After 3 games in 3 days, everyone needs a little rest. Pitt doesn’t play until Friday when the FSU Seminoles come to the Pete (Pitt returns the favor in 2008) for a post-Thanksgiving game that is technically the last game of the FCCAABC Tournament. I don’t pretend to understand how this tournament played out, other than the fact that Pitt got to host and play a bunch of early games.
The Oakland team gave Pitt a good battle. Dennis at Pitt Hoops has his thoughts on the game
Pitt came out sluggish and not fully ready to play.
Pitt missed its first five field-goal attempts, and Oakland went on a 12-2 run to take a 25-15 lead on Vova Severovas’ back-door layup with 8 minutes, 20 seconds left in the first half.
Pitt trailed, 33-29, at the break. The Panthers shot 33 percent and had as many turnovers as field goals (eight) in, by far, its worst half of the young season.
Oakland, located in the Detroit suburbs, was trying to match Oral Roberts’ upset at Kansas, and become the second Mid-Continent Conference team in less than a week to beat a top-5 team on its home court.
“I think we were maybe a little fatigued,” Kendall said. “We weren’t expecting them to come out quite as hard or be quite as good as they were. We were a little bit tired.”
Oakland also was playing its 3d game in 3 days, but they were presumably a little more juiced about taking on Pitt then the other way around. Pitt was the opponent, each team coming into the Pete, wanted to take out.
The Grizzles hung close for most of the second half but Keith Benjamin came off the bench and hit two crucial baskets and a lay-up with seven minutes left which gave Pitt a 12-point lead, 57-45.
He also sank a tough 3-pointer from deep in the corner that pushed Pitt’s lead back to double-digits, 60-49 with five minutes left, much to the disappointment of Oakland coach Greg Kampe.
“We’re disappointed. We had a chance to beat the No. 3 team in the country,” Kampe said. “Just when I thought we were getting close enough to steal the game at the end, that No. 1 (Benjamin) hit a tough 3-pointer.
“We knew they would go to Gray, but I thought we defended him as good as you could defend him for players of our size. We knew Pitt was coming out in the second half as intense as they could so we went into the locker room happy to be up four points on the No. 3 team in the country, then we came out in the second half in a fog and just watched.”
The second half, though, was really about Aaron Gray — sore lip and all — just dominating inside.
The Panthers avoided the upset by force feeding the ball to Gray in the second half. Pitt’s 7-foot, 270-pound senior center scored 15 of his 23 points after halftime and the Panthers came back to beat the pesky Grizzlies, 66-55, at the Petersen Events Center.
“Coach Dixon told us to get the ball down low,” Gray said. “He has confidence in me to make good decisions. I got a couple of easy buckets. I had a few good post moves. I started to really get confident.”
Pitt played a nice little tournament, won the games and (mostly) no one got injured.
then there is supposedly the last game of the tournament on friday vs Florida State. Neither Oakland, N Eastern or UMass play FSU so why are they considered part of this tournament?
at the end of the Oakland game, there was the award presentation. there was no trophy for the overall winner of these games. but there was an all star team. 3 players from UMass, the center from Oakland and Graves. The MVP went to Gray. so gray is an MVP of the tournament, but not even the best center? and no players from UMass came out to collect their all star plaques. guess it wasn’t very important to them and they already skipped town heading north.
and then i read how the tournament is exempt and the games don’t count? well, if pitt were to have lost, their ranking, etc would have suffered.
Some trivia from that game: Coach calls Aaron “A. G.”
The play-by-play man on the radio (the young guy, not Hillgrove) kept calling Antonio Graves “Aaron Graves” throughout the entire game. I thought my head was going to explode.
Does anyone remember the football season???? Its nice to win, who the hell cares what the margin of victory is, this isnt the BCS. Enjoy the games and this will hopefully be a special year.
1. That team out there did not look like the #5 team in the nation. Of course, I don’t know how much that had to do with playing a 2nd game in two days.
2. The Oakland Zoo was disappointing. Not a lot of cheering, very quiet at times. I could hear UMass’s coach yelling to his players on the court. Creativity is certainly not there. I’m sorry, but as someone said to me on a Duke board, there is nothing like the Cameron Crazies. I guess I’m spoiled by that.