Okay, there is no shortage of articles relating to Pitt. I’m skipping all the capsules that every newspaper does. I think we get it with the base stats on each team.
It’s a big game, with a few days building behind it. So, there are plenty of stories on DeJuan Blair. The New York Times focused on his rump — an amusing and decent piece.
But Blair’s game has more nuance to it than simply rocking his hips and pushing people out of the way. The Pittsburgh associate head coach Tom Herrion marvels at how Blair uses his rear end to create angles, something he said took more than physical strength.
“What’s amazing about him is how subtle and legal he plays with that,” Herrion said. “He’s not a brute player. It’s all subtle. His feel and his instincts allow him to take advantage of his body.”
The maestro of properly using one’s backside is Barkley, who earned the nickname the Round Mound of Rebound and angled his way into a Hall of Fame career. In a 1984 Sports Illustrated article, the 6-4 Barkley articulated why he had success against taller centers like 6-11 Melvin Turpin.
“It’s easier for me to get low,” he said. “I can put my butt on Melvin’s legs, but Melvin can only put his legs on my butt.”
Blair puts it this way: “It’s hard to get around my wide body. Why not push people out of the way with it?”
Ron Cook apparently wasn’t expecting much since Blair wasn’t too talkative on the subject
As a companion, this Wall Street Journal article on the return of the big man in college is well worth reading. The focus is mainly on Blake Griffin, but it is interesting and provides a quick little history lesson on their lessoning impact.
There’s also a couple stories from the Boston papers. One trying to look forward.
Asked if a trip to the White House to meet with the president gave him any added motivation to want to win it all, Blair perked up. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be cool,” he said. Then, turning serious, he added, “I’m not worried about that right now. We’re in Boston right now, we’re not in Detroit. When we get to Detroit, we can talk up a storm about that.”
The only thing on Blair’s mind yesterday was getting past Xavier tonight.
“Xavier is a tall and athletic team,” he said. “They like to play and they like to run and they have an excellent rebounding team, so it’s going to be a little challenge for me. But I’m just going to try to do what I can do.”
The other just recapping his story.
“He’s a very unique player,” said Xavier coach Sean Miller, a former standout point guard at Pitt. “He reminds me of a guy I played with, Jerome Lane, and Jerome led the nation in rebounding. And DeJuan is right there.”
While his body type and game frequently draw comparisons to Lane, as well as players such as Karl Malone, Blair shrugs them off like so many opponents who battle him inside.
“I’m just trying to be me,” Blair said. “That’s all I am.”
The similarities are not lost on Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon, who sees certain qualities that allow such players to make up for their lack of height inside.
“Oftentimes you have to have soft hands and good feet,” Dixon said. “If you have a combination of those things, you can have success. He’s got all those attributes, I think, so that’s what he builds around and plays around.”
The players are trying to stay loose as the game looms.
In winning their first two tournament games, Blair and the Panthers settled down and allowed their talent to take over. They started playing more and thinking less, putting them in the right frame of mind for tonight’s game against a dangerous Xavier team coached by former Pitt standout Sean Miller.
“You want to have fun, especially with this being our last go-round,” point guard Levance Fields said of himself and fellow seniors Sam Young and Tyrell Biggs. “You try to have fun, but at the same time, we want to be as focused as possible.
“As the (second-round) game (against Oklahoma State) went on, we loosened up, got a little bit more excited and played better.”
…
“You want balance,” said Fields, who’s 82-16 as a starter at Pitt. “You want to be determined but also a little loosey-goosey. You don’t want everybody to be uptight and feel the pressure’s on.”
The only other Pitt player to get feature stories is Levance Fields. Seems to be the focus on NYC point guards thing. I always wonder if it is some sort of hive thing with media. It’s one thing when it is a pool of local beat writers but this is a bit different.
Pitt will survive or burn out with The General.
That’s the sometime nickname of Levance Fields, Pitt’s senior point guard and the most important player in the Panthers’ universe. The stocky 5-10 guy from Brooklyn, from legendary Xaverian High School and from the long list of big-time New York City point guards, is the one who runs the show for the top-seeded Panthers, the one who will be staring down Xavier tonight at the TD Banknorth Center.
Just ask him.
“DeJuan, Sam, those guys are our two horses, our stars,” Fields said. “When the game’s on the line, I’m going to have the ball. The biggest thing for us is confidence. I feel confident when I have the ball and I want to take that last shot. And my teammates and coaches feel the same way. They want me to have the ball.”
If you feel a bit put off by Fields’ bravado, well, two things: He’s from Brooklyn, so he doesn’t care; and he’s got a pretty solid resume to back those words up.
Just look back to Sunday in Dayton. Oklahoma State was throwing all it had at Pitt, hitting shots from all over the court. Down by a point with 3:30 to play, Fields turned it up a notch.
He drove and kicked out to Young for the go-ahead three-pointer. Next trip down, a putback by Fields. Next one, a Fields three. Game over.
Okay, that was a NYC area paper. So it is almost standard to bring in the local hook. But a New Hampshire paper with this?
“People brush him off because he doesn’t pass the eye test,” Pitt assistant coach Tom Herrion said from his team’s locker room at TD Banknorth Garden yesterday. “His appearance isn’t the fittest, but yet he’s the toughest. He’s a big shot taker, a big shot maker. He’s a winner. Hopefully he can keep that going in the next couple weeks.”
So where does Fields belong? At this point, he deserves to be mentioned among the Big Apple’s success stories. The 21-year-old, a three-time finalist for the Bob Cousy Award, given each year to the nation’s best point guard, has spent his four seasons at Pitt maximizing his talent.
“You can make the argument that he does as good a job playing that position as anyone out there,” said Xavier coach Sean Miller, himself a former all-star point guard at Pitt.
If you’re an unaffiliated basketball junkie searching for someone to root for during tonight’s NCAA East regional matchup (7:27 p.m., CBS) between No. 1 Pitt (30-4) and No. 4 Xavier (27-7), look no further than Fields. Sure, 6-7, 265-pound DeJuan Blair is the star (he looks like he could be the long lost son of former Michigan star Robert “Tractor” Traylor), but Fields runs the show.
“He’s the leader out there,” said Holloway, a 6-foot guard averaging 5.7 points per game for the Musketeers. “If you watch Pittsburgh, and you take him off the team, you can see that they’d be a lot different.”
Sam Young gets snubbed on the stories. Hopefully he’s got some more motivation then.
More in a bit.
