If it’s Friday, it’s time to list out where Pitt is in the various power polls. After all, how else can we achieve righteous indignation at the punditry that hates Pitt if we don’t know which ones.
FoxSports dropped Pitt to #5 and bitched about the free throw shooting.
At the beginning of the week — before the Syracuse game — Mike DeCourcy had Pitt at #5. On the bright side, he had a cogent critique.
Sam Young is not slumping as a shooter. He’s slumping as a shot-selector. It’s hard to say why he began to perceive the demand for him to take and make guarded shots. There was a smidge of that in the victory over Georgetown, but it faded quickly. It has been more evident as he has shot 15-of-49 in the past three games. The nature of the Panthers is to generate and convert high-quality shots while denying them to opponents. To be great, they must remain that team.
Which is something that jibed exactly with what he did in the Syracuse game. It also meant he got to the free throw line.
Before his recent drought, Young had attempted at least one free throw in 46 of the previous 49 games.
“It’s just him attacking and not settling,” Fields said. “It kind of got him going. It’s always good for a scorer to get a couple easy ones at the free throw line.”
Against Syracuse, Young nearly single-handedly fouled out Harris — even if it meant getting one of his shots blocked. Young drew two shooting fouls on the junior forward, including his fifth with 3:17 to play. Young also drew shooting fouls on Syracuse forwards Rick Jackson and Kris Joseph.
Most shooting fouls come from the defender being late and desperate to stop the clean look. That’s what Young was getting in the game.
Luke Winn at SI.com only dropped Pitt one notch to #2, and focused on Levance Fields.
… In it, point guard Levance Fields says, “To be honest, some of us got snubbed, if you really want to look at it that way, from being those kind of recruits.” Fields is the strangest case of being overlooked, because typically New York guards — like, say, Sebastian Telfair — tend to be overhyped rather than overlooked. When Fields made his college decision in 2004, he was choosing between St. John’s, South Florida, Miami and Pitt. He was the 14th-ranked point guard on Rivals.com’s board that year, and as you scan up the list, only second-ranked Mario Chalmers — who, if you recall, had a decent title game in March — turned out better than Fields. The No. 1-rated point guard that year was none other than Greg Paulus.
Fields being overlooked is easily explained. His body type just doesn’t scream elite point guard. Or more precisely, future NBA point guard.
ESPN.com also put Pitt at #2.
The Big East survival guide warns against letting one loss turn into two, or even three. Pitt heeded that warning with a dominating win over Syracuse at home on the heels of the Panthers’ first loss against Louisville. But it’s back on the road again, with upcoming trips to West Virginia and Villanova.
Now, the big shock. Gottlieb was had Pitt at #2 (and had UNC at #1???). Jay Bilas, however, put Pitt down at #6 — the lowest of all voters.
1) they are always polling each other as who is ranked from 1 to whatever no matter what time of the season it is and then discuss it extensively.
2) much of the discussion is purposely done for creating cotroversey and feedback – remember, it is a 24 hour TV and radio entity that has to constantly entertain.
3) it is a corp with many employees, and has each other as guests on their programs introducing them as experts … and the problem is that they actually believe this stuff after a while. The trouble is that for every Bobby Knight, who can contribute much insight, there are many more ex-jocks, or wannabes, like Kordell Stewart, Doug Gottlieb or Chris Berman (I can go on and on) who prove week after week that they don’t know any more than us who post on this site. In fact, I respect the opinion of many of the posters here than there.
You may remember that just about 9 months ago, virtually every one of the self-titled experts on ESPN except for one, predicted the Lakers to beat the Celts in the NBA championship. I also remember that I, who doesn’t give a shit about the NBA, was wondering when hearing these predictions how could they think so low about the Celts which, in my limited knowledge, thought was very much the equal if not the better team. And this is certainly is not the only time where the so-called experts looked foolish.
