I’m coming back slowly. Actually, it feels like withdrawal at the moment. Not just with the end to Pitt’s season, but the entire Saturday of nothing until nearly 5 pm. Since September, there hasn’t been a Saturday with me either at a college game or planted in front of a TV watching college football or basketball all day. Now, nothing. I mean, I seriously debated putting on one of the women’s games. Instead, I just drifted around the house making half-hearted efforts at some of the house chores. This is going to take some getting used to.
Well, I’ll talk a little bit about the game. Gene Collier’s column on Friday about summed it up.
No, the painful part of this for Pitt was that these Bruins were virtually dying to get beat, and Pitt simply refused. Rejected the death wish Ben Howland’s team expressed with shrieking clarity in the opening moments of the second half by going nearly six minutes without a field goal.
Pitt’s response? A morbid little blizzard of missed shots, most no longer than the length of Aaron Gray, who missed a bunch of ’em along with Mike Cook and Sam Young.
“A couple of those layups and easy shots go down, the momentum probably shifts right there,” said sophomore Levance Fields. “When we started missing those chip-away layups, eventually they’re going to get the rebounds and then we’re frustrated and start fouling, so they convert the foul shots and just hold us off.”
Pitt never led on the night its season ended at 29-8, never had so much as the sense that it might at long last venture to the prohibited Elite Eight and still never looked very much different from a UCLA team that’ll meet Kansas tomorrow afternoon for a ticket to Atlanta and the Final Four.
It was part of what was so frustrating. Pitt was never out of it. No matter when Pitt was down by 12 in the second half. Scoring was coming so haltingly for both teams, just one little flurry…
Instead, Pitt never found its shot. The whole team struggled and as the game went longer, you could see them press and be more frustrated at the miss. Knowing they weren’t far. But never getting close enough.
Credit has to be given to UCLA’s defense. No matter how much we may wish otherwise. They did a great job of hounding the guards and not letting them get too many open looks. They were exceptional at irritating Gray inside and being well positioned. Even on some of the seemingly easy lay-ins, they were at least there trying and possibly distracting the Pitt players. It was a fair point from Nestor at Bruins Nation.
As usual after watching a classic defensive Ben Ball game, lot of us are seeing the same type of comments from Pitt fans and players about how it was a matter of them not finishing their shots or failing to make layups, like we have heard from opposing fans and players throughout last two years. Once again some of our opponent’s fans are having a hard time accepting the fact that it was the focused, fundamental defensive effort put forth by our team, that resulted in total disruption in the rhythm of Pitt’s offense leading them to take harried shots, and keeping them from executing in offense in general.
Yes and no. I accept it to a point, and as he observes it isn’t the most uncommon lament after playing UCLA. Plus, there is simply the scoreboard and that is the final arbiter — and the winners write the history. That said, the number of open misses starting early in the game was not simply the stingy defense of UCLA. It’s not like Pitt hasn’t shot this way before, even this season.
It’s never all from one team. It’s nice to think so, and I’ve read plenty of it in the comments this year (and almost certainly written it myself plenty of times). When Pitt wins, it’s because of what Pitt did on both sides of the ball. When Pitt loses it’s because of the mistakes made by the players and/or the coach. We rarely credit the other side for what they did or didn’t do because it is all about our team.
Antonio Graves seemed especially crushed with the loss. He tried to be positive, but it seemed he was feeling too upset about not getting past UCLA — about letting the fans and everyone down.
“It’s been a great year,” said the senior guard. “We accomplished a lot of things, but to me, that gets old after a little bit. We have to be able to win the big games. I hope in the future Pitt can win the big games.”
I hope no one ever doubted how much the players wanted to win. You know they wanted to be the ones to bust through at Pitt. Antonio Graves is a great story for Pitt. Another player who worked so hard on and off the court and became the key defender this season.
Part of what has me bummed out about this is knowing some fans that will never forgive Graves, Gray and Kendall for not winning this game. For not winning enough. Everything else gets erased and they become permanent bums. They will hope for Gray’s failure in the NBA as further proof of how bad he was.
I’m disappointed, frustrated and I’ve been upset for the last couple days.
Still, they are Pitt players and they are or will be graduates of the University of Pittsburgh. The way they have played, represented the team and the school these last years have been things to be proud. They have provided plenty of good memories and moments.
Man, I hate having to be the positive one.
For the record, although Kendall stunk it up the whole season, I actually thought Gray played pretty well against UCLA and will remember him fondly. We started going away from him in the second half and it didn’t seem like there was a cohesive scheme in place to deal with the double and triple teams.
…
I think the reason why many of us have trouble letting go of this dissappointment has a lot to do with the kids the comprised this team.
People are lashing out at Kendall and Gray, but everyone should remember the type of team this was that played against Pacific…the questions of the attitude’s of Taft, Troutman and yes even Krauser.
I think these kids were a real good bunch and they embraced the unselfish “team” concept. I think we were all convinced prior to the beginning of this season that they were at least a top 10 team if not better.
In the end they played as hard as they could. I don’t deny them that. But I too thought they could do more and its hard to say goodbye to a good group of guys like this team.
We all wanted more and I believe that is why it still bothers me 2+ days later.
thanks,
DaveD
They embraced the team concept, they were
How do the players on this team match up to them?
They don’t plain and simple.
People who honestly expected or better yet believed this team would go beyond the Sweet 16 this year were deluded. What did they base this belief on, preseason hype, rankings, BE projections?
I have been amazed at all of these believers who when the team could not do what they were supposed to would talk them, the coach, and the program down, when in reality they did the best they could do.
I said it before and say it again you cannot fit square pegs into a round hole. You get the squares to the hole but they cannot get through the hole. Likewise, you cannot get good recurits who are athletically limited to be good recruits who are athletically gifted. Like I mentioned did you see the 2 regional finals today? Great, athletically, gifted, players were on display.
This year’s squad and the recent success run’s squads would not have had a chance in those games, let alone tomorrow’s games.
Pitt just needs recurits and I belive they will come. It takes time. 6 year’s of relative success does not make a BB dynasty.
Howland is doing pretty good at UCLA rigtht. Same system but better results, why? Did you watch the game against KU, bet you thought at the beginning that the Jayhawks would be winning at the end. Well they did not because Ben runs the same system he did at Pitt but he had the great, athletically, gifted, players to win the game.
It would be a safe bet to say that if Dixon had great, athletically, gifted, players he would break the 16 barrier irrsepective of what the JD haters say.
This may sound oversimplistic and naive but somehow if we had another Brandin Knight out there on the floor. I know we would have gotten it done..been watching PITT for a long time and in the post season, there has been no one in his class for a long time..
also, howland coached at northern az not asu-big difference.
What I saw was UCLA hitting some big time shots over and over as the clock ran down. It was impressive but i didn’t see that against Pitt. Which is why i thought they were beatable on Thursday. They played a better game on saturday.
It just seems lately that the Big East has been putting a hurt on the ACC since they tried to basically destroy the conference.
I know I probably am over-exaggerating the whole thing…it just feels that way to me.
🙂
DaveD
I think everyone here would…all I am saying is this team lost their tourney games to 2 final four teams.
That is not something to be ashamed of…that is all I am saying. (I also think it is a line that you would tell a potential recruit).
Just trying to stay positive here. 🙂
DaveD
“When the officials were introduced, Georgetown fans quickly pointed out that the Hoyas had lost five of their last six games with Shaw working. He handles a lot of Big East games, but only once when Georgetown played this season — a home loss to Villanova.”
So a lack of heart…maybe but no one questioned these guys when they made the BE final..so maybe they just weren’t good enough..or led enough..
I just really feel like this team didn’t maximized its potential and always backed down and looked disorganized when things got tough. In my mind that comes from coaching. The VCU game almost made me lose it. We were so much more talented than that team it was disgusting. Now, was G-Town more talented than us? Probably. But I think we had just as good of players as UCLA and the bigger issue is that no matter who was better or worse than us from a talent perspective, I felt like we didn’t play up to our own potential.
And the really sad part is I’m afraid that this was our last real chance. Hopefully I’m wrong (lord knows I have been before… when Kendall was a freshman even I thought he was going to turn into a player) but having Aaron Gray presented a unique opportunity.