The late game on Thursday, coupled with general national disinterest in the teams, means not a lot of stories.
The AP story, picks up on the DePaul Coach’s complaints.
What did catch Wainwright unprepared was how rough-and-tumble Pitt was for a team that starts only one senior, and ended the game with only one player having more than two fouls.
“Maybe I should give Coach Cowher and the Steelers a call and see if we can play them a scrimmage while we’re here,” Wainwright said, in a thinly veiled criticism of the officiating. “I wonder if there would be as much hitting in that game.”
Pitt went 20-of-28 at the free throw line to DePaul’s 5-of-8, and Wainwright appeared to question why there was such a big disparity.
“We’re not good enough to be up by 13 on anybody,” he said. “After that, you have to earn some baskets and get to the free throw line and we didn’t do that.”
That’s gamesmanship at most to BE refs for the next game. It was physical, but the foul disparity has more to do with shot selection and style. DePaul wasn’t driving and dumping down inside. They settled for a lot of jump shots or at most a little penetration before pulling up. Pitt played inside a lot more, and DePaul found itself out of position to stop it. Especially in the second half when Pitt attempted 21 FTs, Pitt only took 3 shots from behind the 3-point line.
Coach Dixon was encouraged by the second half effort.
“We were very efficient in the second half,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “We wanted to get it inside to Aaron from the start. We missed some easy ones early. Our patience was good in the second half. We used the clock and got shots at the end of the clock, which can wear down teams. We really had good clock management.”
Gray had five of his seven field goals in the second half. He was 6 for 9 from the free-throw line and had six offensive rebounds.
“The coaches just told me to be patient,” Gray said. “I get real anxious when I see teams are playing me man-to-man. Early on, I had a lot of bad turnovers. I think that goes to the fact that we hadn’t played in eight days.”
Pitt of course doesn’t want to discuss still being undefeated.
“I haven’t given it much thought,” Dixon said. “We’re always just looking at improving and just getting better. This week, we haven’t even talked about our record.
“The number of wins never comes into conversation in practice. Of course, we get asked about it by the media and other people. I think it does bring some exposure to the program, and that’s always good.”
In Chicago (sort of) Paul Zeise freelances this piece.
Coach Jerry Wainwright said the combination of his team’s inexperience and the Panthers’ depth, size and physical style was too much to overcome. He said one positive is that the Demons clearly have progressed from their first Big East road game, an 82-60 loss Jan. 4 at Cincinnati.
“I thought we played exceptionally well given the circumstances we had to overcome,” Wainwright said. “It is never experience that wins games, but what you do with that experience, and it is clear we have to continue to build depth, get stronger and add some weight. If we continue to move forward, we’ll have a great future, but I’d like to see the growth process accelerated.
“If you look at Pitt’s minute distribution, there is no dropoff. It seemed like they just interchanged guys the entire game, and that had a wearing effect on us. It is like a boxer taking body blows. Early in the second half, they finally got us to drop our gloves.”
Pitt definitely started wearing down DePaul, but the depth for Pitt is one of the strengths of the team this year. Coach Dixon has recognized and exploited it well this season, while getting the kids more experience.
Chicago newspapers, of course, now get to have fun of puns on Pitt’s name, hence the editor who came up with this original headline “Demons find road the pits.” The story itself is a mostly perfunctory summary of the game without anything really worth excerpting.
