One big win doesn’t mean everything is perfect for Pitt. For better or worse, Pitt how has to wait until Saturday night before they play again. The bad news is that it takes away from the immediate positive energy and momentum the team might feel after such a big win. The good news, is it gives Pitt more time to work on their defense and prepare for Syracuse.

The talk is still about Chevy Troutman. Dick Weiss at the NY Daily News was impressed. It was just astounding to all at the way he took over the game.

Troutman was described as relentless, passionate and overpowering. But the word everyone kept coming back to was possessed.

“Chevy has this look on his face when he’s anxious, and he starts shaking,” Pitt junior point guard Carl Krauser said. “Once you see Chevy shaking, you know he wants the ball, and we just kept feeding him the ball.”
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“That boy is an animal down there,” Krauser said. “He was just down there outworking those guys. It was all about the will and passion of the player, and he showed he had more will and passion for the game. He wanted to win that game and he did whatever it took.”

The victory was huge because Pitt had lost three of its past five and was coming off a bad loss at St. John’s. Plus, it was a win against the defending national champions on their home floor.

Troutman was taunted at halftime by Connecticut’s student body. At the time, he had four points and three turnovers and had been shut down by Connecticut’s strong front line. Once he got into the locker room, reserve center Aaron Gray said he saw something change in Troutman.

“People were chanting in the crowd, ‘Hey, great half, Chevy.’ ” Gray said. “He was like, ‘All right, I’ll go to work now.’ He was possessed in the second half. You could see the fire in his eyes.”

Apparently the UConn Husky players were getting a little too into things in the first half, thinking the game was over as well.

A season’s worth of celebration was pent up inside Rashad Anderson. And when he hit his second three-pointer of the first half Saturday night, it all came tumbling out.

The junior forward raced into the corner of Gampel Pavilion and saluted the UConn students, who were creating an unsustainable din, as Pittsburgh coach Jaime Dixon called timeout.

Near the UConn bench, Jim Calhoun surveyed this wild scene – Anderson was not the only one taking it to the seats – and saw trouble.

The Huskies were ahead by nine – a lead they would stretch to 17 in short order – but wilted when Pittsburgh mounted its inevitable challenge.

“We were all so happy, jumping around and running to the corners and stuff like that, and that really concerned me,” Calhoun said. “If someone did that to us, I think it would inspire us. And secondly, games are 40 minutes. That’s what the rules say.”

I’m really not sure the Pitt players noticed. The ESPN cameras didn’t show anything.

What may have helped Pitt, was a 3-hour team meeting after the St. John’s loss.

Team members agreed they were taking things for granted, they were reading too many press clippings and they were getting caught up in the hype. And, while it’s far too early to determine if the meeting caused a complete reversal of fortune, the Panthers took major strides in that direction with a 77-67 comeback win at Connecticut on Saturday.

“We were believing what we were reading,” said 7-foot sophomore center Aaron Gray, who went 3 of 4 from the field against UConn and had seven points and four rebounds in 12 minutes. Gray’s hook shot gave Pitt the lead for good with 7:37 remaining. “We got a little lazy and a little too confident, but we were humbled (in three last-minute losses to Bucknell, Georgetown and St. John’s) real quick. We realized things aren’t going to be easy anymore.”

Senior Chevon Troutman, who had 25 of his 29 points in the second half against UConn, said the Panthers were victims of previous successes, considering they had posted the top winning percentage in the nation the past three years and have played in three consecutive Sweet 16s.

“We were always used to winning, so we just felt like, ‘Oh, this is another one of those games we’re going to win, no matter who it is,’ ” Troutman said. “And then, the other team came up with bigger plays than us.”

Of course if Pitt goes out and lays an egg against Syracuse or just plays at a .500 clip, then...

Come March, a three-hour team meeting Tuesday night at the New York Hilton might be considered a turning point in Pitt’s season. Or, it might merely be a footnote in the 2004-05 history of the Panthers.

That all depends upon the way Pitt completes the final six weeks of the regular season. But judging from their 76-66 victory against defending national champion Connecticut Saturday night, something positive happened in that meeting, which came after an embarrassing loss to St. John’s at Madison Square Garden.
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Senior forward Chevon Troutman said the team’s consistency of effort was also called into question.

“I felt like it put our team back into perspective,” Troutman said. “We have to work for everything we get. We can’t take plays off if we want to win. Coach has been doing a good job of getting us ready. We just didn’t do a good job of executing for him.”

Now they just need to show that it wasn’t a one game thing.

Here’s a brief story on Dante Milligan announcing his transfer.