Anyone who has followed Pitt this season knew that Pitt was going to do everything they could to get the ball inside this game. They were going to focus on trying to feed the big men and get more rebounds. There wasn’t any secret. Especially against an undersized and young Duquesne team.
The good news: they pulled down the rebounds. The bad news: Water. Boat. Fall. Miss.
Pitt was really, really trying to get the bigs to score — defined in this case as Steve Adams, Talib Zanna, Dante Taylor and J.J. Moore. But it was ugly. At halftime, those four combined to shoot 2-16 (that’s 12.5%). And basically that was what was keeping Duquesne in a very ugly first half for the first 12 minutes or so.
Then Travon Woodall had just about enough of that. Woodall didn’t even attempt a shot until nearly 7 minutes into the game. Offensively he was deferring. Working with James Robinson in the backcourt to get the ball inside. Passing up shots. As was most of the front court. Woodall, Robinson and Lamar Patterson were clearly focused on feeding it inside or penetrating to the basket.
