Family obligations, that I vainly tried to get out of are completely taking me away from the house today.
The meme out of Louisville is that last season, beating Pitt at the Pete was the start of turning around their season. Now it’s about maintaining their run.
Once again, the story of the game is defense. 43% from 3? 63% from 2? That’s downright awful. What in the hell is going on.
Having said that, Pitt is making more mental mistakes than I any team I can remember. I do not know why but guess Pitt is pressing. How you can give up a long rebound on the missed foul is inexcusable…except that Louisville was quicker to the ball…actually they were quicker all afternoon.
Better game by Pitt…but again the shooting and Ft’s…ugly ugly ugly. 7 -13 from the line will not get it done.
Have to beat Cinncy or we will not win another game.
Oh well, if we have to put together a streak, now would be a good time to start…
Good effort today, but against Louisville’s talent the little things need to be done every play – bad shot selections, bad double teams, all leading to bad results. Blair lost Padgett too many times today and late in the game Benji went for a steal with 2 seconds on the shot clock and his man got an easy score. Brown also lets his man get by him way too much (and often led to other guys picking up fouls). Blair and Brown can both learn from this, with Benji, his defense is the prime reason he’s never started before this year.
1. Fields played well, and his ball-handling skills make a difference.
2. Sam and DeJuan came to play. (and the foul call on Biggs was bogus…definite case of travelling—so add Biggs to bringing quality to the game, also).
3. Brown’s driving to the basket opens up things up…I hope to see more of this in the future.
4. There was no quit, and even though it was a loss (and that can be the bottom-line), we showed some game today.
Hail to PITT!
-al-
Understatement of the year by Dixon.
I’m tired of re-watching tape of teams destroying us on D. Its embarassing and awful.
Like i said the other day, they need to spend THEIR ENTIRE PRACTICES FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR ON DEFENSE. JUST DEFENSE. Its the worst i’ve seen in years. Its the worst i’ve ever seen in the H/D era. Its just awful. We scored enough to win, again. 70 should do it. We should hold EVERYONE to under 70. Just awful.
Dixon’s kid was also heard in the background saying “Daddy, did we win? Did we win?” “No honey, we didn’t win…”
We’re paying for a couple yrs when Dixon brought in either no big recruits or lousy big recruits.
Today the game was decided in the 2nd half when L-ville consistently went to Padgett. Finally Dixon starting sending Young to double but the guards didn’t help down to cover Sam.
It’s tough when your team has a size disadvantage and no quickness advantage to make up for it.
Blair gets that shot to go and draws a foul its tied. Personally, i too would have gone for the 3. But we didn’t lose cause of some game ending shot or the bad officiating. The 5 kids out there need to play sound, fundemental defense on EVERY POSESSSION.
Pitt was OK with guys like Lett playing inside because they had guys like Troutman alongside them. Blair’s playing beside Sam Young. Enough said.
Teams that play up and down can get away without having the size to grind it out. Dixon doesn’t have the thoroughbreds to play that way, so he needs some more size/muscle to complement Blair.
That Onuaku kid up at Syracuse is going to give Blair all he can handle inside and that’s going to open things up for the rest of Boeheim’s front line. I’m not looking forward to that game, though Pitt could still win because those Cuse kids play stupid.
“Shootin bricks man…I just couldn’t do nothin…” is how Fields described his 4-13 shooting performance.
Definitely saw many things I liked today, though, particularly Fields. If his shot comes around and the D can improve, I think we’ll win 3 of these last 4. Then again, I always pick Pitt in my NCAA pools to go to at least the final 8, so I’m a bit delusional.
“Maybe our team should stop playing like a bunch of girls and hit that kid in the jaw. We used to pound anyone that thought they were just going to run free through our defense. Now you can backdoor us all day and not worry about a thing.”
Amen brother. Chevy, Ontario, Donatas, et al are weeping for the Death of Pitt Defense. I’m sad for this program that they didn’t recognize the need to tighten up and play D after the injuries. I’m not sure they could ever play with the defensive passion of 5 years ago, but they are now playing with less passion of 15 years ago.
Maybe giving up nearly 80 at home will finally wake them up.
We can’t play D and transistion would save us a lot of pick and roll Baskets…we can’t shoot from the perimeter and transition up tempo would give us 10- 14 points on layups. Of couse, we have to have the O boards to do it…but why not try!!
We are not as quick as MQ or Nova but out match them under the boards…we are quicker than every other team in BE as a 5 some. Blair gives us that
big man that can run.
Sent this off to Jamie this morning …we’ll see if he tries it tomrorrow against Cinncy.