Pitt pissed away games they needed to have. Winnable, lower tier competition. The conference schedule actually was kind to give them time to get ready for the tough stretch. Now they are hitting the tough stretch and not much margin for error left. The only teams Pitt has beaten that may be going to the NCAA are Richmond and South Carolina.
Their non-con was pathetic, and they still managed to lose one of the games. The selection committee, at a minimum was going to hold that schedule against them in seedings, but the way Pitt is playing, they have put themselves on the tournament bubble. Just before the start of conference play, I said that Pitt would need to go 11-5 in the conference just to avoid being something like an 8 or 9 seed. At this point, I figure they need to go 9-7 (maybe 8-8) to be on the bubble, and 10-6 to be solid. Either way, they will also need at least one Big East Tournament win. A quarter way into the season and Pitt is 2-2 against teams with a combined BE conference record of 5-11. Pitt’s RPI, before the St. John’s loss was at #78.
Now with 12 games left Pitt needs at least 7 wins. Seven of the remaining games are against BC, UConn, Syracuse and ND. Teams that are 16-2 in the BE and 3 of the 4 are in the top #15 in the polls. The other 5 are against Providence, St. John’s, Villanova and West Virginia. Right now, I’m having a hard time seeing Pitt get more than 6 wins. And some of them need to be quality wins.
So maybe it isn’t time to panic (yes it is), but it is time to start sweating.
All of a sudden, this team that had Final Four aspirations has legitimate concerns about even qualifying for the NCAA tournament unless they get their act together soon.
“Obviously, we’re not where we need to be,” a dejected Dixon said after the St. John’s game.
…
Point guard Carl Krauser and center Chris Taft have struggled to live up to their preseason billing as Big East first-team selections. Krauser has 45 turnovers, an average of almost seven per game, in the past seven games.
Taft, while posting solid offensive numbers, has been a liability on defense at times. Dixon pulled him late against St. John’s after allowing an easy 3-point play off an inbounds play with 4:47 to go, which allowed St. John’s to take a 59-56 lead.
Forward Chevon Troutman has been inconsistent as well. His game against St. John’s was a microcosm of the inconsistency all Pitt players have shown through 15 games. He dominated early, scoring seven points in the first eight-plus minutes of the game, but didn’t score again until 3:32 remained in the game.
A tale of Pitt’s season: Glimpses of hope followed by lapses for long stretches.
The formula for the latest loss was the same as the previous two. The Panthers got behind by double digits, made a run to take a lead and then let it slip away at the end.
The early deficits are attributable to porous defense — St. John’s shot 58 percent from the field in the first half — and careless offensive possessions. Failing to protect late leads is more of a mystery, especially because Dixon’s team last season was adept at finishing off teams.
Krauser and Taft are getting a lot of the blame, because they are the stars of the team, and if they are going to get a disproportionate amount of credit, it also cuts the other way with blame.
Krauser and Taft are not having Krauser- and Taft-like seasons, which goes a long way in explaining why the once-feared Panthers have lost three of their past five and are 12-3 overall, 2-2 in the Big East.
Nobody has a clear-cut explanation for this surprising drop-off in play, but, perhaps expectations were too high. Or, maybe, the pressure is getting to these brash New Yorkers, who essentially said before the season that it was “National Championship or bust” for Pitt.
…
In the case of Krauser, a 6-foot-2 junior, he is struggling to run the team with efficiency. His performance against St. John’s offered a microcosm of his up-and-down play of late, as he had the ball in his hands four different times in the final minute and was unable to produce any offense. He missed a floater, turned the ball over, passed up on a shot opportunity and was unable to take a desperation heave in the final second.
A telling sign that Krauser might be lacking the confidence that elevated him to stardom last season occurred with six seconds left. He opted to pass to a wide open Ronald Ramon instead of going to the basket with a chance to tie the game. Ramon missed a 3-pointer and St. John’s got the crucial rebound.
Krauser finished with 22 points, seven rebounds and seven assists — impressive numbers — but he also turned the ball over eight times, a no-no for a top-level point guard.
In the past three games, he’s turned the ball over 22 times, and the Panthers rank eighth in the league in assist-to-turnover margin. Krauser has 83 assists and 63 turnovers on the year, nowhere close to the 2-to-1 ratio Dixon demands.
Taft, meantime, is not dominating games like many might have expected when league coaches named him a preseason first-team pick. Coach Jim Boeheim of Syracuse said Taft might be the best big man in the country at Big East media day.
But Taft proved on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden that he was a way to go to meet such standards. He was relatively ineffective in the second half against St. John’s – he sat on the bench for nine minutes – and scored only two of his 11 points after the intermission. He also had some difficulties defensively – St. John’s forward Lamont Hamilton had 18 points and seven rebounds – and dropped a pass from teammate Levon Kendall that would have led to an easy bucket. Taft is averaging 14 points and a little more than seven rebounds on the year.
None of this is to suggest that Krauser and Taft are the complete causes of Pitt’s recent struggles. Fact is, the Panthers have a big bull’s-eye painted on them for past success (39-9 in the Big East the previous three seasons), and every team is looking to pull the upset. They are also adjusting to the key losses of top defenders Julius Page and Jaron Brown, in addition to struggling at the foul line (Big East-worst 223 of 353) and dealing with the controversy surrounding the arrest and indefinite suspension of former senior starter Yuri Demetris this past Sunday.
Coach Dixon has to be running out of the rope he can allow Krauser to have. At some point soon, Krauser will find himself sitting for much longer than a minute at a time if his play continues to take away scoring opportunities as often as he creates.
Obviously the players have a lot of blame in this, but so does Coach Dixon and his staff. I admit, to my bias being towards a strong defensive team first. But as I look at the players on the team, I have to wonder if the Pitt coaches need to adapt somewhat to the players on the team. Pitt’s offensive style, is supposed to match its defense, slow, methodical find the best shot and make the extra pass. The problem is that while Pitt will have a good field goal percentage, they have been giving up too many turnovers and not getting enough shots.
Looking at the players on the Pitt roster, they are capable of playing good defense, but there isn’t a dead-certain, lock-down defender there. The zone seems to be necessary, but they also have to look at what they are doing on offense to get shots.
Meanwhile the UConn game on Saturday night is looming larger and larger. UConn had some struggles early in the season, but they have been getting better. This is a much different UConn team than most in the past. Even more than last year’s team, they are a much bigger and far more of a team looking to score in the paint.
The blueprint UConn must use during the next two months, including Saturday against Pittsburgh, was on display Monday night against Seton Hall.
During a four-minute stretch in the second half, with the outcome in doubt, the Huskies scored on seven straight possessions.
It was a textbook example of interior basketball, written with both muscle and finesse, which might light the way deep into March.
“I’m not sure we’ve ever had a team built like this,” UConn coach Jim Calhoun said. “Not quite like this. But the way we are playing now, we’ve got 6-9, 6-10, 6-11, and that is a lot to handle.”
As UConn plunges into the deep end of the Big East schedule, the Huskies are rewriting their own book of basketball.
The Huskies have lived on the wing throughout the Calhoun era. Many of the great names that have rolled through Storrs have been perimeter players.
…
Led by Josh Boone, Charlie Villanueva and Rudy Gay the Huskies are scoring inside more than in previous seasons.
The trio has combined for 48 percent of UConn’s points this season. Last season, even with Emeka Okafor a focal point of the offense, Okafor, Boone and Villanueva combined to score 37 percent of the Huskies’ points.
If Calhoun has his way, that percentage will dip in the final two months as Rashad Anderson finds his touch.
“Eventually they will crowd us and leave the other guys open,” Calhoun said. “Zone is one of the answers, not necessarily with Pittsburgh, but certainly we are going to see more zone, and we are going to need to make some outside shots. There is no reason for me to believe that Rashad, Denham [Brown], Rudy and Antonio [Kellogg] won’t do that.”
A flurry of outside scoring would make things easier for UConn, especially against muscular teams such as Pitt, but it will not change the Huskies’ foundation.
They are, perhaps for the first time in the Calhoun era, a big man’s team.
That may also explain why BC could beat them. BC is very much also an interior scoring team. As long as UConn can’t score consistently from outside, Pitt will have a chance in this game. If they want it. For Pitt to win, though, it will also require scoring of their own on their opportunities.
