Happy New Year. In case you missed it from all the bowl games, Louisville just got dropped by Cinci — in Freedom Hall and with Palacios and Padgett back — that isn’t supposed to happen when you get healthy.
How bad is Pitt’s injury situation? Bad enough that coaches from other conferences, that didn’t face Pitt, bring up the injuries as a way of pointing out that things could be worse.
“We’ve got ankles, shoulders, backs and this, that and the other,†[Virginia Coach Dave] Leitao said. “If you allow it, it can be a little frustrating, but as much as I would like to complain about it, I wouldn’t want to be [Pittsburgh coach] Jamie Dixon right now with two starters being out for the year with injuries.
Ron Cook cribs my injury post and expands it for all of Pittsburgh teams.
It’s hard to think it won’t be terrible what has happened to Pitt. The huge win Dec. 20 against Duke and the even better football win Dec. 1 at poor West Virginia were tremendous, but, apparently, somebody at Pitt made a rotten deal with the devil to get them. The football team lost All-Big East Conference wide receiver Derek Kinder before the season and quarterback Bill Stull in the first game; now the basketball team has lost Cook and Fields — its treasured point guard — within a 10-day period. That’s two-fifths of the starting lineup gone, just like that. That’s not right.
It’s all about the Pitt injuries.
1. If bad news comes in threes, the worst should be over for Pitt. After looking like a Final Four-caliber team with a comeback win over Duke in Madison Square Garden, Pitt has suddenly fallen on the hardest of times. In addition to losing Mike Cook to a torn knee (all three ligaments), Pitt will be without Levance Fields for 8-12 weeks with a broken bone in his left foot, and Ronald Ramon hurt his shoulder in a collision during the Panthers’ 80-55 loss at Dayton on Saturday. The ironic thing is Pitt had escaped major injury issues during both Ben Howland’s and Jamie Dixon’s runs at Pitt. Now, with a beautifully blended team with talent, experience and spectacular youth, Pitt heads into the Big East with only one on-the-court loss but numerous questions that did not exist a mere two weeks ago.
Pitt headlined the list of teams with big injuries heading into the New Year — yippee. It also notes that Ronald Ramon has been having a poor season.
Breakdown: Pittsburgh guard Ronald Ramon‘s shooting touch. Ramon missed all eight of his shots from the field in Pitt’s 80-55 loss to Dayton and has now made just one of his last 15 field-goal attempts. It’s an uncharacteristic slump for a player who led the Big East in 3-point field goal percentage last season.
Ramon separated his shoulder in the Dayton game which could excuse that performance. His ankle issues are apparently the excuse for everything else. Before the Dayton 0-8 shooting, Ramon was 26-68 (.382) and 17-47 (.362) on 3s. Just not good performance so far.
Ramon has probably had the biggest problem in the change of style. He benefited greatly from Gray and the slower pace. It meant, moving the ball around, passing it and throwing it in to Gray and back out to Ramon when the defense collapsed inside. He could square up, wait for the ball and take his shot. With him trying to run the point — receiving extra focus from teams — as well I’m not totally optimistic his shooting will be improving the rest of the way. Right now, he knows he needs to concentrate on the point duties.
“It’s more of a leadership thing,” Ramon said. “I have to go out there and carry the team and make sure guys are in the right spots. It’s being a team. We’re going to be the same, smart team we’ve been. Nothing is going to change with us. We’re going to play the same way we’ve been playing. We just have to go out there and execute our plays and play hard.”
Ray Fittipaldo isn’t optimistic about Pitt’s NCAA Tournament chances unless Fields comes back by the end of the regular season.
Brian Roberts of Dayton still thinks well of Pitt.
“They’re going through a tough time,” Roberts said. “But they are going to be fine. That’s a top-5, top-10 team. They have other guys ready to step up.”
Admittedly there is more than a little self-interest in puffing Pitt after beating the Panthers.
Naturally Coach Dixon isn’t saying anything but positive things.
“I have a lot of confidence in Gilbert and Bradley,” Dixon said. “I know they are going to play better than they did (against Dayton). They are going to bring different things to the table. They can bring some rebounding. … We’ll get good stuff out of them as it goes. We’re going to be fine there.”
Pitt players, unsurprisingly, aren’t packing in the season.
“Everyone else has to step up,” Benjamin said. “We just have to step it up. We’re all looking at ourselves now. That’s what you have to do. We’re a team. We have to realize what has to happen if we still want to go somewhere.
“You lose players sometimes. You lose your stars. You lose your role players. That happens. It’s unfortunate that it’s happening to us right now. But we can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We just have to go play. And we have to play much better than we did [Saturday night].”
As for the idea that Pitt might pull in some football players to help, I can only imagine that they would be from the freshmen and sophomore classes. Kids that aren’t too far removed from playing basketball and haven’t bulked up as much as the upperclassmen would have. Dom DeCicco (6’3″), Brandon Lindsey (6’2″), Maurice Williams (6’1″), Cedric McGee (6’1″) and Dorin Dickerson (6’2″) all played b-ball in high school.
