Just made it. Pregnant wife craved pancakes and fruit for dinner. Yeesh.
7:10: 8-2 L-ville, 15:55 to the half. Horrible start. Bad ball handling — 4 straight turnovers. Louisville has opened well shooting 4-6.
7:20: Pitt now trailing 17-7, 11:47. 0-5 on 3s, 2-10 shooting overall and 6 turnovers. Pitt has come out unprepared tonight. Can’t say I’ve seen much to like from anyone on the court.
7:26: Frustrating to watch this game with the inconsistent refs. It’s screwed on both sides, but I have no sense about when a foul will be called. They’ve allowed shoving and hits on both, but at the same time they have called some real cheapies.
It isn’t the reason why Pitt is doing so poorly. It just adds to the frustration.
7:38: Safe to say, this has been the worst Pitt has looked all season. Sloppy play. Bad passing, poor effort to get to the ball. Bad shooting. Team effort to look this bad.
7:47: On the bright side, they can only play better after this.
7:53: Pitt down 36-19. I’m blown away. 19 points, 19 rebounds, 15 turnovers. 5-21 shooting and 0-9 on 3s. That’s just too many 3s.
This is a team effort at this kind of bad play. No one player, the whole team shares this opening 20 minutes.
8:31: And now Fields is shaken up. What a tremendously bad game for Pitt. Sloppy. Poor execution, poor play, and even good shots aren’t going down.
Everything is coming together to go absolutely wrong in one game.
8:52: Geez. 61-46, 3:52 left. The team will have the rest of the week to stew and get angry over this performance. Even with all the turnovers (19), the piss-poor shooting was astounding. 14-39 overall and 2-16 on 3s.
9:24: Pitt loses 66-53. Louisville from the very start wanted it more. They played harder. They went after it.
Their defense was tremendous. Not simply pressing up court. It was the way they flew to the ball. There was no space for shots. They swarmed and kept Pitt from getting good shots. The early slew of turnovers, also made Pitt timid about moving the ball around. Afraid of screwing up again.
I mean it’s insane. You look at the stats and if you didn’t see the game you would just assume Pitt had a bad shooting night, and that was the main culprit. Note, these are unofficial stats and may change slightly.
Turnovers: 19-Pitt; 16-Lousiville
Rebounds: 34-Pitt; 33-Louisville
Free Throws: 16-22-Pitt; 10-18-Louisville
Fouls: 21-Pitt; 21-Louisville
Shooting:Â 17-48-Pitt; 26-54-Louisville
3-point shooting: 3-21-Pitt; 4-12-Louisville
All you can do is tip your cap to Louisville for playing far better then Pitt. For playing their best game of the season — and they did. This was not the same team that lost to Villanova a week and a half ago.
Nor was this the same Pitt team that took it to WVU last week.
It’s now up to Pitt to get up and deal. They can’t expect to win just because of who they are, who they are playing or where they are playing.