Primary stories on Pitt basketball focus on “character” and “resilience” of the team with Durand Johnson gone for the year.
They are nice stories. Positive stories. And nothing I really disagree with them.
At the same time, this is nothing new with Pitt under Coach Jamie Dixon.
We’ve seen the team handle the loss of Mike Cook and Levance Fields in one season. They weathered early issues when Gil Brown had to sit or Jermaine Dixon.
Any time a ranked team loses to an unranked team it is a big deal in that news cycle. Regardless of how the other team is doing. Road or not. Conference game is minimized. Just look at Kentucky and Wisconsin going down last night. They played teams with NCAA Tournament expectations of their own on the road. They lost in close, tight games and it is treated as an amazing thing.
For that moment it looks like it, but when seen over the course of the whole season it hardly seems surprising. It was a conference loss on the road. No one expected either team to go undefeated in conference or only lose one or two games. In conference play, on average, if you lose no more than two home games and go 5-4 on the road, you are an upper-tier team.
From that perspective, if Pitt had lost last night at Georgia Tech it wouldn’t have been a huge shock. GT, like so many middle-of-the-pack teams plays far better at home than on the road.
In the moment, though, it would have been treated as a bigger deal since Pitt finally got ranked. By virtue of doing nothing but winning all but one game, Pitt pushed past the Seth Davises who wouldn’t rank or credit Pitt as punishment for the non-con. Or those who only saw the Cinci mess and base their entire POV on that game. A loss, though, to GT right after ranking would be their justification and proof they were right.
So, in that way, this was a big win for Pitt.
I made an uncomfortable link this morning. In 2007, when Pitt upset Duke in MSG the Panthers also lost Mike Cook for the season. The very next game, Pitt got trounced at Dayton (and lost Levance Fields for a chunk of the season just to make things worse).
This year, Pitt loses Durand Johnson and has to go to Georgia Tech. The one common theme is that the coach is the same. Brian Gregory was the coach at Dayton then and is the coach at Georgia Tech now. Anything that reminds me of that loss — no matter how vague — makes me nervous.
Other concerns.
Georgia Tech (10-6) has been a tough opponent at home. The Yellow Jackets are 8-1 at McCamish, and the enthusiastic crowd impressed Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey, who said, “Their fans were great. Their fans gave them probably the confidence to win the basketball game.”
Georgia Tech is 5-0 against Pittsburgh. The teams’ last meeting came in 1989 at The Omni, a 111-92 Georgia Tech win.
That one loss. Brian Gregory’s old team, Dayton.
Welp, Pitt finally cracks the AP and Coaches Polls. Coming in at #22 and #21 respectively. Huzzah!
Lamar Patterson was named ACC Player of the Week for the second time this season. It oddly feels like his performance is being taken for granted. We acknowledge he is playing really well. That this team would be in big trouble if he hadn’t raised his game — which is really impressive when you think about the steady improvement he has shown in the past three seasons. Each year, getting better. Improving facets of his game and his conditioning. And the improved maturity. And versatility.
This sucks. This really sucks.
Tough break for Pitt hoops: Sophomore G/F Durand Johnson out for the year with torn ACL, torn meniscus
— Will Graves (@WillGravesAP) January 12, 2014
I’m not saying Wake Forest struggles on the road under the tenure of Jeff Bzdelik. I really don’t have to. The numbers do it for me.
The overall record in 3+ years is 45-64.
ACC Record: 12-40
Home ACC games: 11-13
Road ACC games: 1-27
Last road win: January 21, 2012 at Boston College.
This is year four of the Jeff Bzdelik experiment for Wake Forest. It has led to billboards, anger, apathy and diminishing attendance in Winston-Salem. In Boulder, Colorado I have to believe Buffalo fans still send yearly thank you cards to the WF AD for plucking Bzdelik away from them. Allowing for the hire of Tad Boyle and real success on the court.
Whatever good feelings Wake had about their big home win against UNC last Sunday, went out the window by Wednesday as the Demon Deacons got decimated by 23 in Charlottesville by a disappointing Virginia squad while UNC was losing to Miami.
Been a while since I did this, but there is no real theme to what I’m posting, so…
I blasted Dejan Kovacevic a couple times for his “I’m not saying, but the questions are out there” columns. So, good for him on admitting that, yes, he was actually questioning the non-con schedule for preparing the team for the ACC.
For all the teeth gnashing over Pitt not “getting respect” (specifically, being ranked), it’s coming.
It is permissible to like Paul Chryst as a coach at Pitt and still hate hiring decisions. That is the state I find myself once again this offseason.
Ross Kolodziej, who played seven years in the National Football League following a distinguished collegiate career at Wisconsin, has been named head football strength and conditioning coach at Pitt, it was announced by Coach Paul Chryst today.
Kolodziej (pronounced ka-la-gee) was promoted to the post after serving the Panthers as an assistant strength and conditioning coach this past season.
I said it on Monday that this would be a bad hire, based purely on his resume.
Morning, everyone. The deep freeze may be coming to an end but a third day of no school for the kids further disrupts life.
Amidst the hoopla for the last BCS Championship game, the Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) released their Freshman All-American Team.
Tyler Boyd made the squad, so one more accolade for him and this Pitt squad.
Weak effort I know, but it was a late night and an early start. I felt obliged to make some sort of weather reference.
Unlike the past few games it did not take long for the offense to get going. Pitt came out with purpose on offense. Finishing at the rim and not nearly so much settling for jumpers early. The defense, though, took a little more time to get going.
Some of that has to do with Maryland and their style. They like to take a lot of threes, so there are points where it can help keep you in the game or shoot you right out of it. In the first half, it kept them in the game with 4-10 shooting from outside. It gave the Terrapins some more room inside, giving them more opportunities on the boards.
The first 7-8 minutes of the game couldn’t have started much worse for Pitt. Down 17-2 and 19-4, Pitt was lost. Every writer paying attention to the game was preparing the “Pitt’s bad non-con schedule set them up for this debacle” piece. They weren’t prepared for their first real road game. They didn’t know how to handle playing a quality team. They were paper tigers.
…three newcomers made key contributions for the Panthers in their inaugural ACC game.
The trio combined for half of Pitt’s 26 first-half points, providing an offensive punch after Pitt fell behind by 15 points, and finished with 24 points.
“We weren’t playing that good, and they got out to a big run,” Pitt fifth-year senior Lamar Patterson said. “Our freshmen responded and we took it from there.”
Power forward Mike Young scored Pitt’s first points — and the Panthers’ only basket of the game’s first six minutes — and finished with 13 points and two rebounds. Backup forward Jamel Artis added six points and one rebound. Point guard Josh Newkirk, a Raleigh native, provided a spark off the bench, scoring five first-half points for a happy homecoming.
You know how it is for upperclassmen. Noon on a weekend. You can’t expect them to be awake yet. Nooners suck.
Okay. You may be ready to panic and scream if you saw this:
CoachingSearch.com doesn’t do permalinks, so it is in their ticker for today.
In theory, there might be a reason to tell a commit that if he is making the commitment, then he should not still be taking recruiting trips to other schools. This despite the fact that a verbal commitment is non-binding. One of those reasons might be a promise by the coach of the program not to recruit any more players at the same position. A show of good faith by both sides.
But when you are a program getting ready to leap from the Big East to the Big Ten. When you are a coach that has seen strained relations with your local recruits and some of the coaches in the area. You might want to be a little more flexible.
Rutgers head coach Kyle Flood is not that kind of flexible. It has cost him a few de-commits this year with his belief that recruits need to shut down visits even as he keeps recruiting others. Back in November, that cost him Adonis Jennings.
Pitt was the source of the rift then, as Jennings took an unofficial visit to Pitt for the Notre Dame-Pitt game. Pitt was the final beneficiary last night.
The build-up on the offensive side of the ball continues apace for Pitt. The latest piece is Adonis Jennings.
The near consensus 4-star recruit from New Jersey (only Scout.com has him at 3-stars) made his decision known in the 3d quarter of the Semper Fi All-Star game.
4-star WR Adonis Jennings commits to #Pitt here at the #SemperFiBowl
— David Berry (@RivalsDave) January 6, 2014
Slogged our way through the non-con and all it’s patsies — which wasn’t nearly as bad as all the complaining about the patsies.
Now we have our first conference game. Down in Raleigh, NC against North Carolina State in PNC Park Arena. It’s a nooner.
Unfortunately this is not a national game, and if you don’t live in the Pittsburgh area, finding the game is a little tricky. In Pittsburgh it is airing on WTAE. For everyone else, you have to hope you are in a place where a local ACC Network affiliate is carrying the game. It’s being carried by a fairly broad group of carriers, but I am not so lucky today. The closest affiliate for me is in Youngstown, Ohio.
Thankfully the game is also on ESPN3.com. It is also on the ESPN FullCourt package if you have it. Just to twist the knife, at the start of conference play there is usually a free preview week of FullCourt to suck you in at midseason. But wouldn’t you know it, the preview starts (PDF) on Monday, January 6. Some good news is that it will include the Wake Forest game on Saturday, January 11.
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