Congratulations Hoopies. Good win.

March 4th, 2008 | by The Prowler |

Here at the Prowl, we are not above extending congratulations to our opponents. I said in my pre-game post yesterday that WVU had a lot more riding on this game than Pitt did, and that Pitt couldn’t win if they didn’t come in understanding that. I am not surprised by the outcome of the game. Pitt hasn’t played well lately. That didn’t start last night. So there wasn’t a whole lot of confidence for me that Pitt would go into hostile territory and steal a win from a team that had the combination of rabid revenge and needing a win. WVU came into this game ready not only to play, but to win. For 15 minutes, it was a good game. For the last 25 minutes, it just got progressively worse for Pitt.

There aren’t any excuses about why Pitt lost either. Pitt lost because WVU played with more passion, desire, and skill. That is it, plain and simple.

In the first 15 minutes or so, even though Pitt trailed for most of that time, I thought Pitt looked better than WVU. Pitt was getting to all the loose balls. They were rebounding well. And they were playing very aggressively on both ends of the floor. This isn’t to say they were playing flawless basketball. I just thought they looked good and that they would get it together. Then with 5 minutes to go in the first half, Pitt just lost its intensity and drive. It isn’t uncommon for them to go cold for a several minute stretch, but they never seemed to recover from it. By 5 minutes into the second half, the dagger had been plunged into Pitt’s heart and the game was over.

The one key factor in the game was that the officials seemed to call a foul on every sneeze. There were 45 total fouls called last night. So Pitt’s aggressiveness (something they had been lacking lately) ended up keeping their players on the bench. WVU had a lot of fouls called one them as well, so I am not offering the officiating as an excuse for the loss. The officials called it both ways, but they made a decision early on that the game wasn’t going to be a typical Big East slug fest and Pitt doesn’t have the bench right now to fight through that kind of thing. They could have helped their own cause, though, if they would have made some of their own free throws. Pitt went 16-28 from the charity stripe. They missed 12 free throws and lost by 14 points. So you can see how they really could have eased their own pain in this one.

Props to WVU for being the better team last night.

What is funny is that now WVU fans are saying on pretty much every Pitt site they can that WVU is the better basketball program and that Pitt sucks. You take your jabs when you lose because you know you would have given them if you won. But winning a game and splitting a season series doesn’t make your entire program superior. Pitt is going to play in its seventh straight NCAA tournament this year while WVU may yet still defend its NIT championship. With a win over Depaul, Pitt will become the only team to ever win 20 games and 10 Big East games for seven straight seasons. There is no backup to the claim that beating a team that has almost every player dealing with some significant injury, has beat two top 10 teams this season, beat you once this season, and is a virtual lock for the NCAA tourney for the seventh straight year is a worse program than a team that played its heart out and got a big win because their entire season was riding on it.

Good game last night. I have no doubt that the Hoopies will become a force with that goon head coach they have. He is a good coach and he has no standards for his program so he will cut every corner and take every shortcut he can. But he will win games. While that is going on, Pitt will continue to be a dominant team, even while having a classy coach who will hold himself and his program to high standards.

Good luck to WVU on making the NCAA tournament. In all honesty, I wish you the best. If you make the tourney, the Big East looks better. If you don’t make it, that is just fine with me too. In reality, WVU doesn’t have a very good team and isn’t likely to make much of a splash in either tournament. Pitt doesn’t look like they are going to do much more either.

  1. 3 Responses to “Congratulations Hoopies. Good win.”

  2. By WVU_ftw on Mar 4, 2008 | Reply

    WVU beat Marquette, which was ranked #8 at the time (Currently #20). True, the only other solid wins we have are Syracuse and Pitt. But that should be enough when coupled with 11 conference wins (maybe 10 but unlikely).

    That being said, I see WVU as a first round exit in the NCAAs if we make it.

  3. By The Prowler on Mar 4, 2008 | Reply

    While 10 wins has historically gotten a Big East team in the tourney, there are two wild cards this year. First, the Big East went from 16 to 18 games, meaning you have 2 more chances at getting to 10 wins. That could well be a factor when couple with the second wild card. Ever since UConn and Villanova both made no. 1 seeds, many of the ESPN type media have made it their goal to come down harder and harder on the Big East every year. If you were to listen to the coverage, you would believe that the Big East is almost a mid major, and yet they are going to get at least 6 teams in the tourney and have 4 teams that stand a good shot at making at least the elite 8. Without the recent bias against the Big East, WVU would be a lock at this point. But even after the game last night, guys like Digger Phelps were saying that WVU still needed more wins. It is ridiculous. If you took ANY team from ANY other conference and put them in the Big East, they would end the season with at least 3 conference losses most year, if not more. Teams like Duke, UNC, KU, Texas… these teams have very weak conferences. Duke has to play UNC and who else in conference? KU has to play Texas and who else in conference? Those are the only perennially good teams in their conferences. The Big East changes at the top every year because there are legitimately 7-8 good programs that can content for a conference championship in any given year.

  4. By Pitt84 on Mar 4, 2008 | Reply

    WVu is a freakish team and I mean that in a not negative way. You guys kick the living crap out of teams in Morgantown and then go on the road and get smoked except in the last week or so.

    I truly do not know what to make of WVU and would actually like to see them get in a couple games in the BET. Alexander is playing great.

    The game did not bother me much last night because of the win against the cuse on Saturday

Post a Comment