Potentially interesting sidenote. I stayed at the Holiday Inn on campus for the night. They have a 42″ LCD TV in the lobby to list events and things in the hotel. One of the things was that Pitt football recruits had a meeting in that morning. Turns out it was another football recruiting weekend. This of course led to the ever popular, “spot the recruits at the basketball game” game. You know, look for the group of big, beefy kids who look too young to be that big, dressed nicely and not sitting in the student section. They were treated to an absolute massacre and over 10,000 person crowd — albeit, somewhat late arriving.

The Centre Daily Times continues its tradition of not reporting bad things about Penn State by providing this story credited to “CDT staff reports.” To be fair, it neatly summarizes the statistical domination:

Pittsburgh had five players in double figures, led by senior point guard Carl Krauser’s 20 points. John DeGroat and Sam Young scored 11 points each and Aaron Gray and Levon Kendall both had 10.

The Panthers out-rebounded the Nittany Lions 49-30 and grabbed 24 offensive rebounds, many of them leading to easy putbacks. Penn State had been out-rebounding opponents by nearly nine rebounds per game prior to Saturday.

Penn State, which lost for the third time in four games, got a career-high 15 points from Cilk McSweeney, who hit all four of his field-goal attempts off the bench, three of them 3-pointers. Geary Claxton scored 11 points, but Penn State’s other four starters — guards Mike Walker and David Jackson and forwards Travis Parker and Brandon Hassell — were a combined 4-of-16 from the field for just 13 total points. Milos Bogetic scored eight points off the bench and Jamelle Cornley added seven.

Penn State played the entire game without starting point guard Ben Luber, who suffered a minor shoulder sprain during Wednesday’s win over Missouri-Kansas City. Freshman guard Maxwell DuBois suffered a foot injury during Friday’s practice and did not see any action, and classmate Nikola Obradovic played just three minutes. That left the backcourt work mostly up to Walker, who played 35 minutes in his first start of the season, and Jackson, who played 34.

The Nittany Lions were a dreadful 12-of-22 (55 percent) at the free-throw line Saturday and committed 22 turnovers. Jackson, who had committed just seven turnovers in the first six games, had a team-high seven Saturday.

Now the theme that carries through most stories on the game is that Pitt and Penn State don’t play in football and the basketball side will likely go on hiatus after this. Once more, then, Penn State is left with the bitter taste in its mouth as going out a loser and looking like it wants to duck games. In this case, with the biggest blowout loss in the 145 game, series history.

The Panthers and PSU likely met for the last time on the men’s basketball court as well, but it’s unlikely that fans would want this series to continue after Pitt blasted an undermanned Nittany Lions squad 91-54 yesterday at the Petersen Events Center.

It was the largest margin of victory for Pitt (7-0) all-time against Penn State (4-3) and the Panthers’ fifth straight win in the six-game series that resumed in 2000. PSU’s only win was the first game when the series was renewed.
…
“I had a certain type of energy that I felt that I haven’t felt since freshman year,” Krauser said. “So, I just wanted to calm down and look for some other guys and get them some great shots.

“We sent a message that we’re the better team right now. I don’t discredit them at all. They’re a great team with a great coach, and they’re some great competitors. But, at the same time, we’re a Big East team, and we feel like we have a lot of good things to do this year.”

Being short-handed is about the only excuse Penn State has for being destroyed that badly. They played 9 guys, but one of them only played 3 minutes. Effectively, they had a 3 man bench. Pitt on the other hand had 10 players go for double-digit minutes and another player see 6 minutes of action. Not to mention senior walk-ons Bowman and Small made it on to the floor.

Penn State head coach Ed DeChellis is now in year 3 of rebuilding Penn State basketball. (Just to nit-pick, how do you rebuild something that was never truly there? Unless by rebuild, mean get it to a .500 team or so. Which given recent times would be rebuilding.) Based on what we saw on Saturday, 0-16 in the Big 11 this season is a legitimate possibility. I wonder what the line is on them finishing with more than 7 wins (the number of wins they have had each of the last two years) this season is?

If there is any solace for Penn State fans, I guess it’s the knowledge that the suckitude of the team will likely be a drag on Pitt’s RPI and the RPI of any other decent team that beats them.

The game is nothing more than another warm-up for Pitt, along the same lines as Maine and Vermont and St. Francis (N.Y.). The Panthers have beaten the Lions 24 of the past 27 times, and have not lost in this series since the 2000-01 season, when Penn State went on an improbable run to the Sweet 16.

The Panthers have since made four straight NCAA Tournaments and had three Sweet 16 appearances. Penn State has whimpered through 7-21, 7-21, 9-19 and 7-23 seasons.

The only Penn State player who looked good, and shot well was the wonderfully named Cilk (pronounced, Silk) McSweeney. And he turned out to be a gift walk-on for PSU.

Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence on how far Penn State men’s basketball team has to go in order to become a legitimate contender in the Big Ten is this: The Nittany Lions most impressive player in a 91-54 loss at Pitt yesterday was a walk-on junior transfer from Towson University who entered the game averaging seven minutes and three points per game.

That’s not a good thing for any team, especially one that is in the third year of what began as a massive rebuilding program. At this point, at least one or two younger players would be expected to step up and show they are the foundation for what is a brighter future.

Penn State coach Ed DeChellis is waiting for that to happen, but after watching his team yesterday, he has more questions about its direction than answers.

The fact walk-on Cilk McSweeney made four 3-pointers and had a team-high 15 points must have given DeChellis something positive to take from the Nittany Lions trip to the Petersen Events Center, right?

Not really.

For Pitt, Coach Dixon was very happy with the performance especially on the defense.

“We executed defensively throughout and really crashed the boards,” Dixon said. “We made them take tough shots which helped our defense play really well.”

Pitt’s defense continued its stinginess of not allowing a team to score more than 60 points since the first game this season.

“We emphasized contesting a lot of their shots, especially the 3-point shots, because they really do shoot well,” Dixon said. “Our ball pressure throughout the game was stressed and we were able to create some turnovers.”

Pitt jumped out early on Penn State and never let them come close.

“The beginning of the game is the most important part of the basketball game,” DeGroat said. “We started off strong from the gate. That’s what we do. We play tough defense. And we carried it through the rest of the game.”

This is a big difference from last year and this year. Pitt is coming out right away and taking leads. In the last 5 games, Pitt has come out and scored and not let the other team take even a brief lead. Last year, even in the weak non-con, Pitt would come out slow and let an opponent lead and hang around. Forcing the starters to stay in more and generally not be focused.

That hasn’t been a problem this season. Everyone is getting time to play, learn and perform. Coach Dixon seems to have realized that having too quick a hook with the young players leads to less confidence and continually fearing a mistake rather than playing and executing.