First a word about the booing of Dixon during the honoring of McCarroll and Troutman after the game. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with Dixon’s coaching job in this game either, but there is no excuse to unload on Dixon at that point. That was about 2 Seniors who have represented Pitt very well. 2 players who have helped raise the basketball program to national respectability. Guys who have already earned their degrees. That was classless and tasteless and no amount of frustration and emotion excuses the booing.
Losing 3 in a row is bad. Losing 2 of those 3 on your home court is worse. Losing all 3 because Pitt couldn’t score or make a stop at the end is what makes each so much more devastating than the last.
Pitt struggled in the closing minutes for the second consecutive game. After getting outscored, 28-10, over the final nine-plus minutes of Wednesday’s loss to West Virginia, the Panthers watched Connecticut score 11 of the final 12 points yesterday.
The Panthers did not make a field goal in the final four minutes, missed their last four shots from the field, three of four free-throw attempts and committed a turnover.
“Down the stretch is what’s killing us,” Troutman said. “We have to find a way of correcting that. We know we can do it. It’s just a matter of doing it.”
Part of it might be remembering to get the ball inside and finishing on offense. This excuse from Krauser holds no water.
“I don’t want to say that we don’t have guys who know how to win,” point guard Carl Krauser said. “But we have young guys who don’t know how to close out games. Once you become a leader, you close out games. We have a young team. We have to keep talking to them about closing out big games.”
That excuse holds no water in the last week of February. Not when Pitt has closed out the games. That just makes no sense.
Part of the problem is that in the closing minutes no one but Troutman or Krauser seems to be able to put the ball through the basket.
To be sure, the Panthers have ample opportunity to right their ship, but the UConn loss reinforced the fact that Pitt is struggling to finish off games. The Panthers failed to hold a one-point lead with 4:01 left in yesterday’s game, which occurred one game after they squandered a 14-point second-half advantage against WVU. What’s more, they are lacking in scoring options outside of Troutman and point guard Carl Krauser (21 points, seven assists, two turnovers).
No other Panthers player scored more than seven points. That fact prompted Dixon, who rarely puts a negative spin on things, to proclaim that Krauser and Troutman can’t do it all.
“We need scoring from different guys,” said Dixon, whose team went 4 of 22 from 3-point range and made just 9-of-31 shots (29 percent) in the second half.
The Panthers also need scoring at crunch time. Case-in-point: After Krauser’s runner through the lane gave them a 63-62 lead at the 4:01 mark, they missed their final four field-goal attempts and allowed UConn to go on a game-clinching 8-0 run. Against WVU, they failed to convert a field goal in the final 7:27 and scored just four of the game’s final 22 points.
Troutman did not help the cause by going 8 of 14 from the free-throw line, including 3 for 7 in the final 5:44. Pitt went 6 of 16 from the line in the second half.
Not that others won’t take the shots, they are just not sinking them. And even Krauser and Troutman are struggling at the end as teams just key on them.
There were 47 fouls called in the game. It seems that Jim Calhoun showed why he is going to be a hall of fame coach (he should have been last year) when he got called for a technical.
“I wanted to establish the territory of how the game was going to be called,” Calhoun said. “If we were going to allow shooters not to be protected and moving screens to continue to occur, the best way to do it is to get a technical many times. Let them know what the deal is, we’re not going to accept that.
“I apologized to Tom. What I said to him, he should have given me a technical foul.”
The technical gave UConn five teams fouls to Pitt’s two. But seven of the next nine foul calls went against the Panthers. What proceeded was a whistle-fest during which the officials kept a close eye on everything, mitigating the way the Panthers normally play.
A total of 47 fouls were called in the game with Pitt getting 24 of them. UConn went to the free-throw line 30 times and Pitt 29 times. Six players wound up with four fouls.
Oddly, the most physical Pitt player, forward Chevon Troutman, made it through the game without a foul. Regardless, Calhoun’s outburst had the desired effect. Neither team was allowed much leeway with its physical play.
“The calls helped tremendously,” UConn point guard Marcus Williams said.
In know way is it an excuse or am I complaining about it. It is just an illustration as to why Jim Calhoun is such a good, smart, experienced coach. Calhoun may publicly question or rip his own players in the media at times, but on the court they know he has their back. He’s the guy they will follow.
For the UConn perspective it was about a team that has just gotten better as the season continued and this game was a reflection of the steady improvement. Now the UConn team believes it can make a deep run in March. UConn got solid play from Gay who benefited from Kendall’s foul problems leading to clear mismatches against him.
The freshman forward was a key part of the Huskies’ second-half plan because Pittsburgh couldn’t find anyone to guard him.
“Every time [Antonio] Graves played somebody, we wanted to go there,” UConn coach Jim Calhoun said. “The same thing with [Mark] McCarroll.”
Graves was too small to guard Gay; McCarroll was too slow.
And Kendall had 4 fouls in only 12 minutes.
This has become a rivalry. I’m not saying that to puff up Pitt’s profile. I’m saying that based on what the UConn players said and did. The UConn players took great pleasure in the win.
Starting with pre-game warm-ups, the Pitt student section screamed vulgar comments at the Huskies, so UConn took extra satisfaction sending them home disappointed.
“I don’t typical say this but we were just hearing from the crowd all night long,” Boone said. “This is probably the worst crowd as far as being just plain old vicious. That’s all I can use to describe it. They were just vicious and relentless.
“Every time you go near them they were yelling something at you, so it was a little bit of motivation. Then when you look up at the scoreboard at the end of the game and see you’re on top, it’s really satisfying.
“Also, when we walked off the court and through the tunnel we noticed that there really wasn’t anybody saying anything then. That’s a really good feeling.”
There is nothing for the crowd to say. Scoreboard is the final arbiter. Huskie players freely admitted they enjoyed seeing the Oakland Zoo silenced.
Denham Brown scanned the emptying arena, which had resembled a blast furnace for two hours, and could not contain himself.
The man they call “Frown” smiled wide, which should tell you everything you need to know about how much this game meant to UConn.
“I saw the crowd leaving with about two minutes left,” Brown said. “I’ve never seen that here before. I thought ‘Wow, this is really over.'”
The Huskies lived with their collapse against Pittsburgh in Storrs for more than a month but exorcised it Saturday with a bone-crunching, second-half performance.
This game – like this rivalry – was an uneasy mix of admiration, animosity and great basketball, and the Huskies won it because they were the tougher team when it mattered most.
Heck some players were giving it back to the Pitt players as well.
Marcus Williams looked up at the scoreboard, looked down at the Connecticut scrawled across his chest and, geez, he couldn’t resist.
He pulled a Krauser.
He pulled the national flag blue fabric from his chest, elevated the school name for Pittsburgh guard Carl Krauser to see. He kept it up for all the Panthers, heck for all 12,508 crazies at Petersen Events Center to examine, too.
That’s Krauser’s trademark. That’s what Krauser pulled at Gampel Pavilion last month when the Huskies’ knees buckled and they fell apart in the second half. When you get beat and beat up you don’t easily forget, and that’s why Josh Boone scribbled the date and score of the loss to Pitt on his Nikes before this game.
The winners get that right.
So where does that leave Pitt? In a difficult position of winning at least 1 of their next 2 games. Both road games. Both very good opponents. Both NCAA bound. I don’t want to say Pitt is on the bubble yet, because they can win and get in. It’s just that no one expected they’d be in a position of must wins. The NY Times sums it up.
Pittsburgh Coach Jamie Dixon’s hands locked behind his neck as he shook his head in disbelief.
Dixon’s eyes wandered to the rafters of the Petersen Events Center, his body language saying what he would not allow himself to.
After losing to No. 17 Connecticut on Saturday, 73-64, the 18th-ranked Panthers have dropped three consecutive games for the first time since 2001. A daunting schedule remains, as the Panthers (18-7, 8-6 Big East) must travel to Boston College on Monday and Notre Dame next Saturday to close the regular season.
Dixon’s frustrations had diverse roots. The Panthers scored 1 point in the game’s final four minutes, missed 10 second-half free throws and endured an erratically officiated game in which 47 fouls were called.
With their hopes for participating in the N.C.A.A. tournament suddenly in peril, the Panthers find themselves in an unfamiliar position.
Frustration is the big thing right now.
Ron Cook turns his ire on Chris Taft. Much like his previous whack shot at Krauser, it is ostensibly about the team failure, but then he spends most of the column singling out one player. Don’t hide it. Don’t pretend you are not looking to single one player out in your little preamble. Just come out and say it. The criticisms are valid, even if I don’t fully agree. I would criticize Taft more for taking himself out of the game with 2 dumb fouls. That was a major reason why he couldn’t be aggressive underneath. And maybe I missed something, but I didn’t see any Pitt player getting the ball inside much in the second half. Pitt took over half their shots outside the paint in the second half. That is definitely not where Taft should be or you want to see him.
Final column is an attempt at optimism from Joe Starkey to try and talk the bandwagon jumpers back from the ledge.
It’s the varying inconsistency that drives me wild. Remember early in the BE season. The problem was that Pitt would come out playing poorly then have to mount a frenetic comeback. I mean that’s what they had to do the first time against UConn and Syracuse. Now, Pitt plays a solid, even dominating first half and can’t finish. No explanation for either. And that’s what I would like — an explanation.
