You know, Pitt didn’t shoot free throws particularly well (13-21), but they were aces compared to Providence (7-16). Interesting to see that the final shooting percentages were nearly the same. Pitt was 28-60, while Providence 28-61. The key difference was that when the final stats come out and the halftime splits are seen, Pitt shot better in the second half.

This was a key win, because Pitt was actually outrebounded 41-33 (and worse 16-11 on offensive glass), and didn’t have a great advantage on shooting. Those are usually the things that indicate doom for Pitt. Pitt was able to overcome that. This was an off-night for the team, but they were good enough to over come that.

Providence played a much better game than I had seen from them recently (they looked nothing like the team that nearly blew it to Cinci at home. Hard to believe, but the Providence team could actually be quite good in the next year or so. Still, Pitt has beaten the Friars 7 straight. Since Pitt came into the Big East, Providence has been the one team they have consistently beaten.
The good: Pitt only had 10 turnovers to Providence’s 6. And the team had 18 assists.

Gray had 22 points. Cook had 11. Graves had 13 (all in the second half). Kendall had 10 rebounds — doing a decent job of picking up the slack on the boards when Gray was out — and those two charges he took were so important.

Despite all the struggles, Pitt had a very balanced distribution of minutes. Levance Fields and Graves played 31 minutes. Five  other players had at least 22 minutes. Benjamin had 11 minutes.

The bad: guard play was shaky, especially in the first half. Pitt only had 7 assists in the first half, and 6 turnovers.
It was disturbing to watch Ramon dribbling, trying to shake his defender to create space for his shot. That wasn’t fooling anyone. If he wants to do that, he needs to show them that he can take them off the dribble and go to the hoop.

It’s probably just me, but there were points where Gray settled for short jump shots rather than push to the basket. It made me think that he was doing that because he’d rather take the chance with the shot than draw the foul, and have to shoot free throws.