It wasn’t as comfortable as I would have preferred. I think the hope was that Pitt would come out from the opening tip, impose its will on Seton Hall. Not turn the ball over, shred and dismantle the Pirates and hold them to perhaps 30% shooting. Is that about right?
That didn’t quite happen. For the second straight game, Pitt was the big game target on Senior night. Seton Hall came out extremely fired up to play. Specifically Hazell and Mitchell shot very well in the first 10-15 minutes. That allowed Seton Hall to fire up the press and actively attack on defense. Pitt struggled with turnovers for the first half. 14 turnovers in the first half. It also didn’t help that DeJuan banged knees and only played 12 very quiet minutes. Despite all the problems, Pitt held a 5 point lead at the half.
In the second half, Pitt completely took control. Not with switch flipped, but slowly and steadily. Just being the superior team — and taking care of the ball. While Pitt had 9 turnovers in the second half. There were really only 7 that took place in meaningful minutes. And against a team that presses and is that aggressive, I’ll take that. Two of the steals came in the final 45 seconds when Pitt had all bench (Frye, Tiesi, McGhee, Robinson and Gibbs) in the game. All that did was allow Seton Hall to make the final score look closer than reality. They scored 8 points in the final 45 seconds to make it only an 11 point road win.
Looking from the perspective of those in NJ, Pitt was simply a better team.
There was a ton of energy in the building at the opening tip and that rubbed off on the Pirates to start the game, but Pitt took their best bench and stayed upright. Considering how well the Hall played in the first half, it didn’t bode well when Pitt walked into the locker room with a five-point lead. A 25-8 rebounding edge helped that along.
We tend to look at it only in terms of what Pitt did and didn’t do. The fact is Seton Hall was playing very well to start the game, but Pitt did not get overwhelmed or flustered — unlike what happened in Providence. One of the beat writers from the NJ Star-Ledger had running updates during the game. Again, the theme was that Seton Hall was playing some of their best basketball early, but Pitt was just stayed with their game plan and steadily took control.
Seton Hall’s coach, conceded after the game that Pitt was just plain superior.
“It was just Pittsburgh being better than us,” Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez said. “We didn’t have an answer for Sam Young. … We didn’t have an answer for them on the backboards. So many of them can make a play.”
Pitt’s big three – Young, DeJuan Blair and Brooklyn product Levance Fields – had strong second halves as the Panthers pulled away. After intermission, Young scored 17 of his 29 points, Blair had all of his nine and Fields contributed eight of his 10.
Here’s the difference with the Providence game and Seton Hall, with regards to the turnovers. Pitt didn’t stand around looking stunned and off-balance. They got back on defense.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t do much with those opportunities. Pittsburgh turned the ball over 23 times, but the Pirates could only turn those into 19 points, while the Panthers turned Seton Hall’s 15 turnovers into 23 points.
“We’re a team where we usually convert other team’s mistakes,” Pirates guard Paul Gause said. “For some reason, we just weren’t able to do it. It had a little bit to do with them, but it had to do with us too. We have to take that into account and try and fix that.”
And once more, 4 of those points off of turnovers came in the final 45 seconds.
Sam Young had a tremendous game against the Hall.
Young scored 29 points and grabbed 10 rebounds to lead No. 1 Pitt past Seton Hall, 89-78, last night at the Prudential Center. The victory came five days after the Panthers lost in an uninspiring effort at Providence, one day after regaining the No. 1 ranking.
“Sam is a great scorer,” junior guard Jermaine Dixon said. “When he rebounds like that he’s going to get a lot of points. He saw we were struggling a little bit there, and he stepped up.”
The scary point came early. Not from Seton Hall playing close in the first half, but DeJuan Blair lying on the court in pain after banging knees.
When DeJuan Blair fell to the ground after banging knees with Seton Hall’s Jeremy Hazell early in the first half Saturday night, a shockwave rippled through the Pittsburgh bench.
“The first thing that comes to mind is, ‘Oh my God,'” Pitt senior guard and Brooklyn native Levance Fields said. “He had two ACL injuries in high school. It’s a scary sight. You hope for the best.”
Part of why Pitt was able to handle Seton Hall was that even without Blair, Pitt outworked Seton Hall for rebounds. Pitt pounded them 44-21 on the glass. The Pirates just could not get second chance shots.
Funny stat about last night’s game — Pitt went 24 for 31 from foul line. 4 of those 7 misses were on tech fould shots — I read where Fields missed 7 of his last 8 tech foul shots (maybe he should only shoot them if it is in the last minute of the game.)
Once again Pitt was troubled by quick defensive players (LVille, Nova, Providence). Wannamaker and Brown continue to try to dribble thru 2 and 3 guys at a time — they (Pitt) have to improve in this area before the NCAA.
1) It really was never in doubt. I made a winning bet with my companion with 5 minutes left in the 1st half that Seton Hall would not make another 3 until it was well over (Pitt – 10) and won it. SHU was just plum tuckered out
2)Doesn’t it make you cringe when Blair leave his comfort zone, the block, to either hedge or pick? Always seems to be some sort of trouble when he does. He needs to stay put.
By comparison, the Zoo has prime seats and the students are enthusiastic.
Also since the Big East has 16 teams and invites every team to its tournament, they should break it into 2 weekends with no byes. 1Blue plays 8Red and so on and so forth. Imagine playing a tournament that would imitate a region exactly. Thursday, Saturday back to back weekends. Of course logistics are difficult, but you know they can get the Garden.
I think the two divisions would work because the football schools would develop more intense rivalries. and the smaller basketball schools would have more level playing field being grouped together. When examined closely, the divisions are about even in overall strength. Both short term and potentially long term.
4 divisions. Play the 3 teams in your division 2 times (6 games). Play the other 8 teams once, alternating home and away each year (18 games total, like now). The #1 teams in each division get the double bye, the #2 teams the single bye. It makes each division important.
An article in Post-Gazette addressed the turnover issue, and stated that it is a team problem — of the 41 TOs the past 2 games, 17 were from Blair & Youn, some of them being stripped after rebounds. The problem wasn’t necessarily breaking the press — below is an excerpt from P-G.
“We’ve got to be more active,” Jamie Dixon said. “We have to meet passes. We had 13 in the first half [against Seton Hall]. It’s not the press. It’s the frontcourt. We had no turnovers against the Providence press. It was all in the frontcourt again. We have to make better decisions in the frontcourt once we get across.”
Even when the Panthers weren’t turning it over after the press break, Seton Hall players were having success stripping the Panthers after rebounds and when they set up in the half-court offense
If Sam had even played an average game rather than a stellar game, that game would have been a lot closer than I’d like to consider…….and Seton Hall stinks.
Besides Young, the Panthers stars AND the Panthers supporting cast aren’t clicking right now. Besides the two late treys against UConn, Fields hasn’t played well on offense in quite a while and his defense has been awful and Blair’s coming off one lousy effort and one sub-par effort. Brown, Wanamaker and Dixon have all mixed a bunch of turnovers in and around anything positive they’ve done and Wanamaker has visibly struggled on defense.
Have to hope a little home cooking will rectify things, but these last couple outings were really uninspired.
I’ll be interested to see how JD handles McNeal and Matthews. Jermaine Dixon can only cover one of them at a time; guess he’ll get McNeal. Not sure who’s going to hang with Matthews, who is 6’5′” and strong. I know Fields has to be psyched that James won’t be there to hound him. It’s amazing how tough Marquette has played UConn and L-ville without him. They’re really scrappy.
Not only can Marquette be a nuisance, as I posted earlier, UConn is the only team in the country that has yet to lose an away game … thus if Pitt gets any notion that since the won up there, it will be easier here, they may be in for a rude awakening.
March Madness is here!
Same for Dixon. He is a really strong slasher but has not been doing enough of it. Would really like to see them focus on getting to the hoop against Marquette and, as we saw with Sam against SH, taking the good open mid-range shots instead of taking so many 3s.
Plainly put: this team is at its best when it moves the ball (and that includes against the press!) and gets to the hoop.
Pitt does need to dominate on the boards, and to do so, they have to play a half-court tempo than to try to play uptempo.
Pitt should dominate inside, but Louisville and Uconn also dominated inside and Marquette stayed close.
– Pitt, WVU, Marquette, DePaul
– UConn, Syracuse, ND, St. John’s
– Louisville, Cincy, Seton Hall, Providence
– GTown, Nova, South Florida, Rutgers
Just saw that Memphis jumped Pitt in the coaches’ poll.
In fact, the BE wanted a PGH presence for the TV market and had to decide between Pitt and Duquesne in ’82. It should also be known that PSU had its application to join the BE before Pitt was accepted, but was rejected due to its lack of TV market and bb success. The BE didn’t turn into an FB conference until ’92, in which Miami and VA Tech joined and WVU came in a year or 2 later.
Lastly, DePaul was accepted into the BE for the same exact reason that Pitt was accepted — for the large TV market. (note that I may be a year off on the data I provided abve as to when teams joined.)
But I think Pitt at number 3 makes sense right now. AP sometimes is hard to figure out what they are thinking….
Totally disagree on the some the above sentiment regarding Fields. He played well against Seton Hall. 10 assists on some really nice looks, plus a few that weren’t converted. People in our section were oohing and ahhing over his passing. He also penetrated well, drew some fouls late, and handled the press well. Plus he plays a very hounding defense. He’s not getting burned individually or anything like that. He just can’t make his technical foul shots. But he’s a great player and one of the most sound point guards in the country still.
They break the press better than before. There is no coaching issue there. It’s clear that this is something they’ve been working on. They use a standard spread out formation. There is not supposed to be a lot of movement from the off ball guys because that causes confusion from the part of the ball handler and doing that often draws defensive players in bunches toward the ball. They need to do a better job of protecting the ball, but not a lot of passes were thrown away as versus Louisville. Gilbert has issues on the press though.
Things are stacking up nicely for us now. Two competitive home games- one against the #1 team, our own senior night, then the BET at MSG (our home away from home), and hopefully a high seed in the Mid-West. Lots of great hoops ahead of us…
Guess we’re seeing something very different with Fields lately. Can’t imagine what it would be like to watch him hound anybody on defense, but I’d love to see it. He gets burned individually a couple times a game, which doesn’t bother me much because I know he’s not the quickest guy out there. I’m willing to accept that because he normally makes a big difference on the other end of the court — and I just haven’t seen that offense lately. We’ll need that difference-maker on Wed and Sat and there’s much more chance of seeing it against a man-to-man defense because Fields uses picks well and gets to the hoop way better than when he faces a zone.
My thinking on the press is pretty simple: you have to make the opponent pay for their press with easy buckets. If you’re only playing to break the press and then slow it down, then that pressure is eventually going to wear on you. I don’t mean that Pitt needs to turn these games into track meets, but they do have to attack pressure and look to score off it sometimes. Nothing discourages a press more than a couple dunks. The problem, though, is that Pitt doesn’t have a speedburner like a Lawson or a Sharaud Curry or a Kemba Walker to strike fear into anybody…..
Still would like Dixon to throw in a few press breaks involving hitting Fields in motion (as has been mentioned on this blog)……though he’s not a speed merchant, he’s still a great ballhandler and should be able to create a couple easy scoring opportunties, making it tougher for the presses to develop any momentum.
Absolutely correct — there is no one else on the team that can handle it, pass it, and penetrate like a PG should. That’s why seeing him play average ball is frustrating.
Fields is a winner. No doubt about it. He also can play a lot better.
Omar — you’re a great fan of the team, which is wonderful. If you don’t want to analyze and criticize constructively, that’s fine. Let the “professionals decide” and you’ll just worry about the W-L record at the end of the day.
That wouldn’t work for me. When you’ve spent (and am still spending) what seems like half your life on a hoop court, it’s impossible not to think about every decision you see coaches and players make. Could they have made a better decision? Why would Gilbert Brown be bringing the ball up against a press when he’s uncomfortable handling it in the halfcourt? Why would I keep Gibbs on the bench and stay with my normal substitution pattern when he’s the only zonebreaker I have?
This team just has me a little worried right now.
in #1 seed news – the beast has 3 strong cases for them and only 2 of us are going to get them….we need to step up in this next week and in the BET or we are going to be a #2 seed to either UNC or Oklahoma/Memphis instead of a #1 seed with possibly Duke or Mich St……..