Settling in for my weekend monitor duty for AOL Fanhouse (gorging myself on watching lots of college basketball for 10-12 hours, drinking a little and making snarky posts — I love this gig). Trying to think about the Providence-Pitt game a little without feeling overconfident. Pitt has won 6 straight against the Friars. Still, I don’t want to turn into Lou Holtz with puffing a team I really think Pitt should pound.
The Friars have a very nice troika of Herbert Hill, Geoff McDermott and Sharaud Curry. Hill, was actually my mid-season Big East player of the year. Yet, outside a very surprising running off the floor of Marquette (Wesley Matthews was injured and Dominic James was slumping), the Providence Friars haven’t really done much against the better teams — especially on the road.
Pitt is a team, that Providence has to envy. They also aren’t sure where to key on defensively.
At this point, it’s getting difficult to pinpoint just what is the most impressive feature in the six-year run the Pittsburgh Panthers are on.
…
The Panthers have made five straight trips to the NCAA Tournament, easily the best run in school history. In fact, fans in the Steel City have become so spoiled that the only consistent complaint heard on the streets is not will the Panthers win 20 games and get into the NCAAs but why they keep falling short of the Final Four.
This may be the year that that NCAA drought is ended. Howland established Pitt’s tradition of big, strong and physical defense and rebounding before he left for UCLA in 2003. Dixon still stresses those traits and has the best center in the Big East, Aaron Gray, anchoring the team’s power game. But this Panther team’s biggest strength may just be its offensive versatility.
With a slew of talented guards, the best 3-point shooting in the Big East and some athletic, slashing forwards, stopping Pitt’s attack is an opponent’s worst nightmare.
While the minutes might increase for Sam Young, don’t expect him to start (but, really, we knew that). And you know what, no one is going to complain. Especially when Pitt is winning like this. Who really wants to be that kind of whiner? It’s hard to argue with success, and of the 3 losses. Can anyone really, definitively say Pitt would have won with Young in there more and Kendall out? Or Benjamin and/or Ramon in more for Cook and/or Graves?
Georgetown just knocked off Marquette (a lot closer than the score indicates). Guess what game now looms even larger then the season ender for winning the Big East regular season?
