Pitt Panther Prowl

We’ll Take It

Last night Pitt snapped its three game losing streak by beating Cincinnati. Of course, all the talk is how they didn’t do it the right way, but the general sentiment is that we’ll take it, ugly or not. It is true that this wasn’t the way we wanted to see Pitt win. But we wanted, scratch that, needed a Pitt win last night, so we won’t be too picky. For those of us who know that Pitt just needed to get a win to build their confidence again, I think we would have accepted winning the game on a last second shot that bounced off the referee’s head and in. A win is a win, and this team needed one badly.

There were some issues that Pitt is going to need to address, especially going into a two game road trip at two difficult places to play. First we get Syracuse at the Carrier Dome on Saturday. Then it is off to Morgantown to fight the Hoopies on I Married My Sister Court at the Coon Skin Cap Arena. Neither place will be kind to Pitt and they aren’t going to be given any slack. They simply must find a way to get rebounds, especially against two teams that are likely to throw up a lot of three pointers.

It is no secret that defense and rebounding, two things that in many ways go hand in hand, are simply killing Pitt right now. Pitt has been out-rebounded in each of the last four games, most recently by 12 by Cincinnati. I am not sure the connection, but the rebounding faded when Levance Fields came back into the lineup. There are probably multiple theories and reasons for why these two things happened at the same time, but I suspect that there is an element to it that the players believed Fields’ return would solve their woes, perhaps to the point that they unrealistically expected him to just do everything. As fans, we often talked like Fields’ return was going to be a quick fix. It is possible that the players, worn out from a long and difficult stretch without him, have dropped off a bit of the emotion and desire assuming that Fields would pick it up. While Fields has been playing extremely well, especially the last two games (12 assists and 1 turnover), he has still been recovering his legs and can’t be expected to be our best defender right now.

The crazy thing about last nights game is that Pitt didn’t play bad defense. They didn’t play typical Pitt ugly-ball defense either. But they played decent on the defensive end. They forced 17 turnovers total, eight of them steals. The forced Cincinnati into long stretches where they didn’t score and where their offense looked awful, like a high school team on the floor. Yet somehow Pitt managed to allow them to shoot 48.1% from the floor, 44.4% from behind the three point arc (8-18), and to grab 15 offensive rebounds. There were times when Cincinnati looked like they took six or eight shots in one trip, looking totally sloppy and like they were throwing up junk, but they kept getting offensive rebounds and would eventually leave with two or even three points. To be fair, a lot of the rebounds were long rebounds that a guy right under the boards isn’t going to get. At the same time, on most of them, there wasn’t a Panther in the area of the rebound, which is just inexcusable. Add to that the fact that Cincinnati shot so well from behind the arc, seemingly having open shot after open shot. With the amount of open threes that Pitt is allowing opponents to take, they are going to have a hard time with both Syracuse and WVU if they can’t make some adjustments.

On the offensive end, Pitt has gotten progressively better the last four games. They shot a very respectable 47.2% from the floor last night. The problem is that they took 53 total shots in the game and 26 of them were three pointers, only eight of which they made. If you take away the three pointers from their field goal count, Pitt went 17-27 from the floor. That is 62.9%. Pitt took so many threes because they had wide open looks, so I understand it. But when the inside game is working so well, shooting a ridiculous 63%, they need to figure out ways to work the ball inside more. Teams are just going to clamp down on DeJuan Blair and Sam Young inside and force outside shots until we start making them. There is one solution (other than the guards making their shots); Pitt could give Brad Wanamaker more minutes, emphasizing his role as passing in to the post. He has terrific passing abilities, getting the ball down to Blair better than anyone on the team. He made a pass in the first half that was so ridiculous that I had to watch it about 10 times on my DVR.

All in all, Pitt is headed in the right direction. Young had a solid game with 20 points, 5 steals, and 2 blocked shots. Blair stepped up big making 6-7 shots from the floor and finishing with 18 points and 10 rebounds. A win is a win. This win should give Pitt some confidence again. Let’s just hope that they can get some swagger back and find that pride that it takes to play tough D and rebound. If they can’t do that, it will be a difficult final three games. But if they can build on this win then they can beat everyone left on their schedule.