Ramon. Finally…

Ramon buys a three!!

Big time d from Blair….why didn’t he just put it in for Padgett?

Pitt is close to needing a miracle…do they have it in them?

Down by two and we’re 7-13 from the line.

Blair at the line is not good for us

Blair on the line. Let’s see if we convert…

Blair was wide open underneath…took the foul instead of the easy two….ugh.

Pitt just down by one, but looking like they may still need a three to tie or win this game. 20 seconds left.

Why did we go for the two on that posession

Inability to finish around the rim kills us. Nothing new.

Well, there you go….we had our chance even, and can’t get the ball…unreal.

Yeah! Only lose by 2!

when does spring ball start?

L’vill up by four, 5 seconds left. That’s just about it…

Wasn’t it a 100% certainty that Ramon would make that?

Good game. Great effort by Pitt but just didn’t do enough of the little things to get it done.

I think we may be favored to win the NIT…

I don’t understand go underneath to Blair for two. Even if he makes it and gets fouled his foul shooting is suspect. we shoulf have looked for Ramon with the three, he had a hot hand at that point.

Fields is looking much better. His 3 shot will be back soon. That’s what we needed today. Wednesday vs Cincy will be a W.

as dissappointed as i am about this lost it is not that unlikely that we run the table for the next 4 games. Fields is playing much better and if we can shoot better the whole game we can beat anyone.

We played tough but LVille is really good…they were just a bit better today. We just need to get hot..i like a lot of what i saw

Well, now we have to pray we win 3 of the next 4, or we’ll have to win at least 1 game in the BE tourney to get in. Unreal.

Once again, the story of the game is defense. 43% from 3? 63% from 2? That’s downright awful. What in the hell is going on.

First of all Louisville is a better team with more athletic guards and a very good senior big man….and they can shoot.

Having said that, Pitt is making more mental mistakes than I any team I can remember. I do not know why but guess Pitt is pressing. How you can give up a long rebound on the missed foul is inexcusable…except that Louisville was quicker to the ball…actually they were quicker all afternoon.

Better game by Pitt…but again the shooting and Ft’s…ugly ugly ugly. 7 -13 from the line will not get it done.

Have to beat Cinncy or we will not win another game.

Pitt needs to get their swagger back. They made a good effort today but came up short, again. 🙁

Someone here said it last week…does anyone remember another Pitt team allowing an opponent such an easy time getting to the rim.

Oh well, if we have to put together a streak, now would be a good time to start…

I believe they will make the NCAA playoffs inspite of these last three games.

We also must play better D and stop getting beat with back screens and losing your man. LV had 40 points in the paint. ridiculous from a team that prides itself on defense. this is an area that freshman can hurt you and we see that with Blair all the time. he’s got to get better and he will.

Dan72,LV may be quicker, but we forced 14 turnovers and only had 4 of our own. That isn’t a stat you see when the other team is that much quicker. I don’t think that was the issue today. they didn’t beat us off the dribble, our guys missed many assignments and they knocked down a lot of wide open threes were we didn’t defend well. I’m sure Stewar will break it all down for us, but that is what I noticed.

We’ve just two of the hottest teams in the conference (ND and Louis) and a team on the road that’s always a bad matchup (MU). Before our injuries I tought we’d lose 2 of these 3. Consider how tough we played today, I feel comfortable we’ll turn the corner against teams not at the top of the league and win 3 of the next 4. 10-8 in conference gets us in the NCAA.

Good effort today, but against Louisville’s talent the little things need to be done every play – bad shot selections, bad double teams, all leading to bad results. Blair lost Padgett too many times today and late in the game Benji went for a steal with 2 seconds on the shot clock and his man got an easy score. Brown also lets his man get by him way too much (and often led to other guys picking up fouls). Blair and Brown can both learn from this, with Benji, his defense is the prime reason he’s never started before this year.

Well….it’s a loss….but:

1. Fields played well, and his ball-handling skills make a difference.

2. Sam and DeJuan came to play. (and the foul call on Biggs was bogus…definite case of travelling—so add Biggs to bringing quality to the game, also).

3. Brown’s driving to the basket opens up things up…I hope to see more of this in the future.

4. There was no quit, and even though it was a loss (and that can be the bottom-line), we showed some game today.

Hail to PITT!
-al-

Now Pitt is going to have to scratch and claw their way in to the tourney. With big games against the other Big East bubble teams WVU and Syracuse, they still have a decent shot.

One other thing. we need more than Blair and Young grabbig rebounds. We have been outrebounded in all of our recent losses. Our forwards and guards need to crash the boards more.

“we’re just not where we need to be defensively…”

Understatement of the year by Dixon.

I’m tired of re-watching tape of teams destroying us on D. Its embarassing and awful.

Like i said the other day, they need to spend THEIR ENTIRE PRACTICES FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR ON DEFENSE. JUST DEFENSE. Its the worst i’ve seen in years. Its the worst i’ve ever seen in the H/D era. Its just awful. We scored enough to win, again. 70 should do it. We should hold EVERYONE to under 70. Just awful.

Dixon’s kid was also heard in the background saying “Daddy, did we win? Did we win?” “No honey, we didn’t win…”

G-town, L-ville and UConn are all at or near the top of the BE and a huge contributing factor to that is having a big man (a real honest to god 5-man) to build around. We’re asking Blair to compete inside against guys way bigger and to do it without any other beef alongside him. I have no idea how Dixon thought he was going to survive all year with a 6’6″ freshman in there and I don’t care how long his arms are. It’s amazing how well Blair has done, really.

We’re paying for a couple yrs when Dixon brought in either no big recruits or lousy big recruits.

Today the game was decided in the 2nd half when L-ville consistently went to Padgett. Finally Dixon starting sending Young to double but the guards didn’t help down to cover Sam.

It’s tough when your team has a size disadvantage and no quickness advantage to make up for it.

i don’t care how hot lousiville is – this was the chance to let the crowd give them a boost and some show heart. you can’t go to the press and say how bad you want to win and then play the exact same brand of terrible basketball you’ve played for the last several games. i saw all i needed to see at the petersen on where this team’s heart is at.

Give Blair a break inside; the kid again had to defend a 6’11 man. When we cheat down inside to help Blair the three is open, not a good situation to find yourself in on defense. What we need is a legitate big man inside to alter shots, then suddenly the Pitt defense will improve. My question is how we always get to the end of games without timeouts. Some may disagree, but I wasn’t fond of the dump down to Blair with 9 seconds to go. Personally, I would have preferred a three for a possible tie. But of course the way we shoot threes, we probably still lose. Get Blair some help inside, and many of the Pitt woos will disappear. Sad to say, it’s not going to happen this season. If we get to the NCAA’s it will be with blood and guts. In my opinion, these kids played their hearts out today and still got bet.

Scottie, you are right on the money.

Itl, good post. why did you like the dump down to Blair. I thought 9 seconds was not enough time to get the basket, foul and bring it back up court for a decent closing shot. whwn you are under 10 seconds i don’t like taking the chance that they can get it in bounds and kill 3 seconds or miss a free throw and get the rebound. then we are totally screwed. At 12 or 15 seconds I’m ok with the layup. What i would have liked to see was the dump down and the kick out. Perhaps that was the play and the kick out wasn’t there.

Scottie you are right and they are NIT bound!

UCLA didn’t have a 7 footer last year and played pretty good D. Until 2 years ago we didn’t have a 7 footer. We’ve played EXCELLENT D with a similarily sized team. Last year everyone was complaining about our D cause we had a big lumbering 7 footer who couldn’t move. Now that’s the most important part. Unbelievable.

Blair gets that shot to go and draws a foul its tied. Personally, i too would have gone for the 3. But we didn’t lose cause of some game ending shot or the bad officiating. The 5 kids out there need to play sound, fundemental defense on EVERY POSESSSION.

TMGPanther, sounds like a plan, I’m in total agreement with the way you drew up the play. Maybe with a timeout available Dixon would have called the same play, but whose fault is that? Louisville ended up with two unused timeouts just in case of a similiar situation. All said, Blair needs help inside or every game will continue to be a struggle. Syracuse has big post men, so that doesn’t sound like a walk in the park to come. But first we need to get by Cinny and their confidence is surely high after their last outing against us. The road ahead doesn’t sound like a cake walk, but at least it appeared Fields is close to 100% and that alone can be a huge boost the rest of the way. Too bad he’s not 6’11 and can bounded and block shots.

OT: Aaron Gray may be getting some time tonight against Yao Ming, now that Wallace is gone. ESPN at 8pm.

they still talk about the UCLA team that won the nat’l championship with Mike Sanders playing center at 6’6″…….but they talk about it because IT WAS SO AMAZING.

Pitt was OK with guys like Lett playing inside because they had guys like Troutman alongside them. Blair’s playing beside Sam Young. Enough said.

Teams that play up and down can get away without having the size to grind it out. Dixon doesn’t have the thoroughbreds to play that way, so he needs some more size/muscle to complement Blair.

That Onuaku kid up at Syracuse is going to give Blair all he can handle inside and that’s going to open things up for the rest of Boeheim’s front line. I’m not looking forward to that game, though Pitt could still win because those Cuse kids play stupid.

Troutman was 6’7. I don’t understand.

“Shootin bricks man…I just couldn’t do nothin…” is how Fields described his 4-13 shooting performance.

No, seriously explain what you mean by a 6’6 and a 6’7 player side by side was fine, but having a 6’6 and a 6’7 player now isn’t fine. Please help. Does not compute.

I don’t want to put words into Scottie’s mouth, but I believe he means two big men that take up lots of space on the inside. Blair’s that type of guy, but I don’t believe anyone is going to confuse Young for Blair physically. A 6’6 center that leads D-I teams to championships are the exception not the rule. Look at the top ten teams in the nation and tell me how many have 6’7 centers? Furthermore, how far did our 6’6 and 6’7 players take us. Nothing against Gray, but he had serious deficences as did Taft. A quality 6’10 man that can get off the floor and run, alter shots, and score a little is worth his weight in gold. Presently, I don’t see Pitt coming close to that type of player, so our team is what it is, struggling. And yes our D is poor, but a quality big man can make up for a lot of defensive breakdowns. Put that one person in the line up I described, and Pitt would be a dangerous NCAA tournament team. I absolutely love Blair, but we are expecting way too much out of a freshman that’s only 6’7. The kid with time will be an outstanding strong forward, but he’ll never be able to be a dominate center in the BE. It doesn’t even made sense to ask him to shoulder that load.

Despite the defensive lapses and, again, some motherfucking terrible calls, we hit just 3 of at least 7 WIDE OPEN threes that we missed and and make just one or two more free throws and we have a W by 4.

Definitely saw many things I liked today, though, particularly Fields. If his shot comes around and the D can improve, I think we’ll win 3 of these last 4. Then again, I always pick Pitt in my NCAA pools to go to at least the final 8, so I’m a bit delusional.

Stuart said it all way above:

“Maybe our team should stop playing like a bunch of girls and hit that kid in the jaw. We used to pound anyone that thought they were just going to run free through our defense. Now you can backdoor us all day and not worry about a thing.”

Amen brother. Chevy, Ontario, Donatas, et al are weeping for the Death of Pitt Defense. I’m sad for this program that they didn’t recognize the need to tighten up and play D after the injuries. I’m not sure they could ever play with the defensive passion of 5 years ago, but they are now playing with less passion of 15 years ago.

Maybe giving up nearly 80 at home will finally wake them up.

Well…Layup, after Layup, after layup given up, game, after game, after game. The coaches need to fix that! We must be giving up a good 20+ points every game on layups! It’s not the 3’s that are killing us, it’s the damn layups. On the positive side, Fields is well on his way back, his shot will come around…Ramon may be coming out of his slump. We are beating the press better than I can ever remember in the Howland/Dixon era. If we can cut the number of easy baskets we give up by just a few a game, and hit a few more shots, we are going to be a very dangerous team in the tournaments. If we don’t, we are headed for the NIT.

This team is light years from the tenacity and toughness on D of the Brown, Lett, Troutman, Page teams. And half of their rotation is completely ineffective- Mcghee, Wannamaker, Biggs, and recently Ramon have been /are complete zeros. If Dixon thought the team played well today I don’t hold out much hope. Getting beat continually for uncontested layups and dunks on bad switches and generally indifferent defense is not playing well. It will be painful watching them get pounded into dust against a #1 seed if they’re lucky enough to escape from the 8/9 pillow fight.

thanks Itl………you covered me. It’s about beef inside. I’d rather have Troutman at 6’7″ because he took up space and was a man inside. Blair’s all alone in the paint against these teams and he’s not reliable on defense yet. I don’t care if pitt has 7-footers, but it’s tough going into battle when your only power player is a freshman being asked to play center against bigger comp.

How amazing was Troutman his freshman year? And i saw them both play side by side this summer, Blair obviously needs to learn a few things on D, but he eats up more space than Troutman. We’ll be fine once the kids get back to the fundementals.

Stuart, no one is arguing the point that these guys need to play better fundamental defense, but the fact remains even a fundamental 6’7 big man has his limits on defensive as well as offense. If size didn’t have its limitions, a 6′ kid with great defensive fundamentals could play center. Scottie, as well as myself, simply believe you are expecting a lot out of undersized postmen to compete night in and night out with players much bigger than they are. One thing I’ve noticed lately is Pitt for the most part stays with teams, or in many cases is a head of teams until they begin substituting. Depth at all positions seems to be a weakness. I believe if we would be getting any help off the bench our record may be a few games better.

This came to me last night….Let’s play up tempo and run…play in the 80’s and use our transition game to score! Nothing else has worked…we have had our hands tied due to injuries but now with Fields back…let’s run. What do we have to lose?
We can’t play D and transistion would save us a lot of pick and roll Baskets…we can’t shoot from the perimeter and transition up tempo would give us 10- 14 points on layups. Of couse, we have to have the O boards to do it…but why not try!!

We are not as quick as MQ or Nova but out match them under the boards…we are quicker than every other team in BE as a 5 some. Blair gives us that
big man that can run.

Sent this off to Jamie this morning …we’ll see if he tries it tomrorrow against Cinncy.