I never made it back to posting on the b-ball team yesterday.
This story discusses how Pitt got off to a slow start, and this one noted how it had a definite warm-up feel.
There’s a reason they call these exhibition games.
It’s not as if Pitt pored over tapes of the Slippery Rock point guards and offensive schemes in preparation for last night’s contest at the Petersen Events Center.
“It’s for us to get better,” Pitt point guard Carl Krauser said. “I won’t ever take anything away from any other team, no matter what division, but it’s about us working on our game.”
And of course the new kids got a lot of love.
Everyone wanted to talk about the new class after the game.
“The young guys really do a good job taking things from practice and carrying them over to the games,” Krauser said.
“They work really hard,” Gray added. “They’re there [in the gym] every day, sometimes some of the first players there.”
Dixon acknowledged the hard-work aspect, but also explained that the freshmen are usually in the gym because there’s no place they’d rather be.
“They like to play, and they like to be in the gym,” he said.
You mean they don’t want to go to class?
Freshman Sam Young, especially, made people stand-up and take notice.
Young showed the 6,813 in attendance, especially the rather-full student section earning their new loyalty points, what his teammates and coaches had known since he’s been at Pitt this fall — he has all the athletic ability in the world.
“He’s an instant highlight,” center Aaron Gray said of Young. “He does his thing every day in practice and he’s going to be a great spark for us all year.”
The 6-foot-6 forward scored eight points in 10 minutes in the second half. It wasn’t necessarily the quantity of the points Young scored as much as it was the quality that got the crowd so excited.
A little more than five minutes into the second half, Young put on his very own one-man slam-dunk spectacular.
After a steal in the backcourt, Young broke in all alone at the hoop closest to the Pitt bench. As the entire Oakland Zoo wondered what would transpire, it was as if his teammates already knew because they were already standing. In LeBron James-like fashion, Young nearly hit his head off the rim as he fully extended his right arm for a tomahawk dunk.
Although it was early November, the Zoo sounded like it was mid-April.
“Having someone like him that can instantly get 12,500 people going crazy, it just adds to our home court advantage,” Gray said.
I’m very happy to read that the students were already showing up ready for this season. A very good thing, and it mostly matches with what Aaron reported.
so, yeah, i was at the game. a few observations, even against “the rock” (haha.) – pitt STILL is just carelessly launching too many threes without working to get the ball inside, especially graves. it was really disconcerting to see pitt, with about a foot on every player for SRU, just continually launch threes before the shot clock hit 25. – krauser looked sharp, looks like he has motivation this year to impress some scouts. – the zoo was rocking last night. i was surprised, since it WAS an exhibition against SRU, but it was pretty good. – i was pretty impressed with the freshmen, since this was the first “game” they were in. fields already looks like the third best G (behind carl and ramon, and ahead of graves and benjamin), although we’ll see how he reacts in the big east. young was impressive in size, but after all the raves from the scrimmage, i expected to see some fireworks, but they weren’t happening. exhibition, i guess. overall, a good exhibition. definitely some quirks to be worked out, though, before we get into december. the next few games should help with this.
A little difference of opinion regarding Young and what he did, though.
