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January 5, 2007

Last night up in the Air Conditioning dome looked like we were going down do the wire for a long time and yet we pulled away in the final few minutes. The first half almost got ugly for us at points but the way we finished the half, combined with the quick start at the beginning of the second half, got us back on track quickly.

Most of this was thanks to Levance Fields carrying us through. 24 points, 3-7 on three pointers, and a handful of assists to go along with those. So far he’s filled the Krauser role well and leading us to a win over Syracuse up at their place, no matter how good or bad they are, is a breakout type of win.

Two worst stats of the game?

Free throw shooting was 9 of 17. As a ton of commenters asked, “Do we even practice foul shots?” Big Aaron Gray missing one or two in a double overtime is different since he can barely pick up his feet, let alone concentrate and shoot a good foul shot. Missing them in the first and second half (not just Gray, all players) is inexcusable. Thankfully, Fields and Ramon did a good job making most of them when they were intentionally fouling us in the last minute but missing on that many free points that they’re handing to us is not going to take us to the Final Four. Maybe not even the Sweet Sixteen.

Aaron Gray scored 9 points. The main focus of your offense needs to get the ball more than he did last night. Terrence Roberts sat out for a while and we still couldn’t feed it into him. If Levance wasn’t hitting shots like that (which I guarantee won’t happen every night) and teams keep the ball from getting inside then we might as well not expect a win. Forget the fact that they were changing defenses and packing the middle. We had plenty of time to prepare and still they held him in single digits.

Complaining after a win is hard because, after all, we won. A tournament game played like this is going to send us home though and we’ll know exactly why.





Dennis,

Fields was 3-7 on threes not 3-4. Gray missed a lot of easy 10 footers and turned the ball over last night. Otherwise he would have scored more points. The offense was superb in the second half.

The beauty of this team is that we do not need to force the ball into Gray. We are perfectly capable of scoring points without a huge contribution from him. Please see the last three games where Gray has scored 5, 5, and 9 and we have won by an average margin of 23 points. If anything, teams are going to have to respect the games of our perimeter players. This will really open things up for the big guy and I look for him to have a much larger impact later in the year.

By the way, Fields has scored in double figures in 6 straight games. This isn’t a fluke. He is a very talented offensive player. Probably the best on the team, even ahead of Cook. I would bet on this trend continuing.

Comment by Omar 01.05.07 @ 5:09 pm

Sorry about the statistical error, when I went down the stat column I saw his FT stats as the 3Pt. stat. My bad.

One thing that bodes well for Fields is that instead of running at the hoop, closing his eyes, spinning, and throwing up a bad shot (also see: Krauser) he pulls up and shoots well. I believe they may have also mentioned this on the broadcast last night.

I find it hard to look at stats from non-con games (especially with the kind of OOC schedule that Pitt plays) but if his shooting stats and the team\’s winning continues with Gray not scoring much then I\’ll know we can play like that consistently.

Comment by Dennis 01.05.07 @ 5:23 pm

Pitt’s non-con, including the games against the shittier teams, is better than every team in the big east and most teams in the country. Gray led the team in our two losses and I think that is an important statistic. Pitt won’t win on Gray’s back, he is not that type of player. The rest of the team has to step up.

Our two best games this year were against Florida St. and Dayton and Gray didn’t score a lot in either. If he can get 12-15 points and 10 boards that is enough production for us to win. The perimeter guys have to score for us to be an elite team. Especially when opponents are trying to take Gray out of the game. If they aren’t doubling him and he is one-on-one, then that is a different story.

The team will struggle and be out in the tournament’s early rounds if we have to force the ball into Gray. He is a tremendous player, but not the dominant offensive type.

Fields emergence is key for us to play deep into March. The kid scored 18 points in a 5 minute stretch in high school. I have no doubt about his ability on the offensive end. Graves play has been very encouraging as well. Hopefully they will keep it up.

Comment by Omar 01.05.07 @ 5:52 pm

The ironic thing is that while the ‘Cuse’s dome is name for an air conditioning company it has none. Gets kinda stuffy in there (went to a FB game there once).

Comment by Shawn 01.05.07 @ 9:40 pm

Dennis is clueless. I never trust anyone who uses the term “my bad”. Omar, you’re right on target with your comments.

Comment by TMGPanther 01.05.07 @ 10:14 pm

Do you guys think it’s odd though that he only scored 9 when the other team’s senior center only played 22 minutes?

And TMGPanther, I never thought two words could cause such a problem.

Comment by Dennis 01.05.07 @ 11:50 pm

I have to agree with Dennis. The handful of games I’ve gotten to see this year (the nationally televised one’s, mainly) show a team who’s ceiling is probably Sweet 16. They just don’t rebound, defend, or make enough free throws to beat quality teams on a consistent basis. Maybe that will improve as the year goes on, but these guys are upper classmen; if they were going to get significantly better, they’d have done it by now.

Comment by Jeff 01.06.07 @ 1:23 am

I honestly just don’t know how far we’re going to get this year. Our defense frankly is not nearly as good as it’s hyped up to be, and the idea of having to outgun people just doesn’t really cut it. The fact of the matter is that if we run into a team with two good options (which we will in the tourney), we won’t be able to stop them, at which point, AG could have a career day, but it wouldn’t outweigh the two career day’s we’d be giving up. Hopefully, we find that defensive grit again and play like a real pittsburgh team before its too late.

And TMGPanther, once people start reading your blogs, then you can start trashing people without out contributing ONE THING to the conversation.

Comment by Yi 01.06.07 @ 2:23 am

Dennis, your articles have been very good – thanks for your effort, please keep us informed and don’t let the spewings of a person that types before he thinks discourage you.

Comment by Reed 01.06.07 @ 5:23 am

Dennis I appreciate your input on this site and over on your other blog. Last thing about the game, Syracuse doesn’t play man-to-man, therefore the center being out is not an issue. Secondly, and much more important, Daryl Watkins is the center for Syracuse not Terence Roberts. Watkins played the majority of the game.

Yi you make some very good points. Our defense and rebounding still need to improve and I think the team and coaches know this. I don’t think we are going to see dramatic improvement, but that is the beauty of it, we don’t need to. If we can get just a little better on defense and rebounding, then we can get past the sweet sixteen. The reason is our offense is much better than in past years. Boeheim even said as much after the game.

Comment by Omar 01.06.07 @ 11:54 am

Syracuse played man-to-man for at least a decent portion of the game.

Comment by Dennis 01.06.07 @ 12:02 pm

Syracuse played man in the first ten minutes of the game. Roberts was not in foul trouble in the first ten minutes of the game. The more relevant fact is that Watkins was guarding Gray not Roberts.

Comment by Omar 01.06.07 @ 5:10 pm

I just checked the box score to see how many minutes Syracuse center Daryl Watkins played. College basketball consists of two 20 minute halves. Watkins played 40 minutes. This leads me to believe that Syracuse’s center didn’t sit on the bench at all on Thursday. Gray didn’t play against their backup center for even one minute.

Comment by Omar 01.06.07 @ 5:12 pm

The Cuse only played man for a couple initial possessions at the start of the game. Boeheim was just shaking things up a bit, then he immediately went back to the zone.

I think we’d just all like to see some more offensive aggressiveness out of Gray. I’d like to see him post up and want the ball the same way he rebounds on D. He is the one thing that almost nobody else has (except G-town and OSU), a genuine aircraft carrier in the middle with a decent scoring touch. Plenty of teams have decent guards and decent forwards like Pitt, but Gray is the differentiator. I want him to want the rock like he knows he’s the differentiator. They need to run as much as the offense as they can through him. If a team decides to double him and take him out of the equation, then fine, we have to take advantage of it….but that’s not what we’ve seen in the last 3 games. Instead we see a team that’s only too ready to fire up another 3. We need two things here that we haven’t seen any of yet — Dixon to step up and show some control and get the backcout to feed the big man, and we need Gray to demand the ball.

Comment by jason maile 01.06.07 @ 6:36 pm

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