Not much that still needs to be said about Pitt dealing with Siena. Pitt could turn it on at spurts and like they have most of the season to date, came out in the second half and put the game out of reach. A final hard push by Siena made the score a respectable 13 point loss but it really wasn’t. It could be argued, though, that the good thing about Siena’s final push — it reminds the players that they can’t lay back until the clock is at 0:00.
Pitt started the second half with a 16-3 run to lead by as many 22 points, but Siena battled back and trailed by 10, 71-61, with 1:21 remaining.
“This was good for us because I think we learned something,” said Pitt coach Jamie Dixon, who admitted that the Panthers didn’t play their best game. “We saw a team that just kept battling, battling, battling and fighting and cut down a 22-point lead to 10 at the end, so give them credit.
“It seemed like that last seven minutes was an eternity.”
Still there was the fact that Blair was a completely dominating beast. There was a concerted effort by Pitt to work the ball inside rather than just take the outside shots — like against UMBC. Blair responded with another double-double.
Plus, despite the late Siena run, Pitt had some numbers that as Coach Dixon said, “teams would die to have.” Only 7 turnovers, 25 assists on 30 field goals, +11 on rebounds.
This was the first ESPN telecast, and featuring Doug Gottlieb as an analyst. Which makes no one happy. I have found that for the most part, I don’t hear him anymore. Just a harmless buzzing. What is amusing, is that a guy who makes his living on ESPN as being the hateable one, is so stock as an analyst.
The 6-7 Blair is commonly portrayed as a round mound of rebound but in truth that’s just part of his arsenal. He shoots often and effectively, making 64 percent of his twos thus far, albeit against uneven competition. Most strikingly, he plays the 5 yet records steals at a higher rate than any of his teammates. Blair stands out, and that’s not easy to do on a team with featured-scorer Sam Young and assist-hoarding point guard Levance Fields. This is an outstanding offense, one that ranked among the top three in the Big East last year and looks just as efficient this year.
So please explain to me why so many people, most especially last night’s announcers, still insist on viewing Pitt as an all-defense no-offense team? (â€Sometimes it seems like they expend so much effort on defense they have trouble scoring.â€) One of the things about sports that really interests me is the incorrigibly durable power of branding seen within its precincts. Highly-paid MBAs would kill for their companies’ detergents or razors to possess the same kind of talismanic hold on perceptions that college basketball teams exhibit.
Take Pitt. I don’t mean the team I’ve just described, necessarily. I mean “Pitt,†the brand. What comes to mind? Rugged, physical teams, players from NYC, Carl Krauser, grind it out, tough D, annual success in the Big East tournament, etc.
Make no mistake, that perception was earned, not fabricated. As it happens, however, it no longer accords with reality….
Pitt’s defense has been very good this year, make no mistake. But the offense has actually been better.
I’m pretty sure that I can explain it simply. Pitt is a very efficient offensive team. They aren’t, however, a up-and-down the court team. They don’t run it down the court and take it right to the basket. They move the ball and look to get it for an open look or get it inside. They get back on defense and make an opposing team move and pass for the score. There aren’t many quick, one pass and score possessions against Pitt or by Pitt. That helps keep the pace slower. In too many lazy analysts’ minds, a slow-tempo team means defensive minded team that has deficiencies on offense.
Amusing article on Tyrell Biggs being Pitt’s best 3-point shooter by % to date. I’m not sold on a sample size of 8-15 over 11 games. I’m just happy that the sample size is that small. It also gets into the rest of Biggs’ game and his development.
Biggs, a big question mark for the team before the season started, has developed into a solid all-around player. He is the team’s fourth-leading scorer (8.5 points per game) and third in rebounds (5.1 per game).
For someone his size, Biggs always has leaned toward being more of a finesse player than a power player. That was not lost on Dixon, who implored him to focus on improving his rebounding skills and tenacity before the season.
“He’s gotten better at it,” Dixon said.
“His numbers are a little better, but defensively he is a far better player than he was last year. I just think he’s playing with confidence, and he’s giving confidence to other players on the team. I think that’s the biggest thing. His leadership has been tremendous for us.”
The perception of Biggs is rather hardened from his first three years. It will take a while for perception to start to change.
As for Blair, he hasn’t changed the perception that he is a force under the basket. It’s just that he’s even better at it this year. As Pitt moved to #5 in Luke Winn’s power rankings.
Some DeJuan Blair numbers for you to ponder: Pitt’s sophomore big man is rebounding at a superhuman rate thus far, pulling down 25.8 percent of available offensive boards (ranking first in the country) and 29.2 percent of defensive boards (ranking eighth). Offensive rebounding is regarded as more of an “effort” stat that defensive rebounding, and no other major-conference player was even close to Blair through Sunday’s games…
He’s also improved other parts of his game.
That play reminded Dixon of another 6-foot-7 frontcourt force who was known for averaging double-digit rebounds and whipping crisp passes.
“We really talked to him at the start of this year about Wes Unseld, a player he never heard of and what a great outlet passer he was,” Dixon said. “I thought DeJuan could be that.
“I think that’s the biggest improvement he’s made this year, in his outlet passing. He had a tendency to be somewhat not as protective of the ball and didn’t use his passing skills and his strength to get a good outlet to get us going.
“Now, he is.”
Never heard of Wes Unseld. Thanks. I needed to feel older.
A simple adjustment to any defensive statistical formula would be to control for points per game. A lower score by the opposing offense should have the effect of improving a defense’s rating.
Versus previous Howland/Dixon benches these bench guys almost look like starters. Has there been any previous version of the team that was able to effectively use a Brown, a Gibbs, a Woodall, a Robinson and a Wanamaker?
Plus these kids mesh and are not lost out on the court.
When Yuri and the like spelled a starter it used to make me cringe. Not any more.
Anyway, I’m counting my bench blessings (since I can’t count my money).
I won’t bother with McGhee. If anybody thinks he’s ever going to contribute much more than his chest-bumps during the player intros….well, I disagree.
Gibbs looks to be a great shooter, but I don’t see the size or quickness that would ever make him a BE starter. I can see him being useful in spots over the next couple of years, but that’s it.
I don’t know if you guys have watched Woodall in warm-ups, but it’s interesting. Game after game he misses THE RIM on many of his 3-pt attempts. I thought he was just screwing around until I saw him miss everything from the perimeter a couple times in games. Amazing…….even if he’s quick, which he looks to be, the inability to shoot and the lack of size make him a longshot to ever start in this league. We can all name the players (Barrett for ex.) who started and played well at his size in the BE, because they were memorable exceptions…..
Other folks (and the PG) have seen an improvement in Wanamaker that completely escapes me. I’ll go with Dixon, who is completely pissed at him night in and night out. He really doesn’t want to shoot, which means he’s not confident in his perimeter game and he’s not fast enough to slash to the hoop like he did in HS.
I should say that my concerns about these bench guys is not really about this year….the only exposure if is Blair’s out and McGhee has to play major minutes against a big team.
What I am worried about is the backcourt for next year. I think Pitt will have one of the great front lines in the country (Blair, Taylor, Miller….who looks good and I hear has practiced well) and a very suspect backcourt to get the big men the ball. I certainly hope Patterson can play right away because the opportunity will be there. And though I think Brown will develop into a very solid swingman, I don’t think he’s suited to moving to the off-guard position.
I’ve heard all the talk about Kane. I hear he’s player enough to succeed…..the folks I know who have played against him say he’s terrific. (They’re also not so complimentary about what kind of kid he is.)
So I guess I’m hoping Kane, Patterson and Gibbs can handle the 2………but somebody’s got to run next year’s team and I don’t where that guy is right now.
Sorry for all the worry about next year, but when you talk about bench, you’re also talking about the future.
In the meantime, I’ll try to forget my concerns and enjoy what this squad can do in March.
I think that may be Dixon’s one minor flaw as a coach. He’s quick to pull the string if a player — particularly an underclassman — makes a mistake. This gets them playing tentatively because they don’t want to be in the doghouse and ultimately their performance suffers further.
Last year’s injury problems were a blessing in disguise because Dixon didn’t have a bench to resort to. He had to let players play through the mistakes and the played with much more confidence as a result — knowing they wouldn’t/couldn’t be pulled. Benjamin was a prime example of this.
I don’t want this to be perceived negatively. I love what Dixon has done for this program and I think the roster we have has the potential to vault us further into the postseason than previous teams. I guess it’s just idle banter until we get into the meat of the schedule and get a better idea of where we stand.
Fear of failure can be a nasty syndrome especially for someone like McGhee.
The teams/coaches that get my respect are the ones that come out and said Pitt is simply one of the best teams out there. Not once in that article did a coach or even a player allude to that. It was simply them saying they didn’t play well, didn’t shoot well, etc. Could that be partially to our defense? What a joke.
It really cracks me up when these teams complain that they didn’t make any shots. Stop whining and credit the other team for once. Maybe they did and it just didn’t show up in the print article, but you think they would mention it at least once.
Hope you’re right, Omar, but I don’t see it. Anyone with nice jumper doesn’t miss iron that often and the gym’s not going to make him taller. I’d feel better if he’d been the floor leader at St Anthony’s, but he’s a totally unproven commodity at this stage of the game because that team had better players, which is an unusual situation. Most HS PGs headed for a league like the BE have stats and a proven rep by the time they land on a campus…….but Pitt chose Travon a couple years back based on projecting a couple years into the future. Next yr that future arrives…..
Offensively he just needs to develop his left hand and use his speed to get to the rim. He isn’t as gifted offensively as Levance, but he is much quicker. Once the game slows down for him, he should have the ability to beat his man off the dribble at will. He has nice form on his jump shot, gets good arc and has a relatively high release. If he gets his feet set, then it will go in more than 33% of the time and that will be good enough to keep defenses honest. Give him an off-season in the weight room and to work on his game and he will be a player. He isn’t going to be as good as Levance was early in his career, but he might be as good or better at the end. Fields just knows how to play basketball, you can’t teach it.
link to buildingthedam.com
they list the top 5 reasons to hate pitt, with help from the state penn…
“However during Gottlieb’s freshman year at Notre Dame, he stole credit cards from a roommate and fraudulently charged over $900 to those cards. Subsequently, he was kicked off the Notre Dame basketball team and eventually convicted of misdemeanor fraud.”
Source: link to en.wikipedia.org
“Where’s my Visa?,” is an impressive display of obscure background info knowledge. Kudos.
Another convincing reason to hate Pitt, according to Oregon St.? “They get less fans than we do at their games.”
But the best, and most convincing (other than their total source for Pitt being bad is a Penn St. blog) reason they hate Pitt is because we “think” LeSean McCoy is better than their midget running back. According to them, McCoy isn’t impressive because he only got his stats in the weak Big East, as though, after USC, the PAC 10 has even 1 other good team in football.
Quite the funny post.
Can’t wait till the Sun Bowl.
The article is a pretty funny read though.
As for the Oregon State site, someone tell those tree huggers that they are getting info from the wrong people. Why not come to a blog like this and ask? Have the balls to come here and tell me how much I suck to my face, please. They are going to feel really silly when they figure out that they were used by Penn State in this way. Makes me sad because I was really digging the Beavers this year.
I think he’s pretty used to not playing……he was on the bench in HS quite a bit…..
hail to pitt
No reason to get adversarial. He chose to come off the bench. He played the point at crunch time in every game and was one of their best players. I really am not worried about your baseless opinion of Woodall. You are an expert because you watched him in warm-ups a couple of times? The kid was 31-50 from three his junior year of high school (can’t find stats from last year) and 41-50 from the free throw line. Not a heck of a lot of attempts, but that is 62% from three. That isn’t an accident. He played very well in the two exhibition games and will end up being a solid player.
This sounds like the same rhetoric regarding Wannamaker last year and the first couple of games this year. Well, lo and behold, the kid is playing very solid minutes now and is shooting 50% from three and very well at the line. Perhaps the coaching staff knows a little more about the kids they have recruited than us message board head coaches. My opinion is the kid will be very good based on his physical skills and high school pedigree. You disagree. That’s fine.
The author then shows stats that place Pitt square in the middle of BE in defensive points per possession. But is this the best measure? Shouldn’t it have to be moderated by the number of possessions per game? Clearly, if a team controls the ball the entire game – like Pitt always has – the opposing offense will get fewer chances and probably score fewer points.
Interestingly, Pomeroy uses the same math, ranking Pitt 54th in the country last year defensively.
In basketball especially I don’t think you can legitimately measure offense and defense independently.
I would appreciate hearing others’ viewpoints.