Last night up in the Air Conditioning dome looked like we were going down do the wire for a long time and yet we pulled away in the final few minutes. The first half almost got ugly for us at points but the way we finished the half, combined with the quick start at the beginning of the second half, got us back on track quickly.
Most of this was thanks to Levance Fields carrying us through. 24 points, 3-7 on three pointers, and a handful of assists to go along with those. So far he’s filled the Krauser role well and leading us to a win over Syracuse up at their place, no matter how good or bad they are, is a breakout type of win.
Two worst stats of the game?
Free throw shooting was 9 of 17. As a ton of commenters asked, “Do we even practice foul shots?” Big Aaron Gray missing one or two in a double overtime is different since he can barely pick up his feet, let alone concentrate and shoot a good foul shot. Missing them in the first and second half (not just Gray, all players) is inexcusable. Thankfully, Fields and Ramon did a good job making most of them when they were intentionally fouling us in the last minute but missing on that many free points that they’re handing to us is not going to take us to the Final Four. Maybe not even the Sweet Sixteen.
Aaron Gray scored 9 points. The main focus of your offense needs to get the ball more than he did last night. Terrence Roberts sat out for a while and we still couldn’t feed it into him. If Levance wasn’t hitting shots like that (which I guarantee won’t happen every night) and teams keep the ball from getting inside then we might as well not expect a win. Forget the fact that they were changing defenses and packing the middle. We had plenty of time to prepare and still they held him in single digits.
Complaining after a win is hard because, after all, we won. A tournament game played like this is going to send us home though and we’ll know exactly why.
One thing that bodes well for Fields is that instead of running at the hoop, closing his eyes, spinning, and throwing up a bad shot (also see: Krauser) he pulls up and shoots well. I believe they may have also mentioned this on the broadcast last night.
I find it hard to look at stats from non-con games (especially with the kind of OOC schedule that Pitt plays) but if his shooting stats and the team\’s winning continues with Gray not scoring much then I\’ll know we can play like that consistently.
Our two best games this year were against Florida St. and Dayton and Gray didn’t score a lot in either. If he can get 12-15 points and 10 boards that is enough production for us to win. The perimeter guys have to score for us to be an elite team. Especially when opponents are trying to take Gray out of the game. If they aren’t doubling him and he is one-on-one, then that is a different story.
The team will struggle and be out in the tournament’s early rounds if we have to force the ball into Gray. He is a tremendous player, but not the dominant offensive type.
Fields emergence is key for us to play deep into March. The kid scored 18 points in a 5 minute stretch in high school. I have no doubt about his ability on the offensive end. Graves play has been very encouraging as well. Hopefully they will keep it up.
And TMGPanther, I never thought two words could cause such a problem.
And TMGPanther, once people start reading your blogs, then you can start trashing people without out contributing ONE THING to the conversation.
Yi you make some very good points. Our defense and rebounding still need to improve and I think the team and coaches know this. I don’t think we are going to see dramatic improvement, but that is the beauty of it, we don’t need to. If we can get just a little better on defense and rebounding, then we can get past the sweet sixteen. The reason is our offense is much better than in past years. Boeheim even said as much after the game.
I think we’d just all like to see some more offensive aggressiveness out of Gray. I’d like to see him post up and want the ball the same way he rebounds on D. He is the one thing that almost nobody else has (except G-town and OSU), a genuine aircraft carrier in the middle with a decent scoring touch. Plenty of teams have decent guards and decent forwards like Pitt, but Gray is the differentiator. I want him to want the rock like he knows he’s the differentiator. They need to run as much as the offense as they can through him. If a team decides to double him and take him out of the equation, then fine, we have to take advantage of it….but that’s not what we’ve seen in the last 3 games. Instead we see a team that’s only too ready to fire up another 3. We need two things here that we haven’t seen any of yet — Dixon to step up and show some control and get the backcout to feed the big man, and we need Gray to demand the ball.
Fields was 3-7 on threes not 3-4. Gray missed a lot of easy 10 footers and turned the ball over last night. Otherwise he would have scored more points. The offense was superb in the second half.
The beauty of this team is that we do not need to force the ball into Gray. We are perfectly capable of scoring points without a huge contribution from him. Please see the last three games where Gray has scored 5, 5, and 9 and we have won by an average margin of 23 points. If anything, teams are going to have to respect the games of our perimeter players. This will really open things up for the big guy and I look for him to have a much larger impact later in the year.
By the way, Fields has scored in double figures in 6 straight games. This isn’t a fluke. He is a very talented offensive player. Probably the best on the team, even ahead of Cook. I would bet on this trend continuing.