Coming off of a 59-49 road victory over DePaul last night, the one thing that hits you just from looking at the final score was the defense. The Post-Gazette mantions how the defense really stepped it up as soon as we crossed the threshold into Big East games.

It was almost as if Pitt was programmed for Big East play. As soon as conference play began last week, the Panthers began playing the type of defense that has been associated with the program the past several years.

Levon Kendall says it might have taken a bit longer than usual to get everyone to play together. As with any man-to-man defense, playing as one complete unit is greatly important.

“It took awhile for us all to get on the same page,” senior forward Levon Kendall said.

“We’ve been working on the defense for a while, getting ready for the Big East. That’s usually when we try to step it up.”

Even if they aren’t on the same defensive level as teams of years past, they’ve still done something that those teams did not: hold the opponent under 50 points in consecutive games. Obviously, some of that is going to be help from the other team (missing shots, not being a very good offensive team) but there is still a good deal of credit due to the defense as well.

One player who caught the eye of viewers on the defensive side of the ball is Antonio Graves. In the three Big East games we’ve played now, he’s been assigned to cover the opposing team’s top scorer and in all three games he’s been able to keep his man to under their season average.

As always, Coach Dixon makes sure to say the right thing and gives credit to the entire unit, not just one player.

“Antonio and Keith started on him, but it’s a number of guys switching onto him throughout the game,” Dixon said. “It’s a team thing. You’re not going to guard him with one guy because he’s that good off the dribble. It comes down to a lot of guys doing things. The shots he hit at the end were tough shots. We wanted him to take all tough shots, and I can’t remember him getting an easy one.”