Late start again — I know, what else is new on Sundays. Before I give the rundown, a little additional story. The wife came into the living room during the last few minutes of the Pitt game after getting the kid down for a nap. As the game ended and the cameras showed the very happy Pitt players, they showed Troutman pulling off his jersey and holding the Pitt name aloft to the fans. I believe the wife’s exact words at seeing the barechested Troutman were, “Yum, thank you, who’s that?” I told her, then handed her a tissue to wipe the drool from her mouth. I’m really in no position to give her any grief, it just makes it easier for me to drool more openly at Jessica Alba.
The Pittsburgh papers of course led with the toughness of Carl Krauser.
You can outshoot him, outscore him and outplay him, but …
“You’ll never out-tough me,” Pitt junior point guard Carl Krauser said late Saturday afternoon. “I will battle you until I see zero, zero, zero on the clock.”
Krauser put his money where his mouth is (more on that mouth later) in helping the Panthers to a scintillating, 68-66, victory in front of matinee crowd of 12,293 at Petersen Events Center.
…
Krauser did most of his damage with a fat lip and rearranged dental work, thanks to an accidental head butt from teammate Mark McCarroll midway through the second half. Krauser missed several minutes to push the teeth back into place, during which the Panthers went on an 11-0 run to slice a 50-47 deficit into a 58-50 lead, then ultimately put the team on his back at crunch time.
“Nothing’s going to stop me from playing,” said Krauser, who saw a dentist last night to reset his back teeth. “I had to get back onto the court and help us win this game. It was a big one.”
In keeping with the toughness theme, a bit of a reference to when Krauser did a little boxing growing up.
Carl Krauser was an amateur boxer as a teenager and knows what it’s like to get bloodied by an opponent. So when Pitt’s pugnacious point guard was knocked out of the game midway through the second half yesterday against Notre Dame, he was down, but not for the count.
Krauser gathered himself — resetting a couple of loose teeth in the hallway beneath the Petersen Events Center stands — and was back in for the final minutes, delivering the knockout punches in Pitt’ 68-66 victory.
Krauser made big play after big play in the final minute and a half, including the winning shot with nine seconds remaining. He finished with 16 points, four rebounds and one swollen lip.
“I was bleeding all day,” said Krauser, who was holding an ice bag on his bloody lip. “It felt like a boxing match. I was in pain, but it didn’t matter because my teammates needed me. I knew what I had to do. I had to give us a lift and hit that shot.”
Krauser, who hadn’t made a basket in the second half, made a big 3-pointer with 1:34 to go to give Pitt a 64-62 lead. On Notre Dame’s next possession, he dived on the floor, recovered a loose ball and passed to Chevon Troutman, who was intentionally fouled on a breakaway layup attempt. Troutman made one free throw for a 65-62 lead.
And then scored the game winning runner after ND had tied the score again. He then spent a lot of the evening getting dental work, of course Pitt has a great dental school as Mike Ditka and Beano Cook will tell you.
Joe Paterno wishes there had been a letter-of-intent in 1957, because Mike Ditka would have signed it after originally committing to Penn State. To this day, almost 50 years later, Paterno considers Ditka his most disappointing recruiting loss.
Picture Ditka and Dave Robinson as Penn State’s defensive ends. No wonder Paterno took it so hard. Ditka had committed to Penn State during his senior year at Aliquippa. Because there was no letter-of-intent at the time, coaches had to keep chasing recruits right up until reporting day in the late of August.
It was at a baseball tournament in Altoona, Pa., according to his book, that Ditka changed his mind and decided to attend Pitt (Pitt has a dental school). Ditka often tells the story that he wanted to become a dentist. Can you picture his hands fitting into someone’s mouth? Never mind the explorer.
Sorry, somewhat irrelevant, but I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to shoehorn that in somehow. After all, what are the odds anyone is really going to read a book by Ditka?
ND Coach Mike Brey even gave the nod to Krauser.
“He’s a winner,” said Notre Dame coach Mike Brey. “He makes big plays. That’s his style.”
Come the end of any close game for Pitt, Krauser is the guy I want with the ball. Not only do you think he will make the shot, but he can make his free throws.
Now here’s where it gets surprising (at least to me). The papers that cover the game with more of an eye to the ND faithful somehow fail to mention that Krauser nearly lost a couple of teeth and played with and through immense pain. They will mention Krauser’s heroics.
Carl Krauser’s floating left-handed layup with 10 seconds left in the game broke a 65-65 tie, gave the Panthers the lead for good and ultimately secured their fourth victory in the last five games against the Irish.
Krauser led Pittsburgh with 16 points, none bigger than his final two.
“He does that all the time,” Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon said. “He battles for every loose ball. He’s always around the ball. He makes big plays.”
But not the extent. Instead, it’s focusing on how the ND inside guys came up small. I mean, when Pitt lost to WVU last week, as much as it was them hoisting 3s, they were also getting the ball inside for scores just enough to keep Pitt off-balance. ND couldn’t even do that. I get that you focus on your own team’s issues, but how do you pass on the Krauser toughness, even in passing?
In the end, they seem to chalk it up to yet another close game the Domers couldn’t finish.
Once he single-handedly steered Notre Dame toward overtime with nine points in a 2:06 stretch, guard Chris Quinn sensed Saturday’s basketball game against Pittsburgh was set for overtime.
All the Irish needed was one defensive stop for an additional five minutes. With under 10 seconds remaining and the shot clock close to expiring, Pittsburgh guard Carl Krauser sent a Petersen Events Center crowd of 12,293 home as scheduled.
Krauser hit a lay-up with 9.3 seconds remaining and No. 18 Pittsburgh survived the frantic final seconds for a 68-66 victory.
Quinn was amazing for ND, which of course balanced out Falls on the perimeter.
Personally, I still don’t know what to think of Chris Thomas. He seems to have all the skills. Lots of ability and potential. The one thing he doesn’t seem to have as a point guard — the ability to make the rest of his team better. He gets compared to Jason Kidd quite frequently, but Kidd makes his team better. Not just with court vision, defense and assists. It’s something else. Something that resonates with his teammates. Thomas seems to lack it. I won’t even pretend to define it.
As much as I get on Jamie Dixon for being such bland copy, I’m still not a big fan of players in the college game, basically complaining about their own teammates in the press (however true the criticisms might be). Chris Thomas commits this sin.
“We said the game was going to be won down low,” Thomas said. “We shot the ball well, extremely well from the three-point line. But not having an inside presence, that hurt us.”
Especially at the end.
With 9.6 seconds left, Pittsburgh point guard Carl Krauser, who finished with a team-high 16 points despite missing a long stretch after having two teeth knocked out in a second-half fall, made a short runner to break a 65-65 tie.
Moments later Thomas found Cornett under the basket. But Cornett was fouled and unable to finish and had to settle for two free throws.
Come now, Cornett was never given a chance to finish. McCarroll nearly hugged Cornett, to prevent a clean shot.
Now to some columns. The big one, of course, is Ron Cook’s on Chris Taft not showing up, yet again in the big game. I wrote with a lot of hope that Taft maybe had the flu to explain his performance. No such report showed up, so it appears I’m dead wrong about that. I don’t know what to say here. In the three biggest games for Pitt in the Big East — UConn, Syracuse and ND — Taft has scored 19 points (7-13), 17 rebounds, 4 turnovers, 1 block and 1 assist. He was nowhere near assertive, completely passive (13 of his 17 rebounds were defensive) and he never got in position for shots.
The quandary for Pitt is that they really can’t just bench him. Gray is solid, but he can play hard and with abandon, in part, because he knows that he is only out there for maybe 15 minutes max. Fouls are an issue, and Gray while clearly giving more effort is not close to the ability of Taft. Taft is a convenient scapegoat, but can Pitt really afford to bench him with the games Pitt has in the last few weeks? I don’t have the answer. Of course, I’m not paid around $600 K to figure it out (cheap shot).
In another column, singing the praises of Pitt, Mike Prisuta goes with Pitt’s edge.
“They’re very good,” Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said after a 68-66 struggle that wasn’t settled until the last inbounds pass slipped from Irish star Chris Thomas’ grasp. “And they played with an edge about them that maybe you haven’t seen all the time.”
That “edge” was apparent from the outset of the festivities at Petersen Events Center, and it allowed Pitt to survive countless challenges to its individual and collective mettle, as well as another barrage of 3-pointers (14 of them this time).
That “edge,” as Brey no doubt detected from his study of videotape, has been conspicuous by its absence on several occasions this season. It’s absence helps explain Pitt’s inability to achieve a consistency of effort and performance, the type that the program had been built upon in recent seasons.
And while that won’t be restored with one game, yesterday was at least a start.
That “edge” helped the Panthers sprint to a 30-17 lead late in the first half.
That “edge” kept the Panthers confident and composed while sustaining a series of counter-punches that allowed Notre Dame to establish a 39-38 lead less than four minutes into the second half, and a 49-44 advantage with 12:53 remaining.
That “edge” kept Ronald Ramon firing, even after he had missed four consecutive 3-point attempts. It kept Pitt attacking even with Carl Krauser, Chris Taft and Chevon Troutman on the bench at one second-half juncture.
That “edge” sealed the deal in the closing seconds.
Troutman always has it, and Krauser almost always does.
Everyone wearing a Pitt jersey had it against the Fighting Irish.
Not to quibble, but Krauser also never lost it. Just that Krauser holds the ball the most, and his mistakes are the most magnified.
