I’ll be making comments throughout, but I won’t be doing a full liveblog. Everyone knows the drill by now.
12:12: Pitt is looking to have the Bulls aggressiveness against the Pitt size inside work against them by drawing fouls. It looks like it will be a bit ugly and unncecessarily tight, but it should make things wide open later. Still waiting for a little more aggressiveness from Gray to the basket.
12:21: The bad, Pitt is looking a bit sloppy especially on offense. The good, they are a bit more aggressive going for rebounds.
12:29: If there is a game for Pitt not to have the shots fall — and there have been several that have just bounced around and out — this would be it. 5-21 shooting. Pitt is killing on the offensive boards (9-2 advantage), but not getting the ball back in the bucket.
12:32: Kendall gets his 3d foul with 7:15 in the half. Guess we’ll get to find out how Pitt plays with more time for Young and Biggs.
12:42: Pitt took a quick TO after Gransberry just blew past them for an easy lay-in. Biggs totally lost him. Biggs is out of the game after the TO.
1:00: Halftime. Pitt leads 32-22. A mix of things for the poor Pitt shooting — 12-35. Pitt seems to be pulling up a lot more for jumpers and taking outside shots (not 3s, but just jump shots). Cook’s jumper isn’t going, and Young seems to be pulling up again rather than taking it straight to the hoop. 3 point shooting is steady, and not over done, 5-10.
1:06: Gray picks up his 3d foul right away going over the back trying to rebound his own miss. Correction, Kendall only has 2 fouls, the third was given to Graves who also has 2. Biggs, despite poor play in the first half, looks like he gets some extra minutes. I’d like to see them move Kendall to C and bring in Young.
1:19: The Bulls are already worn down, under 14 left. USF is standing around a lot on offense trying to conserve energy. Pitt now leads 41-26.
1:29: In a scrum for the ball under Pitt’s basket USF’s Saaka is rolling and writhing in pain, forcing John Sanders to comment, “Saaka might be hurt.” Really? Way to hedge. 48-29, 10 minutes left.
1:35: USF had to expend so much energy in the first half against Pitt — keeping things close, but they have no bench to help and they are already wiped out. Pitt with under 8 minutes left has played 9 players at least 12 minutes. Fields leads with 25 minutes.
1:45: Pitt may not have been able to hit their jumpers or finish close to the rim, but man, Pitt has been hitting the 3s. 63-41, 3:14 left. Kendall and Biggs have even hit 3s. 10-16 on 3s. 13-40 everywhere else.
 1:53: 69-48 Final. Pitt had 10 players score, as Hudson added a basket at the end. Depth. Have to love having it. Inside game was lousy, but this was the time to have that kind of bad game.
That has been a huge part of this game IMO, shooting almost 67% on 3 pointers.
Even Steve’s boy Kendall drained one.
Excellent shooting in the second half. And finally some more PT for Benjamin. When he and Young are in the game, it’s a totally different team.
One thing I’ve noticed about this Pitt team is that they dont seem to be having entire games where their shooting is horrible. They shot poorly in the 1st half, but settled in and really shot well in the 2nd. There may have been games they shot poorly in both halves, but I don’t remember any…maybe in the Wisconsin game.
Lastly, the announcer today made a good point about the Wisconsin game – he said that no one could have beaten them on that day. I tend to agree – especially the way Butch was shooting.
I think the DePaul game will be surprisingly tough.
