The good news is that DeJuan Blair’s going to be okay to play.
Blair sustained a hyperextended left knee less than three minutes into the game when he banged knees with Seton Hall guard Jeremy Hazell. Blair returned to play 26 minutes, finishing with nine points and 10 rebounds.
Blair, the team’s second leading scorer and rebounder, underwent testing in Pittsburgh on Sunday after the Panthers returned from their 89-78 victory over the Pirates. Dixon said Blair had some soreness in the back of his knee, but no swelling.
“He seems pretty good about it,” Dixon said. “We will see how he feels (today). All signs are pretty good. It was a little scary there at first, but he seems all right.”
Gilbert Brown seems to be bothered with a sprained ankle.
The issue of turnovers has everyone a little on edge. There’s plenty of blame.
The turnovers are coming from every position on the court. Every starter except for Dixon had at least two against Seton Hall. Teams are testing the Panthers and their ball-handling ability at every opportunity.
But the majority of the miscues in the past two games have been coming from DeJuan Blair and Sam Young.
Of the 41 turnovers in the two-game span, Blair and Young have committed 17. Young had a team-high five turnovers against Seton Hall and had nine in the past two games. Blair had eight in the previous two contests.
“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.”
Young had three turnovers in the first half against Seton Hall called by the officials. Two called for palming and one off of his shot fake that the official bit on.
With Blair, it has been when he is not right by the basket the past couple of games. The minute he drops the ball below his waist, usually a guard comes to help and take a swipe. I’m thinking that is something that other teams have figured out in scouting. That if they can get him a little further from the basket, they have a shot at getting him to put it on the floor and can get a strip.
I’m not as concerned with Fields’ turnovers. When his assist-to-turnover ratio is 10:3 in a game, I can live with that. Hopefully he Fields will go down as the most successful point guard in Pitt’s history.
I was frustrated by the first half turnovers in Seton Hall, but the Pirates shot their wad in that first half trying to do it all. I mentioned this in the recap, but Pitt had 14 TOs in the first half, 2 in the final seconds when it was an empty bench. Most of the second half was much better by Pitt. Obviously, we want to see Pitt do a better job for an entire game. That said, I can’t be surprised that a team like Seton Hall was going to create a lot of turnovers against Pitt. Look at their conference stats. They are 3d in steals and 2nd in turnover margin. Their defense is predicated on forcing turnovers.
I’m not trying to minimize concern over turnovers. Given Pitt’s offense is based on efficiency, and does not play at a high pace, possessions matter. I am saying certain opponents style are going to create more turnovers. The unforced turnovers that we saw a lot of in Providence was much more worrisome than what Seton Hall got. Especially since Pitt did a fine job on getting back on defense and minimizing the harm by keeping Seton Hall from getting easy baskets off of the turnovers.
In the seven games prior to Providence, Pitt had a total of 70 turnovers. In 9 games this season, Pitt had 15 or more turnovers. Pitt is 6-3 in those games, and only 1-3 against teams that are NCAA Tournament bound (or on the bubble).
Here’s the thing, I expect around 15-17 turnovers against Marquette on Wednesday. Connecticut takes care of the ball nearly as well as Pitt, and they had 15 turnovers against Marquette. The Golden Eagles are another aggressive defense that tries to get steals and force turnovers. Again, the key is not the turnovers as much as making sure they don’t get out in transition quickly for easy scores.
Finally, UConn has a week to get ready for the season finale. They are already talking about it.
One thing that they can agree on: They’ll have no problem maintaining their competitive edge given what’s still at stake – winning a Big East regular-season championship.
”That’s not going to be too hard,” Calhoun said. “We have Pittsburgh Saturday. The most important thing is to win at Pittsburgh. I’ve always considered the regular season very important. If you can go through 18 games in this league and finish with the best record, you’re probably a very good basketball team.
”We have one more giant test.”
And Pitt has two.
