like it or not they didn’t make the shots, but I can’t fault the plan. Madden in decrying Page and Krauser’s selfishness ignores the key splits of the halves. In the first half, Page and Krauser took a combined 18 shots, making only 6. Ugly, but at the half, Pitt was actually ahead. The second half, they only took 10 shots.

One of the truisms in the NCAA Tournament is the importance of guard play. There were plenty of examples of that this year. How do you think St. Joe’s had the season it had. How it defeated Wake Forest and almost took out OSU? What about Xavier? How did Georgia Tech reached the Final Four? The Guards made shots. Pitt’s guards didn’t make the shots. I don’t like it either, but it wasn’t ego or selfishness.

The really sad thing for Madden, is that he waited until today to put this stuff to print. He was pre-emptively struck down by Joe Starkey at the Trib by 3 days.

Disregard the talk-show babble about Pitt’s Carl Krauser playing an egotistical game Thursday against Oklahoma State.

Any good point guard appraises the situation and acts accordingly. Krauser obviously realized long ago that his teammates couldn’t shoot straight. That’s why he was Pitt’s leading scorer.

Those who follow college basketball — and one of the unfortunate aspects of Pitt’s rise to prominence is that a lot of people around here only pretend to follow it — know that Krauser has established himself as one of the nation’s premier point guards.

[Emphasis added.]

Wonder who he’s referring to? Starkey’s column is quite good and has some interesting notes about the game.