Pitt Panther Prowl

Two Days Later and Still Reeling

Two days have passed since Pitt got embarrassed by Marquette and it hasn’t gotten any easier to swallow. I don’t know if it is better that it wasn’t another close game that they blew, or if it is worse because of the manner in which they got beat. All I know is that Pitt didn’t do much that was positive in the game, and next game isn’t going to be any easier. Notre Dame has been the surprise of the conference and is truly playing good basketball right now. Forward Luke Harongody is averaging 20.8 points and 10.4 rebounds per game and is likely going to be Big East player of the year. The Irish are currently only a 1/2 game back of first place in the conference.

The good news is that Pitt has an entire week between Marquette and Notre Dame to not only prepare and get a game plan, but also to get Levance Fields back into sync with the rest of the team with full speed practices. The nice part of the Marquette game was that Fields did get 20 minutes on the floor. But he was basically a full step behind, and was only 1-7 from the floor (4 points) with only 2 assists. I said in an earlier post that I felt it was worth taking a loss or two now to get Fields back in sync with the team because the long term benefit would be more post-season wins. I still believe that. It is my belief that the sooner the offense is being run by Fields efficiently, the better off this team is.

I only wish that we could attribute the Marquette loss to trying to acclimate Fields back to his point guard duties. That simply isn’t the case. Pitt lost because they did everything wrong and nothing right. They let Marquette score at will. They gave up an unreasonable amount of points in the paint. They got out rebounded. They got out hustled. They got out coached. None of this had anything to do with being willing to risk a loss to get Levance Fields some good minutes. It just had to do with Pitt playing poorly and Marquette playing exceptionally well.

The bright side of all this is that Pitt doesn’t usually play two games like this in a row. They may lose two in a row. But they usually don’t get completely out played like this. Playing at Notre Dame won’t be easy and the Irish aren’t likely to just hand the game over to the Panthers. DeJuan Blair is going to have his hands full with a superior Harongody (maybe he will get lucky and draw a match up with Forward Rob Kurz instead, allowing Young the pleasure of getting outplayed by Harongody).

Hopefully Jamie Dixon makes good use of this week because if Pitt isn’t ready to play this Notre Dame team, then it is going to be difficult to pick up the pieces for the stretch run.