Pitt Panther Prowl

Blair v Hibbert; Blair in a Landslide

Ever since the Pitt-Georgetown game, I can’t get over how unimpressed I am with Roy Hibbert. Coming in to the game, I expected that DeJuan Blair would do well against Hibbert. Hibbert, who is 7’2”, is so thin that I didn’t particularly expect him to be able to bang on the blocks with Blair. What I didn’t expect was that Blair, a freshman, would make Hibbert look like he was the freshman.

All of us as Pitt fans suffered through the Aaron Gray years, wondering why a guy who is 7’ tall didn’t seem to want to dominate the game. How many times did we watch Gray get the ball at the elbow and not even look at the hoop? For some reason, Gray never acquired the “I’m 7’ tall and no one can stop me” mentality. He seemed tentative and sometimes lost.

This is the same way that Roy Hibbert plays. It seems as if shooting is what he does when he doesn’t know what else to do. I just don’t understand how you could have a seven footer on your team, especially in a league as physical as the Big East, and he could be taking a 3-point shot to beat UConn instead of having a play designed for him to smash the ball down someone’s throat to go to overtime. Better yet, if he had the killer instinct to take the ball to the hole, Georgetown wouldn’t have ever needed him to shoot a 3 point shot with no time on the clock.

Compare Roy Hibbert’s 7’ [finesse] game to that of 6’7” DeJuan Blair. Blair gives up 7 inches to Hibbert, yet he never shied away from going straight at him. When Blair gets the ball, unlike Hibbert and Gray, Blair’s first instinct is to see if there is an open shot. Sure, there are times when he takes a bad shot. But as a freshman, I am glad that he already has the instinct to try to take over the game on the inside. With more experience, he will get better at taking good shots and passing when there isn’t one available.

Blair’s killer instinct is especially noticeable in games against big opponents. He seems to play his best when he is needed to play his best. For example, over a 5 game stretch where the toughest team Pitt played was Duquesne, Blair never scored more than 11 points, only breaking double digits twice. On the other hand, he scored 16 points against Washington, 20 against Oklahoma St., 15 against Duke 15 against Georgetown, and 12 against Villanova coupled with 15 rebounds. He just seems to understand that big games call for a big man. And unlike Gray in the past, and Hibbert at Georgetown, Blair is more than willing to be the big man.

The best part about Blair for those of us who love watching him play is that he doesn’t seem to have an NBA type game for his size. If he is going to play in the NBA, he is going to need to develop more range and ball handling ability, because, at 6’7”, he isn’t going to be playing center. I don’t want it to sound like I don’t want Blair to make the NBA, and I certainly think that he will end up there. But what I celebrate is that he isn’t like the other freshmen in the NCAA this year that are just looking for someone to showcase their talents so they can sign with an agent as soon as they play their final game of the season. I celebrate because I love watching Blair, and I look forward to at least three, if not four years of him making people like Roy Hibbert, a supposed All American, look like rookies.