The drill remains the same.
7:11: Did anyone see what happened to Thabeet? I didn’t see it. The officials, though, are really letting the teams bang. The only foul, when Kendall made a dumb reach-in after he got bumped and stripped. UConn definitely looks uncomfortable with being stuck playing at Pitt’s style, but they don’t look able to break it out and run.
7:12: Okay, now they showed the camera angle where Cook accidentally clocked him going up for a shot.
7:20: Pitt’s second squad not looking nearly so good as the starters. Sam Young looks like he is back to struggling again. Getting killed on the boards. Pitt not boxing out or out-hustling UConn. The Huskies seem a bit fired up with Thabeet knocked out.
Vitale is right, the Huskies are really establishing the post position. 11-11, 10:48 to the half.
7:26: The TV timeout gave Pitt the chance to get most of the starters back in (including Kendall with 2 fouls) and Pitt went on a 6-0 run. Cook has yet to score, but Gray has 6. 8:40 to halftime, Pitt up 17-11.
7:29: Dear god, that Vitale address to the Pittsburgh Zoo. No profanities? Where’s the fun in that?
7:38: Thabeet back. Apparently they were afraid he broke his nose. Some interesting spurts from UConn, to keep it close than I’d like. They are really slapping at the ball to get a bunch of turnovers. Not too worried about the shots not falling, yet — frustrating, but they will fall. 19-16 Pitt, 4:20.
7:47: Ramon drops a 3 at the buzzer to retake the lead, after surrendering it for the first time. 24-22
Dixon bothered by poor offensive execution. Standing around too much, going inside, but the shots not falling. No kidding. Gray has 10 rebounds but is only 4-12 with 8 points.
Too much standing not enough, cutting gives the perimeter defense of UConn time to slap at the ball and get position to stop drives. Should be an interesting halftime speech.
8:10: Cook is just having a horrible game (weak offensive foul call). Shots not falling, struggling with the passes, turnovers. Just struggling.
8:22: Ugly, ugly game. Pitt is still not shooting well. UConn’s athleticism is really compensating for inexperience tonight. Pitt just remains out of sorts. Unable to finish shots. Pitt holds an overall rebounding edge, but UConn has a 10-8 advantage on offensive rebounds. Every shot sees more blue under the basket than white.
34-33 Pitt, 11:08
8:28: 41-34 Pitt, 8:51 left. Calhoun had to take a TO after Fields nailed a big 3 and was fouled (missed the 4-pt play), but UConn failed on shots the other way. Pitt got the basket after Kendall missed the jumper, Gray rebound and threw it right back to Kendall — still wide open — who dropped it.
8:37: Another Dick Vitale speech to the Zoo about drinking. Um, not exactly the speech from Hoop Dreams. I do like the fact that he doesn’t preach abstinence in drinking. That works about as well as preaching it with sex. I’ll climb off of my soapbox now.
8:46: 48-37 Pitt, 3:55 left. Ramon has been big tonight, 14 points and 4-4 on 3s. Gray has been great in the second half. 4-12 in the first, 4-4 in the second; 17 rebounds with no other Pitt player with more than 2. Cook hasn’t scored or done much on the boards. He is the leading assist man in the game with 6.
8:55: Second half runs against UConn stat that they showed kills UConn this year. They just fade, and can’t stay together. Have to concede that to be a function of youth. They will be so good in another year. Hell, under Calhoun, I expect them to be a dangerous team by the Big East Tourney.
Vitale called the game for Pitt at 2:24 and Pitt up 53-40. He also congratulated Dan Shulman on his son’s upcoming Bar Mitzvah. Okay.
8:56: Damn. Kendall got the ball first, but his angle got the rest of the arm to foul out with Biggs.
8:57: They mentioned the verbal from Nasir Robinson. Cool.
9:00: Missing the point that, yes, Cook has only 4 points. If he looked a little further he’d see that whole 6 assist part.
It’s now 57-48 with 52.8. Dumb foul by Graves.
9:09: Damn, forced to agree with Vitale — again. Pitt has not played smart in the final couple minutes. Some dumb fouls to drag this out.
In the words of Dan Shulman, “Pittsburgh will hang on to win” by 9 points. 64-53. PittHoops called the differential. Definitely not Pitt’s best game. The good news, was that it was still good enough against UConn. The Huskies were the ones that couldn’t make free throws — 10-23.
Aaron Gray finished with 22 points and 19 boards. The team, after shooting 10-30 in the first half, went 10-15 in the second.
Pitt won despite not losing the battle of offensive glass 18-10. The overall rebounding appears to be tied at 36. UConn caused 18 Pitt turnovers. I’m not thrilled with the way Pitt played, but the fact that Pitt had a bad game and still notched the win makes me feel pretty good. Homecourt in college basketball. Never underestimate it.
Bad new – Another slow start offensively. The should be leading this game by 6-8 points right now.
Struggling offensively so far.
Gray misses ANOTHER one…this time POINT BLANK
if pitt doesn’t come out with some intensity in the 2nd this could very well be a loss. Luckily this UConn team just isnt very good right now.
Gray is really playing well. He just had two nice passes to Kendall over the last few minutes.
Man, we should be killing these guys. We take this game on the road and it doesn’t cut it.
Side note – that Texas A&M / pictionary commercial is HILARIOUS.
Did that last shot attempt and count as the 20th rebound for Gray??
I believe JD will let them know about this and also the stupid fouls at the end. I really look for them to do better against Marquette.
Some final observations:
1. As I said before, Gray played like a monster, but still missed several close shots and turned the ball over. Still, he was clearly our best player tonight.
2. This team is hard to figure out. Some nights, certain players step up and the next night, they struggle (Cook, Benjamin, Fields). While they’re winning, it’s hard to complain too loudly, but it’s still something that should be noted.
3. As was noted by several here tonight, Pitt looked sloppy – especially during the end of the game. A simple lack of discipline and let’s hope Dixon gets in their faces a little bit about it.
4. They’re officially listing Gray at 19 rebounds, but they may end up counting a 20th due to the missed shot at the end of the game. Not a big deal, but it would be nice for him to have a 20/20 game.
All in all, I think they played okay. Nothing spectacular and WAY too many turnovers…especially for a team that prides itself on not having a lot. The defense was pretty good in my opinion, just way too sloppy on offense. I would expect they’d have to play better to beat Marquette on Sunday.
While they didn’t play great, a win is a win is a win…can’t argue too much with a 5-0 conference record. The true test will be the road games.
Ramon bailed us out with his hot shooting and Gray killed it on the boards. By the way, the officiating was atrocious. The refs could have called a UCONN reach or blocking foul on almost every play. Obviously we benefited from the lack of calls also, but UCONN had the advantage.
Although it was sloppy, I really like the win. You aren’t going to play lights out every night.
This UCONN team will not be good until they get some better offensive players. They have nobody to spread the defense and that kills them. The guards can get to the hoop whenever they want, but you don’t have to play them for the three which negates the advantage. If Calhoun (the biggest asshole coach in person by far, all he does is scream at the refs. A couple of times he was at effing halfcourt and they didn’t call a T) can find a shooter they may get a little better. If not they won’t make the tournament.
* Nice floor game from Kendall. Great help D, got his hand on a number of loose balls, and covered Adrien well, which is tough. If he could resist committing stupid reach fouls, he could actually realize all the hype he gets for his all-around game.
* Why didn’t Dixon substitute for offense and defense in the last 3 minutes? We all understood why he wanted 4 guards in the game for ball-handling and foul shooting, but why wouldn’t he get Young in the game on the defensive end after Biggs/Kendall fouled out? Because he stayed with the same lineup, Gray was stuck alone trying to guard the lane and UConn was able to score easily and keep the game within striking distance. Dixon needs to mature and understand game situations.
*I was impressed by Cook’s passing tonight. Several good feeds, and not just to Gray. He’s really a good offensive player, not just a scorer. If he could stop being nonchalant on D, he’d be a complete performer.
*Biggs is completely overmatched inside at the Big East level. He can barely compete.
*Though Gray missed way too many bunnies in the first half, he rebounded like a man and came back to carry Pitt in the second half. He and Cook work well together.
Any win against Calhoun is a good win.
I have two problems with Gray: lack of toughness and his continued insistence on bringing the ball down. He gets so many balls slapped away because he brings the ball down. And while I can’t complain about 19 rebounds, all of those missed bunnies are directly correlated with his timid approach to the hoop. He clearly wanted to be more aggressive tonight, but I don’t know if he’ll ever fully appreciate his own size and understand that if he goes hard to the rim (with the ball up, that is!), the only way most guys are going to be able to stop him is to foul him. I mean, has the guy primarily guarding Gray fouled out yet this year? In tight games, those missed layups will be the difference between a W and L.
Ramon is my man. Love watching him shoot. While he didn’t contribute many hoops, Cook did an excellent job of creating good opportunities for others.
I continue to be troubled by Young and Benjamin’s lack of PT. Young never appears to be in the flow of the offense, and I think he just needs some more PT to establish it. I just hope they don’t get frustrated.
It is fun to watch this team as they are very deep and talented – and that means you’ll see good play from unexpected sources sometimes – not only fun from a fan’s perspective, but plays havoc trying to plan a defensive strategy against them. The announcer’s mentioned PITT is way down at the bottom of the rankings for steals, which surprised me given the energy and tenacious defense I see.
If Dixon can get these guys all peaking at the right time they could end up with a very good post season run.
ESPN’s guys seem to really love this team and the PGH fans. Couldn’t stop talking about how the Coach, Petersen Center and the Zoo are ‘class acts’.
Congratulations on that – it shows off the best of the school’s sports programs.
Now that’s desire to play!
ramon raymond is so much fun to watch when his shot is falling……..
gray played outstanding..he is what he is….he’s always been timid around the hoop and it looks like thats not going to change anytime soon…….
cook, for all of dick vitales annoyance on how he didnt score, made some great plays, and some unreal passes in the 2nd half…..its amazing that a kid can completely change his style of play to help the team…….
the rest of the team was garbage last night…..but hey, it happens……….but we cant play like this sunday, or marquette’s gonna wax the floor with us….i dont think we will though……….
As a Pitt student from ’96-’01, we never got any kind of love from ESPN…not that we deserved it, though. I struggled through .500-esque seasons in the Field House – no Dickie V, no ESPN crews other than the occasional game. Now it seems like we’re on ESPN every other game.
I couldn’t help being a bit envious at the students in the Zoo last night. When I was there, not only didn’t we have a Zoo, we didn’t have much of a student section. Students came (mostly because of the cheap $20.00 season tickets), but there wasn’t a section really…they were mostly spread out in different areas.
My Pitt basketball highlight at the Field House as a student came probably during Jason Maile’s 40 point outburst where we beat a ranked Villanova team led by freshman Tim Thomas (many people forget how touted he was – he jumped ship for the NBA after only his Freshman year). Villanova was only ranked 16th I believe, so while it was an upset, it was far from attention-grabbing. Now we expect to win those games.
Though this team frustrates me a lot, I have to sometimes remember where we came from. For those of us that suffered through games during those down years, it’s definitely made it worth it.
Give me a break, Calhoun. I hope we do meet them again in the Big East tourney.
Finally, as I mentioned before, Fields had his worst game of the year and still made the biggest shot of the night. In fact, you can argue he made the second biggest play on the assist to Ramon to finish the first half. Fields is going to be a SUPERSTAR at Pitt before he is finished. We shouldn’t worry about the growing pains, especially after a win.
Also, I think the reason Pittsburgh’s been disappointing people is they don’t blow teams out. I’d say they lack “Spurtability” and sometimes force their rigid (but beautiful and efficient) half court set on the flow of the game. What do you all think?
More analysis over at http://www.bigeasthoops.com.
so easily we forget pitt basketball from the 90’s………
His problems yesterday were directly related to UCONN’s guards getting in his head. He is one of the best players, if not the best, on the team. He’ll win more games for us than he loses.
Fields has proven to be huge in the clutch and he’s still learning. I can deal with his bad games far more than bad games from the likes of seniors like Kendall or Gray.
Of course Fields has the most assists; he handles the ball the most and he does give it up sometimes, just not enough to Gray.
James was handed the reins of that team last yr as a freshman, and of course he had bad games. In fact, he’s still and up and down player, but you missed the point, which was that he’s expected to lead his team as a soph and that’s not unusual in today’s NCAA.
Fields is a very solid pt guard who’s having a great soph year. None of which means we can’t take him to task when he doesn’t perform.
Fields is having a great year. No one is debating that. He had trouble last night, and it’s OK to criticize him when that happens. The fact is, he’s going to have trouble with bigger, more athletic guards because he’s 5’10” and not exactly a speed-burner. He overcomes those shortcomings (pun intended) with a stron body, a good handle, some deceptive moves and some game smarts……he just didn’t exhibit as much of those last night as he usually does.
There were some non-calls in the backcourt last night when Dyson was riding Pitt’s guards, but I’d always rather have the refs swallow their whistles and call the game that way. If they’re letting them play, then Gray has the advantage inside and that’s more important to Pitt’s overall game.
Frank — you bring up a great point about that St.John’s game, which I remember very well. Until Pitt gets some size at the guard position, the Panthers will occasionally have trouble with physical guards. (Maybe in a couple yrs Nasir Robinson can help with that.)
Calling Fields an egomaniac is where I am confused. He was frustrated but he didn’t do anything to warrant that comment. He ran the plays and took open shots when they were there.
I think he occasionally forgets he’s not this team’s first option. That’s it. He took a couple shots and made a couple judgment errors (when to penetrate, when not to, how deep to go etc. etc.) last night that resulted from pressure defense and everybody just wants him to handle that better next time he sees it. End of story.
