Well if you want any of the Rutgers-Pitt game stories, the NJ media is out in Arizona following the Giants. The Star-Ledger got Ray Fittipaldo to do their story for them. What amazes me, is that no story about the game — even from the Rutgers perspective — mentioned how hot they have been shooting over the last three games. All the focus is on how bad they’ve been overall. Like this was the only aberration.

Naturally, with this inexplicable loss, there’s lots of questions and theories about what happened. Rebounding or lack thereof in the second half was the big theme.

A closer look into Rutgers’ second half surge — the Knights used a 15-4 run over nearly 10 minutes — reveals that the Panthers not only couldn’t shoot, they couldn’t get more than one chance at the basket. Of their 13 missed shots during that span, Rutgers got rebounds on 12 of them. Rutgers, on the other hand, had three offensive rebounds in that 10 minutes, only one less than the Panthers had defensive rebounds.

The Panthers, incidentally, were 1 of 14 (.071) from the floor in that time. Rutgers was 8 of 15 (.533).

“When you’re not shooting well,” Dixon said, “you got to win it with rebounding and defense. We didn’t do that.”

There’s the belief that you almost have to expect Pitt will be up-and-down the rest of the way.

And, maybe this performance smacked of the inconsistency predicted when Levance Fields and Mike Cook went down with injuries at the end of last month. Since the two left the starting lineup, the No. 13 Panthers (16-4, 4-3) have won five of their eight games. They made a huge statement against then-No. 5 Georgetown, but followed that was a lackluster loss at Cincinnati, a better team but hardly a Big East force.

Last Wednesday, with questions about the Panthers’ ability to win away from the Petersen Events Center, they dominated St. John’s in Madison Square Garden. Then last night, they passionlessly allowed Rutgers, the Big East’s worst team that was beaten by Rider this season, to outplay them on their impenetrable home court.

Highs and lows. Ups and downs. Get ready for the roller coaster until Fields returns to the lineup.

The panic button is about ready to be hit by some after this game.

It’s not unusual for effort to occasionally be lacking in a road game, or for a stretch here or there against an inferior opponent. These kids are human, and they are kids, and college coaches will tell you that the effort needed at this level is something that often has to be learned. So it’s understandable in the context that it happens to everyone. And frankly, it happens a lot less in Pitt’s program than in most others.

But two times in three games—in the span of just seven days—is enough to raise some red flags. Is it a major concern?

It certainly appears as though it could be. You don’t solve this kind of an issue all of a sudden. Even a bounce-back game against Villanova (another team really struggling) on Wednesday won’t prove anything. After all, Pitt rebounded perfectly at Madison Square Garden earlier this week in a surgical dismantling of a bad St. John’s team only to shut the engines off mid-flight Saturday evening.

They apparently did not learn any lessons from the Cincy loss; or, more accurately, they learned them enough just to pass the next test and then quickly forgot them. That’s disturbing. You cannot get by with rote memorization or crib sheets at this level – you can’t “cheat” in the Big East Conference.

Is the team struggling right now? Yep. It’s not totally surprising. Actually losing the Rutgers game that badly was, but to have the team be up-and-down, inconsistent isn’t.
Coach Dixon, while still supportive of the players didn’t deny that the effort from the players was tremendously disappointing.

“You’re not always going to shoot it well,” Dixon said. “Usually we can still find some ways to win. We didn’t find the ways [Saturday]. Really, that was the most disappointing thing to us. We didn’t find those ways to win.

“You have to rebound and defend better. Those have to be constants and they weren’t [Saturday].”

Not to mention, not take any game in the Big East for granted. Still, at least we aren’t in Syracuse’s situation. They are down to 7 scholarship players at the moment.