After a week-long layoff — nicely timed to give the football side time to go insane — Pitt is back to play its first Big East road game. Providence embarrassed Pitt at the Dunk a couple years ago. Last year, they nearly upset Pitt at the Pete. It was a change from how Pitt had been dominating the Friars in the Tim Welsh era. Keno Davis’ teams may struggle on defense, but they can score.
The game starts at 7pm on ESPN3.com, ESPN FullCourt, FoxSports Pittsburgh and MASN. Unfortunately SNY is showing the UConn-ND game. Oh, and way to be a power in New England, Providence. CSN New England is going with New Hampshire-Boston U.
It’s a moderated chat. Let’s try and stick to basketball. Consider it an oasis from that crisis that has sucked up most of the pixels on this site.
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Found the Friars radio station I think
But how about Woodall and McGhee … nothing but net for the last minute when it most counted
WTF, we won! Hail to Pitt!
BUT, for the Panthers to be down by four with under a minute left, and have the composure to come back and win on an away court says a lot to me. Nice win, Pitt.
Also, recent history shows that Keno knows how to match up against Pitt, and he changed up his full and half presses to give us fits tonight. Glad we got out of this one with a W especially after the long layoff. Whew!
Was coaching myself and did not get to see the game until the last 10 minutes. Contrary to most, I thought Pitt handled the 1-3-1 full court press decently…I could not get over some of the calls and non calls by the officials.Being off 8 days and then having to face a pressing team did not help. We will be fine. Loved the FT shooting though!
It’s been a Hell of a last few days for Pitt fans…we needed the drama tonight to pull us away from the other soap opera.
Hail to Pitt….One of the best basketball teams in the USA!
PantherP I noticed it seemed Brooks was staring down the Pitt bench once or twice after draining a 3 too. Thought it may have been directed toward Skerry perhaps? But Dixon definitely made a face like someone crop-dusted him as they went through the line.
I just get the sense that the home court advantage played a role in how close the score.
Stats show our offensive rebounding was not up to par.
Foul shooting was good, 76%. As well as shooting from the field.
Patterson plcontributed, what happened to Taylor?
How were the refs?
Thanks
Second half starts, Providence penetrates every time and the refs call a foul on nearly every possession. It was ridiculous. For christ’s sake, Pitt played a 2-3 zone for, what, the last 12 minutes of the game, maybe longer, because of the foul trouble? They had no choice. I was screaming at the TV: “go zone, go zone.” My wife is ready to kill me, b/c I was blathering so much.
There were stretches tonight where this team showed what they can be. There were others where my hand was plastered to my forehead. But in that last minute, that was impressive basketball. Woodall and McGhee with nerves of steel. And Woodall SUCKED in the first half, so for him to step up like that late in the game was huge.
I’ll take the W. Bring on Marquette.
Also, Tra stepped up huge in the 2nd half with the 3 to reclaim the lead and then free throws down the stretch. He’s gonna be a first team BE player when its all said and done.
Taylor and Gibbs can be liabilities on defense and Jamie made a nice move using zone in 2nd half. Unusual for both Brad and Gibbs to be off their games at the same time, v. a deep opponent that’s a too much of a handicap to overcome.
Every BE coach is going to use similar press, no doubt that Jamie will work on that. I’m not sure that this year’s team can sustain an element that has been core to Pitt’s success in Ben & Jamie era: team defense.
He’s got to stop reaching on D and make better decisions on O. Those few TOs will be costly against the top teams in the conference.
*Great to get a win they didn’t deserve. Providence just didn’t know how to close out a game and Woodall was willing to take a big shot.
*Dixon had the worst game of anyone. Many opportunities last night to coach those players to a win and he didn’t have the instincts to do it. A few opportunities he missed….
*Have Gibbs run the baseline against the Friar zone to get open looks. He can’t handle the ball out front against bigger, quicker guards, so let him run from corner to corner and let Woodall and Wanamaker (and sometimes Patterson) handle the ball out front.
*Getting Woodall back in the game earlier in the 2nd half. As bad as Woodall was in the first half, they needed quickness in the game and they needed to attack the pressure and get easy buckets since their halfcourt offense was so tentative.
*Coach the players to understand how the refs are calling the game. They were calling everything and would have called charging foul after charging foul against Brooks, Coleman and Council if Dixon could have gotten his players to pack it in and take the bumps. Only Taylor was willing to take a charge.
I will give Dixon credit for giving Patterson minutes. He really played well — gave me some hope he can be a contributor. Not many good passers on this team, but he’s a natural one and an unselfish player. It looks like he was coached much better growing up than the rest of the squad.
*Pitt’s got plenty of strengths (depth, aderence to system, experience, size come to mind), but athleticism at the guard position is a problem against teams like Prov. Woodall has some speed, but Wanamaker and Gibbs are slower guards and they didn’t have a chance to stay in front of the Friar guards.
*Brooks looks like the 2nd best player in the BE after Walker. He’s what Gilbert was supposed to be……big rangy guard/swingman who can slash, shoot, and play D.
*Still wondering about the JJ Moore situation. Once again, he hoisted up a shot seconds after getting in the game. How about a little discretion, JJ? Why didn’t they redshirt him?
Hey, I’ll take the win. And who was that courtside reporter? We need to see more of her.
Where’s the love for Gary? Big rebounds when he came back in the game in the second half, key bucket down low to set up the woodall there, and damn… two clutch FTS to seal the game… Nothing but net btw, from a 47% FT shooter!
Re Wannamaker – I’m more with Omar than the detractors, though Wanny has a few significant shortcomings that get exposed against quick opposing front courts. Teams with quick guards that play tight defense tend to lock up our slower (esp. Gibbs) back court and too much of our offense is reliant on the guards, especially Gibbs. When Gibbs is locked up, Brad has too much responsibility to make plays and when he’s pressing his ball-handling is really poor. Its mostly because of the offensive game plan – I think Dixon needs to run the offense a little more through the bigs, especially if Taylor is in the game. Pitt’s a bit limited though if Gil is off (and he seems off more than he is on) as swing man.
RE the match-up. Providence is simply a team that always plays Pitt well. Providence is to Pitt what Pitt is to Syracuse. Its just the match up. Can’t get too upset about not wiping these guys out at their own gym. Even with the atrocious turn-overs, we play so efficiently they didn’t kill us. Its actually kind of amazing how solid we are, both in terms of efficiency and also depth/versatility. Really high ceiling to develop over this year – we’re even using a zone defense occasionally!
On McGhee – I rail on McGhee all the time but he just out muscled guys on a few big plays and deserves some credit here.
On Woodall – Woodall is way more valuable than a lot of people think, mostly because he’s a true point guard (speed, floor vision, decent shooter) that knows how to win and has been clutch for us before (ex WVU last year). I think Dixon can afford to switch Gibbs out for Woodall way more often than he does. I’m a huge Gibbs fan, but Dixon leans on him too much and needs to lessen his minutes by from about 38 to 32 a game, using Woodall as his sub as often as he is Wanny’s sub.
Re Brown – i’m really curious what he’s like in practice. Dixon doesn’t seem to trust him for some reason and it seems to play on his mind. Brown makes many dumb mistakes, but i wonder if its because he’s so worried about how short a leash dixon has him on. Sort of weird that most (all?) of his points came on jump shots when there was opportunity for him to dribble-drive and he did none of that. Also weird how he went completely silent in the 2nd half. He has the physical gifts to be our best player…well, everyone knows the story of how frustrating an enigma Brown is.
all in all a solid win if for no other reason than, despite the fact we played like garbage against the press and the MAJOR foul trouble, we still won because of our efficiency, versatility and depth.
nice write-up. quick question: what did you specifically think coach dixon could have done? that was an interesting comment. i would love to hear your thoughts.
regarding woodall’s big shot, he was asked about it and said, “…scared money don’t make money.” these are the types of players that you want. not afraid to make plays at crunch time. coach dixon, when pitt was down 2, said, “…guys, it’s time.” i think dixon recruits and makes sure the kids aren’t afraid to make mistakes at the end of the game.
this is the exact opposite of our former football coach. the differing results speak for themselves.
finally, this team needs a LOT of improvement on the defensive end. some of our players are awful defending the three, especially at the end of the shot clock (i am talking to you, gilbert brown). defense is what is going to hold this team back. get on it coach dixon.
He should have used Gibbs on the baseline and not out front — the Friar zone had plenty of holes and Gibbs could have gotten shots off, but using him out front just exposed his ballhandling and quickness shortcomings.
He should have brought Woodall back in much earlier in the 2nd half and told him to push it against the pressure. Pitt would have gotten easy buckets because Providence’s good players were at the front of the press not the back.
Maybe he tried (we’ll never know), but he was unable to help the players understand that the game was being called way too closely. That was clear early and Pitt never reacted to the officiating.
I did appreciate his use of Patterson. Nice contribution.
On another topic — it certainly seems like Zanna and Moore are close to leaving the rotation, which makes you wonder why Moore was ever in it. (Pet peeve of mine, as you can tell.)
Dixon’s a good coach. I can live without the game adjustments; sideline strategy doesn’t happen to be one of his strengths, but his long list of other attributes make up for it.
I do have a few issues with how Dixon works the rotation, but honestly with so many players to juggle, game rhythms to manage, etc, I don’t know exactly what would be ideal. I’d like to see more Taylor and see Woodall spell Gibbs a little more. I’m really not sure what to do about Moore, Patterson, and Zanna. I think we can/should give some space during the season to let Dixon continue to experiment with the rotation. I really don’t think anyone knows exactly what we have and how to optimize it yet. Too many different skill sets. Not a bad problem to have I suppose.
My thought on the officiating was that those refs were determined to play an out-sized role in that game, so you tell your players to look for opportunities to give the officials a chance to make a call.
Juggling the rotation is tough, no doubt. I think Dixon knows what he has; he’s just not always adept at assessing the need during a game. I think he’s had to work Taylor in slow because of the liability on defense and I agree that Woodall deserves more time in for Gibbs. There are also going to game situations when he needs size and will have to play Zanna more than he wants to.
HTP
Graham