We’re here now, relieving Chas for the night. I don’t expect this one to be too exciting anyways. The game is on ESPN Classic which you probably don’t get, so follow along here.
6:09 pm: Two baskets by way of Blair pounding in the middle and Keith Benjamin with a beautiful three point stroke. Rutgers answered right back with their own 3 though. The fingers continue to stay crossed that Blair stays out of foul trouble. He has one personal foul already.
6:12 pm: If you’re watching, prepare to see “Send it in, Jerome!” at least 5 times.
6:18 pm: Gary McGhee shot what was probably the ugliest foul shot ever. It barely made it 3/4 of the way to the hoop. Rutgers already has five turnovers and their best big man on the bench with two fouls and they only trail 14-12. Rutgers is already at five team fouls — hopefully we hit our foul shots…or at least get them to hit the rim.
6:25 pm: RU gets the Pitt lead down to a point and then goes to the 2-3 zone. Passing quickly and effectively will be important. The Scarlet Knight’s best chance is obviously to black the passing lanes and make Pitt spot up for threes. Blair still at 1 PF and 4 points.
6:27 pm: Tied 20-20. RU nailed a trey and Dixon was halfway on the court to call a timeout before it even fell. He’s not entirely pleased by what’s going on…
6:39 pm: Bill Raftery on the phone to talk about what else, the Jerome Lane dunk. Nice pickup by Keith Benjamin to take it coast-to-coast followed up with a volleyball type of hit by Blair to put it in. Benjamin drops another three and Rutgers answers with their own, yet again.
Benjamin’s stroke reminds me of a young Ronald Ramon — we’ll call it “Ramon Pre-2007”.
Usually a team like Rutgers playing against a ranked team (such as Pitt) is not able to continually answer with big shots. Once Pitt gets over that hump and breaks out the double-digit lead, we’ll just need to hope Rutgers stops the clutch shots.
The announcers mention something I’ve found to be true — other than the Zoo, the other fans at the Pete don’t usually get really into it. Panthers on an 8-0 run, the lead it 7.
6:51 pm: Pitt 39 Rutgers 32 — Halftime
The nice perimeter shooting (until the last few minutes of the half) is what’s keeping this game close. They have a poor inside game, so expect more defense on outside shots. In Dixon We Trust — he’s shown he’s one of the best halftime-adjusting coaches in the nation. Let’s come out very strong right after the half — it would destroy Rutgers’ waining hope and life.
7:04 pm: Panthoor in the comments: “Did Bucky Waters just say that when he coached at WVU, he loved playing against PITT because Pittsburgh was like Paris?”
Pittsburgh > Morgantown
7:12 pm: DeJuan Blair, this is the bench. Bench, this is Mr. Blair. Please sir, be kind to him, for he has three personals.
7:15 pm: Rutgers slowly but surely getting colder from the field. Gil Brown takes a few seconds to get up, and walks away limping. Super…
7:26 pm: We haven’t scored in 5 minutes. Tonight Pitt has either been at one of the extremes: hitting shots at a very good clip or else throwing up a bag of bricks. Tied at 49, 9 minutes left to play. Hand it to Rutgers, they haven’t lost their poise and composure yet.
7:35 pm: The Knights are confident, probably aided by the fact we’re shooting 25% on FGs in the second half. Gil Brown has 10 points, which is a nice sign, but he’s gone cold (like the rest of the team). Rutgers 58 Pitt 49. My finger moves closer to the Panic Button.
7:40 pm: We’re down 10 and forcing ugly shots. Crap.
7:45 pm: One field goal in our last 16 possessions. Barely any good looks, mostly by virtue of our horrible focus and hurried shots. Overheard in te comments: “Crap.” “Unbelievable.” “Holy cow.”
Benjamin has disappeared, no points yet in the 2nd half. As I write that, he makes a basket.
7:52 pm: Commence the intentional fouling. RU is in the double bonus. Let’s at least salvage this somewhat and keep it from turning into an embarrassing blowout. As if the loss wasn’t embarrassing enough.
7:56 pm: Game, set, and match. It’s a tough loss to take, but perspective needs to be kept. We’re playing without two starters and a shallow bench. Sometimes the shots just don’t fall — we’ll recover.
And please help me clarify the definition of a travel..i thought is was not releasing the ball for a shot, pass or dribble before your pivot foot touches the floor in a different place….is this wrong?
And they weren’t “lucky” or “tough” shots either…
I know we held them to 32, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Defense not looking too sharp tonight…
Hail to PITT!
-al-
And another missed wide open 3…
I’m not sure if we can miss another shot the rest of the way and still win. Maybe we should start fouling their crappy foul players already…
I’m unbelievably upset. I was all excited to go out tonight.
It’s my friends fault. Everytime I hang out with him my teams lose.
Now, we should get back to the original talk after the injuries: how are we going to get to the tourney? Can we even win half our big east games? We played all the easy ones first, and we barely got out 1 game over .500…
A very discouraging loss….
I was calling for crippling fouls with 3 minutes to go – i’m sure they have that one awful FT shooter. Get yourself back in the game FCS.
And the defense – its awful. We’re a run of the mill defensive team this year, look the stats up. Worst defensive efficiency in YEARS, by far, and we’ve played the easiest third of the big east schedule.
They need to start benching Young and Blair. I’d rather take some losses now and get them to realize they’re not going to be shooting the rock from a chair if they refuse to follow the defensive gameplan, instead of losing with them standing out there like matadors. Dixon doesn’t ask anything of them they aren’t capable of doing right now – but instead they’re out there doing whatever they want, and don’t get sat cause we’re short on guys and they provide most of the offense. I’d rather lose embarassingly with backups in…at least then i can justify it in my head. You don’t play D like we tell you to, you don’t get to play O. Stop letting them kill us.
No matter how bad things get between now and then, at least we have a shot to get in the tourney by winning the BE tourney with Fields.
Otherwise i could see us being this years Syracuse – “but we won some good games” in between embarassing losses.
Also, it looks like Young might have been reading his press clippings, he is a good player with NBA talent but he needs to be more consistent. He needs to shine this year and next.
Sam Young did indeed belive his hype – weak defense, no blocking out, and it looked like he had problems holding onto the ball. Couldn’t hit the jumpers, but neither could the rest of the team.
It looked to me like Rutgers got some good blocks/rebounds/took it a little to Blair and Young, and our interior game got soft. We weren’t trying to penetrate their zone at all and were content to pass it around outside and then jack it up, and just weren’t hitting shots.
Some days, the shots just don’t fall. What I found hard to handle, though, was Pitt’s defense. In the second half, Rutgers played to draw Blair and Young outside the 3-point arc and then drove to the open hoop after forcing switches. Blair was forced to run through screens and/or reach at the guy blowing by (which Young also did). This either drew fouls or led to easy layups/no boxing out. The same thing happened in the Dayton game. Dixon needs to find a way to prevent this or other teams will bank on it.
Is it a coincidence that the worst refs I’ve ever seen in my 3 years as a Pitt student in both football and basketball occurred against Rutgers? Doubt it.
Granted, the D was also weak, but those quick shots possession after possession really hurt. Rutgers didn’t have to work at all on D throughout much of the second half (e.g, indaye no third foul ’til late in the second half) and there was freakin’ Blair out there on the perimeter picking up dumb-ass fouls and Young just continuing to fire up bricks when it was readily apparent that it was NOT there tonight.
I put a lot of this loss on Dixon. He did nothing to try to disrupt Rutgers’ offense, he did nothing to get the team to work the offense, and left Blair out way too long after picking up his fourth. Nobody else had anything going on offensively and Blair was the one guy who could have gotten the team — and the Zoo — going with some hoops, as he did in the first half.
This is not some season-ending loss, despite Stuart’s histrionics. Hopefully it will bring Sam Young down to earth a little and it will finally convince Blair that, while a steal at the top of a key is a nice bonus, it’s more important to just play good D and not risk stupid freaking fouls.
Up for another deal?
I think that the injuries are taking their toll. There are guys that look worn out at times out there.
We’re putting up a valiant effort short-handed, and fighting the good fight, but twice in the last week they just looked out of it.
We need Fields back ASAP to try and fix this thing. I think we’re still going to the tourney. Maybe not as a high seed, but we’re going.
CAN WE PLEASE FIX THE FOULSHOOTING!
stuarts negative nancy routine is getting old….bad games happen man…if its so painful to root for pitt, maybe you should stop…dont want you having a heart attack watching them….chill out and look forward to the next game…..
BUTTGERS, THE WORST TEAM IN EVERY OFFENSIVE CATEGORY, SCORED 45 POINTS IN THE SECOND HALF.
THEY OUT REBOUNDED US BY 16 IN THE SECOND HALF.
THE SHOT 54% AGAINST US. THEY SHOT 64% FROM 3.
It was the single most embarassing effort i’ve ever seen out of any pitt team since the dixon/howland era began. That’s what pisses me off the most. We’re not making progress here, we have a couple of kids STARTING that refuse to play defense when they don’t feel like it. The team defense was AWFUL because of a couple of bad apples.
I’d take Kendall’s D over Young’s D any day of the week now. We never got beat like this with him starting. Young wonders why he never got in the game…
Blame Dixon? Are you drunk? You think he teaches that garbage that we saw out there? You think he told Young to play the shittiest defense i’ve ever seen from a Pitt player? Blair to get out of position all the time? Take some of those quick/bad shots? That shit was all on the kids on the floor. He took as many timeouts as he could and tried telling them what to do as much as he could. I have no doubt in his ability as a coach – he’s gotten much better effort out of much less talent. Some of those “players” last night quit. That’s on them, not the coach.
You’re going to have games where you can’t shoot a goddamn thing. You need to REBOUND, get more shot opportunities, and play DEFENSE to keep yourselves in it. We did neither. They flat our embarassed themselves out there.
This one loss is not season ending, but if they don’t fix it, the next 8 or 9 will be. This was our worst home less we’ve EVER had in the H/D era. Nothing comes close. Look at the RPI. EVER. I’d rather go watch an undertalented team that fights the entire game (and shows some consistency) than watch a team that shows up when it wants and quits halfway through a game. At least we’ve always had a chance to win alot of our losses at the end.
This is what everyone was worried about with Young’s head. It got big – and when he was putting up brick after brick after brick, he did NOTHING to help his team. Quit on both ends. The only thing i can blame Dixon for is not benching him for the rest of the game. We were 4 on 5 (at best) the rest of the way with him in there.
All:
You call it “whining” or “crying” – i don’t give a shit. I’m pissed off. I want our university to represent itself as best it can in all facets of life. And this was flat out embarassing. I buy season tickets, i go to a alot of games, and i donate to the university. Who wouldn’t be upset watching that last night?
Go root for State Penn if you think half-assed effort is nothing to “whine” about. The fans sitting on their hands at the game, not cheering and not caring what happens either way, leaving with 10 minutes left in the second half, and their apathy, are part of the problem too.
Clearly the players deserve a good bit of blame, but I still think just a few little adjustments might have led to a different result.
