Phew. That nightmare scenario is done within the first week of the season.

Pitt finally notched its first win in basketball last night. I would go with some cliche about how it wasn’t pretty, but let’s face it. Nothing about this season is going to be pretty.

I missed the first half (apparently this was a good thing), where Pitt continued to show no awareness on defense and left shooters on the perimeter alone. To the tune of UCSB going 8-15 on 3s.

The lack of defense on the perimeter coupled with no fear of the frontcourt defending the rim has led to an all-hands-on-deck approach. Redshirts be damned.

Terrell Brown and Peace Illegomah — both expected to redshirt before the season started — got playing time. In Brown’s case, he was a starter. Both could still redshirt if they don’t play too many more games, but at least in Brown’s case that is unlikely to happen. They need his size inside. Illegomah may have made his case for keeping that redshirt, as he played 4 minutes and managed to commit 3 turnovers and 1 foul in that time.

The second half was where life began to be shown by the team.

As the players gathered in the locker room, assistant coach Dan Cage rose and gave something that was less a motivational speech and more of a challenge.

“It wasn’t a negative thing,” junior wing Jared Wilson-Frame said. “It was just him letting us know you guys are either going to fight and win this game or the same things are going to keep happening. We obviously didn’t want that same thing to keep happening.”

When asked after the 70-62 win if any of the details of the monologue were news-conference appropriate, Wilson-Frame and his teammate, Jonathan Milligan, looked at one another before grins gave ways to laughs, with no words uttered between them. The specifics of the speech, after all, were largely immaterial (and presumably not G-rated). What they helped create was far more memorable.

The effort on defense began to assert itself, and UCSB found itself shooting (and missing) a lot more contested 3s.

This game also saw Jonathon Milligan asserting himself more as a scorer for the second straight game. Not trying to simply shoot (ineffectively) from outside, but to drive and attack the ball. He finished with 14 points, going 4-5 on the floor and 4-5 from the FT line.

Ryan Luther, despite foul problems, came up big. Especially late. A nice bounceback for him after a rough finish in the previous game.

As for the freshmen guards. Khameron Davis is still waiting to get his first basket. Marcus Carr does not look right at the moment with a nagging injury. Parker Stewart is starting to find himself on the court.

Jared Wilson-Frame and Shamiel Stevenson are the reason for hope. Both play with energy and are aggressive going to the basket. Yet, they have range to stretch the defenses. Both need a lot of work, defensively, but that applies to the whole team.

Now the bad. Rebounding. My god, the inability to get offensive rebounds. The team finished with 5. 5. For the game. With something like 5 minutes left in the game, Pitt still had only 2 offensive rebounds and 0 second chance points.

The team got 3 came  final few minutes — and even scored off them. Still, the lack of getting second chances was astounding. I don’t even know how you can get only 5 offensive rebounds without shooting something like 65-75% — and Pitt didn’t.