I should have made this in the recap of the St. John’s game, but I have a hard time accepting the spin that Pitt got back to solid defense in this game. St. John’s shot 27.8% in the game. Here are their shooting percentages for the previous 3 games: 26.9, 26.6 and 33.3. That came against UConn, Rutgers and Seton Hall. This was their 3rd straight game under 30% shooting and they hadn’t cracked 35% in 2 weeks. In light of that, it’s hard to attribute much of the St. John’s poor shooting to Pitt’s defense.

A post from About.com’s pro b-ball blog about the 2005 NBA draft.

After a slow start, Wake Forest’s Chris Paul has lived up to the expectation of being the next great NBA floor general, but can you really take a 6’0″ kid No. 1 overall? Pitt’s Chris Taft has 10 inches on Paul, but is dwarfed by Paul in intensity, focus and basketball IQ.

Right now, on their Mock Draft, they have Taft going #6. Krauser does get a mention, in their list of 80 draft prospects for 2006 (the list includes foreign players). Krauser is at #67.

Greg Doyel at Sportsline lists 10 hyped newcomers who have disappointed. Pitt gets one on the list.

8. John DeGroat, Pittsburgh: A 6-5 juco transfer, he was expected to get major minutes, what with the Panthers having to replace wings Jaron Brown and Julius Page. Nope. DeGroat has averaged 7.4 minutes per game and not played in three, probably because he does little but shoot; in 119 minutes of playing time he has 27 shots, seven assists and two steals.

Actually, it seems to be because he has been very slow to be willing to play defense. It essentially cost him this entire season. It will be up to him next season to play or be next year’s Mark McCarroll.

This may upset the Oakland Zoo, but as far as NYC writers were concerned, the student section went easy on St. John’s.

The Pittsburgh student section kept the derisive chanting to a minimum last night, but there was a homemade flyer distributed among fans that read, “Post game party at Club Erotica, St. John’s players welcome.

Showing that the strip club story won’t fade away that easily, even in NYC, one story on the game was headlined, “Stripped Away.” The article asks a question about a particular official who seemed on a short fuse.

What’s gotten into umpire Curtis Shaw? He opened the night by calling a three-second violation on Chevy Troutman. Then he called a palming violation on Pittsburgh’s Antonio Graves and one on Lawrence.

He slapped Carl Krauser with a technical foul when The Bronx native protested an offensive foul call by shouting, “Come on!” He ejected a fan that didn’t like the technical.

Then Shaw stared down Daryll Hill and Phil Missere after they objected to calls.

Some just want all video of this game erased for the good of society.

Mercifully, it came to an end at 8:58 p.m. Forty minutes of basketball that is best forgotten.

Pitt and St. John’s staged a Big East Conference game last night at the Petersen Events Center in name only. The two teams combined for 99 points, 36 turnovers and generally bad basketball.

The general impression I am getting is that this game could be analogized to sex with an ugly. You did it, maybe you needed it, maybe you can claim to have been drunk, but you don’t want to talk about it, and you sure don’t want to see any evidence.

Things got so ugly at Petersen Events Center on Tuesday night that Joan Rivers would have been considered eye candy compared to the Pitt-St. John’s sleepfest.

“Horrible,” Pitt sophomore center Chris Taft said.

“Not pretty at all,” point guard Carl Krauser added.

The duo forgot to mention hideous and unsightly, but when all was said and done, the Panthers walked away with a 55-44 victory in front of 11,034 Visine-deprived spectators.
…
“It might have been ugly but we won,” said Taft, who helped the Panthers avenge a crushing three-point loss to the Red Storm three weeks earlier.

And to conclude the analogy, you just wanted that person out of your bed so you could burn the sheets and get a shower.

Taft seemed to play the game with some intensity this time. Taft seemed to play both ends pretty well. He had 3 blocks, 8 rebounds (6 offensive), and 12 points. You just wait for him to show up in a game against the better teams. He has to play this hard on Saturday against ND’s Torin Francis and Chris Lattimore.

The 12 points scored by Krauser managed to push him to the 1,000 point mark in his career.

In NYC, they saw this as more St. John’s getting Pitt to play at their pace.

But the Red Storm again found a way. They dragged the Panthers down into the muck and hung neck-and-neck through the slop for 30 minutes. That’s when Pitt finally figured out that its big horses – 6-11 Chris Taft and 6-7 Chevon Troutman – were the ones who could pull them out of the mire.

That used to be the way Pitt did things. But then, I guess you could say people saw all sorts of things in this game. Some see the struggles and sloppiness as shades of last February.

March is only weeks away, and No. 18 Pittsburgh is looking much like it did before last year’s NCAA tournament.

Coach Jamie Dixon said that needs to be fixed, and in a hurry.

“We are not playing our best basketball, and I hope we get more comfortable,” Dixon said.

In a performance that closely resembled their three NCAA tournament games of last season, the Panthers played exceptional defense in a 55-44 victory over St. John’s on Tuesday night but were turnover-prone and ineffective offensively.

With the Panthers coming off two poorly played games — they were surprised 83-78 in overtime by West Virginia on Saturday night — it appears there will be some February frustration before they make it to March.

Sound familiar? The Panthers were ranked as high as No. 2 last season, only to struggle badly on offense while never scoring even 60 points in any of their three NCAA games.

Despite that sinking feeling in my stomach, I will point out that last year, when Pitt hit its struggles the problem was poor, poor shooting. That hasn’t been an issue. Turnovers, lax defense, and allowing too many second shots has been the issue.

Another view is that this is par for the inconsistency of Pitt all season. The problem is that doesn’t bode well for the Big East Tournament and the NCAA Tournament.

Others, somehow, manage to see positives.

“It was a horrible game,” Taft said.

That it was. But Pitt’s 55-44 victory over St. John’s on Tuesday also was a game in which the Panthers reverted to form. Which is to say, they played rock ’em-sock ’em defense, pounded the ball inside and hit the glass with abandon.

That formula has made them one of college basketball’s more successful teams since the turn of the millennium.

That formula, if applied regularly and enhanced greatly in the coming weeks, represents their best chance to inflict significant damage in the postseason tournaments.

Really, the Panthers need to do what the Steelers did during the NFL season — recapture their bully mentality.

Last night’s game was a good start.

Taft, who had no offensive rebounds Saturday at West Virginia, responded with six last night (eight overall) to complement Chevy Troutman’s superb overall effort (7-of-8 from the field, 19 points, seven rebounds).

Nobody questioned the team’s effort on this night, as Taft and point guard Carl Krauser had after the loss Saturday.

Whatever he’s drinking, make mine a double.