More than a little hype for this one. Promoted by ESPN channels all weekend. No matter what they were broadcasting. An ad for Cuse-Pitt was going to show up somewhere at sometime.
Fun fact. Pitt is a Big East, Big Monday team in three of the next four weeks. Rest of the Big East might be a little tired of that.
7:30 pm with the tolerable Dan Shulman and the excruciating Dick Vitale on ESPN. Make sure you have the appropriate adult beverage to numb the aching in the ears.
Hopefully everyone knows the drill. It’s a moderated chat to limit repetitive comments, too much idiocy, some sense of order and trolls.
[UPDATE (7:27): Lots of football recruits in the Pete according to lots of Tweets. Along with alum like Larry Fitzgerald.]
The liveblog is below or you can break it out from the site by Clicking Here.
Pittsburgh is on a heckuva streak, Penquins,Steelers,Pitt on Saturday, Patriots go down on Sunday. Let’s keep it going.
Go Pitt.
First of all, good, not great game for Pitt. Very sloppy at times. Two things I cannot for the life of me understand:
1. Why does Pitt not recognize and react better to the full court press and WHY do they inbound the ball to the short corner so often?
2. What happens to Gilbert Brown every once in a while in the game?? He makes ridiculously stupid plays with the ball. His three late turnovers could really have cost Pitt.
That’s all here…Glad we won. Had the Cuse been on their game, it would have been trouble tonight. Should win our next five.
Hail to Pitt!
Now, they can say the the “two top teams in the tough Big East played, and Pitt dominated when it counted.”
– using Gil to drive and dish/shoot instead of Nas at the top of the key;
– Gary/Taylor learning to not give up any ground on the blocks;
– attacking later in the game when slowing down wasn’t working.
Gotta say, despite their dropped rebounds and late TOs, respectively, gotta give props to Gary and Brown today (everyone is gonna give Nas his deserved ones, Omar I’m sure will cover Wanny’s rock solid play). Also, great to see Taylor playin well too. He just needs to learn how to creat some space when we goes up for those dump ins.
Great win. I wanna see Gil’s block on replay a thousand times.
Brown is seemingly limiting his bad moments and I like his aggressiveness in getting the ball to the middle and pulling up for a 8-footer.
Robinson is indispensable even when he doesn’t score, and damn if McGhee doesn’t give 100% every play.
Excellent win tonight over a very good team.
How many turnovers were due to the full court press one maybe two? The full court press creates turnovers for all teams. And Gil Brown also made some great plays in the game too.
Sure, liberal substitutions may potentially cost us a game at some point. But how many games have we won this year because Taylor and Woodall played important minutes last year? Brad the year before. There is a reason Pitt almost always seems like the most experienced team in every game, every year. Dixon goes deep into his bench and often because he’s not just coaching a game, he’s coaching a program.
Also heard excellent things from Boeheim in the post game presser. Said that this may be the best Pitt team he’s ever seen. I hate Boeheim on the court (he was actually pretty tame yesterday), but he seems like a good guy otherwise.
And what the hell happened with Jamie getting T’d up in that game? Anyone see what happened? There were a couple of officials that I don’t usually see doing Pitt games.
I would literally pay $100 to see Gil Brown, just one time when he drives into the paint, go up strong and try to elevate over a defender. Last night he pulled up and hit a few nice short jumpers in the paint, but several other times you could tell that he was looking for the pass first, even before a defender came to him. A little more unbridled aggression from Gil and he would be an entirely different player.
All that said, though, that block was SICK! I need to find a still of that and use it for my screen saver!
In my eyes, all credit for this one goes to Coach Dixon. He could not have possibly prepared the team any better for what they were about to see. Starting with Nas, every guy was in the perfect position and made the right decision in attacking that zone. That’s coaching. And although the lead quickly disappeared, if a few jumpers fall in that stretch the lead stays comfortable.
As for the trouble with the press, it happens, especially when a team abruptly goes from a half-court matchup zone to full-court pressure. I’m confident they’ll take care of it though. After the Providence game with all the turnovers, taking care of the ball was obviously stressed and they did a tremendous job of that against Marquette and GU. They didn’t rebound as well as usual against Marquette, then dominated the boards against GU and Syracuse. This team is really intelligent, really hard-working, and really well-coached. They’re getting better and better, and the bugs will be worked out. Hail to Pitt!
Great article title:
Pitt Football: Todd Graham’s Recruiting Efforts Turning Bandwagon into a Parade
The opening run was awesome and drew the same praise of “best team I’ve seen” from Dickie V as it did from Coach Bobby last week. And, it was great to hear Knight talking about Pitt at the beginning of the KU/Baylor game.
IMO, the Syracuse run was because Pitt relaxed its defensive pressure allowing ‘Cuse to start hitting shots and setting up their D on our end. But as others mentioned, Jamie adjusted and we started getting those open looks inside again in the second half.
Not too worried about the press issues. Agree with SilverPanther that Jamie is playing it correctly scheme-wise. My only suggestion would be to let someone else – McGhee, Nas? – make the entry pass to get Gil into the receiving mix. That might make it easier to get the ball to the middle. Just a thought.
Big win against a good team. As 85 said, they are getting better and better as a team. Unless there’s a key injury or one of those unexplainable mid-season slumps, a #1 seed is clearly in their future.
Hail to PITT!
Just shows how Jamie is able to change style of play to suit the personnel.
We are truly blessed with a greaty coach.
The PPG could muster only 2 articles? Shame on you.
