Well, for those of you who don’t live in the Pittsburgh area — where the game is on WTAE — or have the ESPN Full Court package, here’s the list of TV stations showing the Louisville-Pitt game tomorrow.
WCTX (Hartford, Conn.), Charter-St. Louis (St. Louis), WTTV (Indianapolis), WMYS (South Bend, Ind.), WAZE (Evansville, Ind.), Cox New Orleans (New Orleans), MASN (Baltimore/Washington, D.C.), WBGR (Bangor, Maine), MSG (New York), Time Warner (Buffalo, Albany, Rochester, Syracuse), Catch 47 (Tampa/St. Petersburg), WWHO (Columbus, Ohio), WKRC (Cincinnati), WHAS (Louisville), WRGT-DT2 (Dayton), ETVW (Madison, Wis.), WTOV (Wheeling, W.Va.), WTAE (Pittsburgh), WHP-DT (Harrisburg, Pa.), WQMY (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.), WHVL (Johnstown, Pa.), Cox New England (Providence), WMLW (Milwaukee), Metro Sports (Kansas City), WOAY (Bluefield, W.Va.), WVFX (Clarkesburg, W.Va.), WTAP-DT2 (Parkersburg, W.Va.), WACY (Green Bay), WMME (Chicago), WPHL (Philadelphia).
Seth Davis at SI.com is picking Pitt — oh no.
Those adjustments have spurred their current stretch of winning nine of their last 10, including six straight. The question here is whether they can do those things on the road against a good, physical team that is in dire need of a quality win — Pittsburgh comes in having lost its last two to fall to 7-6 in the Big East. Junior point guard Levance Fields, who missed eight weeks with a broken foot, is still two or three weeks away from getting his old form back. He looked pretty sharp in Thursday night’s loss at Notre Dame (10 points, five assists in 25 minutes off the bench). Now that he has a couple of games under his belt, I think he’ll give the Panthers just enough of a lift to win.
The loss to ND is still on my mind. Whether it’s simply about getting that final win to feel comfortable about making the NCAA, or how pissed some of the players were afterwards.
“It just slipped away from us,” Blair said. “I don’t know what’s going on with this team. I don’t know. We’ve got to find out quick. That’s two losses. I’ve never lost back-to-back in my life.”
The players know they have to get it all together today.
“We’re going to get them on Sunday,” Blair said. “That’s all I’m looking for right now. Playing hard and getting that win on Sunday. I’m not guaranteeing nothing or saying nothing. I just want it. That’s all.”
…
“Notre Dame is in the books,” Benjamin said. “There’s nothing we can do. The ‘L’ is there. We’re just going to go home. When we get off the plane in Pittsburgh, that loss is over.
“Now, the focus is on Louisville.”
Keith Benjamin has apparently decided that as a senior and the struggles of the team means it is time for him to speak to and for the team and step up.
“It’s vocal leadership, it’s doing the right things,” Benjamin said. “I have to make the right plays on the court, so everyone else sees that. I’m disappointed in myself. It beats me up that I’ve been here for four years and haven’t take a charge. Those are the things we need to do better. We have to take charges, we need to get rebounds, box out, make the smart pass. When we do that we win. I’m looking forward doing everything that will help us win. Scoring those points hasn’t helped us, so I’m going to have to do other things. I have to get rebounds, take charges. That’s what I’m going to do.”
For Benjamin and the rest of his teammates, the noon tip-off tomorrow can’t come soon enough.
“I want at it right now,” he said. “Trust me, I want this so bad. It’s going to happen. We’re playing a very hot team, a very tough team in Louisville. We’re in the Pete. We want everyone in Pittsburgh not to give up and to show up on Sunday ready to rock the building. That’s what we need right now.”
It seems Fields might be starting for the game.
Fields, who has come off the bench the past two games after sitting out nearly seven weeks with a fractured bone in his left foot, went through a full practice yesterday without any problems after playing 25 minutes in the 82-70 loss at Notre Dame Thursday night.
“He looks good,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “That was good to see. We went light [Friday]. It was good to see him go full [yesterday]. I thought he looked good the other day and played well. The process has gone as expected. It’s going exactly as we thought. We’ll figure out [today] who we’re going to start. We’ll see how he responds to practice.”
To some extent it will be about controlling the what kind of runs Louisville gets on and how Pitt responds.
(We have no good reason to hate y’all yet–like we do UK, Memphis, Marquette, or Cincy. You’re going to have to actually beat us a few times.)
keep it up.
So if Fields is starting, I assume Benjamin will be sitting. I couldn’t disagree with this more. Keith is a dynamic player and can score multiple ways. Ramon is a streaky shooter, and if he’s off he’s worthless on the offensive end. To his credit, when he’s on, he can hit 3’s all day.
I think this game is a gut check for Dixon. We’ve been out-played in many games but we’ve also been out-coached. He needs to find a gameplan that can beat Louisville and execute it for 40 minutes.
Sidenote, I hear there is going to be a ton of recruits at the game…we BETTER win!
If you look on Pittsburgh website (link provided) you can get this for every game.
No, i’m not kidding.
Yes, Biggs misses every shot. You need to send a message to Young. “If you don’t play fucking defense, then you’re not playing offense. We’d rather play that POS if he’ll defend, than you.” From 53-43 us, i counted about 12 or 13 defensive lapses. 6 of them were caused in part, or fully, by Young. The kid is awful at D. And maybe he doesn’t realize he can’t make up for the other teams 100% scoring on our lapses, with 50% shooting of his own on the other end. Thats why we keep losing. The math never adds up. I am POSITIVE this is why Kendall started last year, and played so much. Sure he didn’t score a ton of points, but at least he didn’t score a quarter of the other teams points for them. Just tell Biggs he is FORBIDDEN to shoot, and we’ll be just fine.
And every time Young pisses around on D, bench him. Make him sit until he learns to play D. And its not complicated crap he’s screwing up – leaving your man for no reason? C’mon. Aren’t you an upperclassmen?
For those of you that think i’m insane and he’s our best offensive option, i want to point out from 53-43 us, he scored 10 points, but his lapses allowed the other team at least 13 points. That’s not a favorable +/-.
Not that this will happen. I’ll just be happy to see Fields start (if he does)…
That sort of reminds me of starting Toree Morris when he was getting less minutes than Lett and Troutman. The theory then was that we needed his presence out there to get us started on defense…and while he wasn’t forbidden from shooting, it wasn’t encouraged. I doubt that, given Young’s admission to pouting last year when he wasn’t playing the position or minutes he wanted, the result of such a decision this year would be positive. But I certainly understand the sentiment.
I’m going to go ahead and reverse-curse us…Seth Davis tried to kiss-of-death us in the above posting, so I’ll go ahead and cancel him out by saying:
This is a game we’re going to lose. Louisville becomes the first team to win twice in the Pete. They’re too tough right now, and somehow, this Pitt team has no identity. I can’t see us pulling this one out.
(There, that should do it.)
I believe that since Louisville joined the Big East, Pitt has beaten them 3 of 4 times (including twice in the BE tournament). Does that count as a few times?
So…Fields, Benji, Brown, Biggs, and Blair. Ramon and Young come in at first TO, and Young gets the quick hook anytime he quits on D.
Now, if Biggs starts jacking up shots, i have no idea what to do…McGhee? Wannamaker? What a mess…
I can always wish…
Cleaning day! Time for us to scrub some of the sh*t out of the Zoo…