I think part of the problem is that this team so greatly overachieved during the non-con part of the schedule that our expectations were raised too high. When Cook and Fields went down (along with Diggs and whatshisname) we should have expected that the season would end like this and started thinking about baseball, apple pie and girls in bikinis. The Big East is too physically demanding a conference to play a rotation of seven guys every night out. Pitino said as much. This conference just eats you up. The four frosh will be all the better long term because of what happened this year. But Smizik said it best the other day in the PG – man it would be nice to get an actual shooter on the team for a change.

Hail to Pitt. And don’t forget to get your football season tix while the gettin’ is good…

Let me give you a 5th theory: WVU is a better team, and won the game because they have more talent.

Right, thats it. WVU beat us for the first time in 2 years, they’re obviously the better team. Just cause our D has been poor for the last 6 or so games….no that’s not it, it’s just that WVU is better. Now that we don’t play WVU anymore, we’ll be fine.

You “school” is a disgrace hoopie. 13-9. Go back to your trailer.

Stuart, you have just highlighted your own intelligence, or lack thereof. Stop pretending like pitt is anything except mediocre. By they way, I live in Pittsburgh, so your original, and very clever trailer/sister fucker comments that you guys find so amusing don’t really mean much. But I’m glad you’ve given us all some insight into your level of class and intelligence, which seems to be severely lacking.

Behoops, give Stuart a break…this is the post-brawl-loss syndrome. Remember how you felt after 13-9, I’m sure you would have said some unintelligent things to Pitt fans. Actually, I might have to go over to our (world class) Med School and introduce my new psychological condition to them. PBL syndrome has a nice ring to it.

That said, WVU played a good game, and Pitt barely bothered to show up. I guess they heard the reports on the news that they were solidly in the Dance, and we no longer felt desperate like we did in the past few games (Cincy, Cuse). And it’s about time WVU wins a brawl this year. But in the three major sports this year (Football, mens and womens bball), Pitt won 3-2.

But now WVU has an easier path in the BE Tourney. It will be interesting to see which Pitt team shows up at MSG….hopefully the same Pitt team that showed up the past two times we played their this year.

No, seriously, they talk shit after winning one basketball game in 2 years. This isn’t even 4-4 in the last 8 football brawls. Suddenly they’re an amazing team – disregarding the fact that 4 teams in a row have shot damn near 50% against us. We struggled defensively (AGAIN) last night – god only knows why – maybe one of the reasons above, maybe injuries, maybe youth, who knows. As soon as that shit gets turned around, we’ll go back to owning them.

Yes, they were the better team last night, no dispute there. But more talented? Look at the last 5 games. Not even close. This isn’t post-brawl anything – this is reality. 1-4 is not a “superior” team.

Congrats on the national championship. It should be a good game when DickFraud brings the trash up to Heinz Field next year…

Its amazing how the inbreeds show up when they win a total of ONE game in either sport in an entire year against their top rival…unreal.

I’m sure what you meant to say was “inbreds”. Here is a bit of advice, the next time you try the smart ass routine, make sure you don’t leave out the “smart” part of it.

Yes, pitt has a world class medical school. Just like WVU has a world class biometrics program, directly connected and run with the department of defense, and Federal Bureau of Investigation. What can I say Stu? Apparently the good folks I’ve been talking to from the CIA, FBI, and DOD don’t think we are too much of a disgrace, they do an awful lot of recruiting down there. Both schools have their strong, and weak points. I’m not sure why little Stu would bring academics into a discussion about basketball.

Seriously though, I love Jamie Dixon. One of my favorite coaches in the Big East.

Two things that need to happen this week off of the court.

1. Jamie gets the entire team in the video room and shows them the Georgetown game to remind them they can be great once again.

2. We make a highlight package of the 02-03 and 03-04 Panthers and show this team how to play some in your face, smash mouth, down low, grind it out, we’re gonna hit you defense!

WVU fans just make me want to gag and hurt them all… They are the most unintelligent fans I know of. The majority at least, because I would figure the one with the least amount of inbreeding would know something.

Did you hear their chants at the WVU coliseum tonight. (by the way, very uncreative arena name). We heard them over the TV chant one thing “Taser”. Get over yourselves. Fields already said it’s useless and he played a decent game. Shots just didn’t fall. The only other thing that could be heard was muttered hick nonsense.

All that said, props to WVU for showing up. You finally got one under your belt in the past few years. It will most likely be that way for the next few years because gilbert blair and fields at the very least will destroy you.

And just as a last thought. Who wants to place bets that WVU falls flat on their faces, chokes in the first round of the Big East tourney to the likes of Cuse or Nova and finds themselves trying to be repeats as NIT Champions… wouldn’t that be sweet

another thought… How about we get mike cook to show the team his scars from the surgery to remind the team of all the heart he had, and what being a part of this team means. A little more passion couldn’t hurt when on the court

Stuart, I’ve never heard one man love to hear himself talk as much as you. During the game you condemned the WVU fans for vulgarity, calling them basically classless, but no one uses more profanity on this blog than you. Your ridiculous comments help make BEHOOPS comments look like those of a Rhodes Scholar.

I re-watched that entire debacle, and kept track of how many “errors” each kid made on defense. Then i looked at how many minutes each kid played, and determined how many “errors per minute” each kid made on defense. Some plays more than one person made an error, some plays no one made an error, but wvu made a tough shot. Time to take a look, from best defender to worst:

benji = .138 errors per minute
fields = .139
biggs = .143
wanny = .200
brown = .211
ramon = .259
blair = .318
young = .345

What you can garnish from this information is that Young is essentially makign 2.5X as many errors as either fields or benji. Being a junior and easily being the weakest link on defense is totally unacceptable. Between him and Blair, it is no wonder we’re getting killed on defese – add up all their errors, and essentially one or the other is making an error every 90 seconds that usually ends up costing us 2 points. Considering we’re on offense half the time, thats something like 2 out of every 3 defensive series they’re making an error. Unbelievable.

When 3 of your starters are making the majority of your errors…i have no idea how we win any games at all. I was actually suprised how few errors biggs made on D – its just the 3 he did were so blatantly obvious during the game, they stuck out in my head. He actually played D pretty well.

So what the hell do we do? Keep playing them, as they’re offensive weapons, but pray they stop sucking on defense? We’ve been praying for a long time now, and nothings changed. How the hell do you get their heads in the game? Is there anything Dixon can do from a schematic standpoint to cover up their errors? Cause going to a zone ain’t working either – they just make errors in the zone.

I guess when your starting 4 and 5 suck on defense, you’re kind of fucked. Our guards didn’t even play that bad today (minus Ramon)…

Excuse me, garner, not garnish…tis late. Excuse any other errors too…

ltl – eat shit. Profanity on an internet site is a lot different that constant profanity on TV where it has been banned by the FTC. There are 4 year old kids sitting in those stands listening to incessant vulgar language. I doubt anyone lets their 4 year old wander the internet freely.

When I saw Jim Burr and Tim Higgins were calling the game, I knew we were in trouble. To add to this list of why we lost tonight, along with the 4 above (and I think Gambling is a symptom of Exhaustion, because it’s easier) – we didn’t have the depth to make it through a game called that damned tight. WVU has more bodies and could win the war of foul attrition. Granted, the calling was maddeningly inconsistent on both ends, and slightly favored WVU (except for the horrible no-call on the goaltending) but the fouls did not favor us at all.

It has to be exhaustion, why else would Dixon abandon man defense and go to zone this late in the season? I haven’t seen Pitt play zone in a long time!

The excuse I’m tired of is this “the team is exhausted at this point in the season because Dixon only uses 7 players” crap. If you’re 19-22 yrs old and you can’t play a game every couple days, you’ve got some kind of fatigue syndrome and the Big East season is the least of your issues.

Anyone who’s played organized ball knows that you’re usually far more tired after a tough practice than after a game. Games are the fun part and the less physically demanding part…… especially TV games with all the stops and starts and timeouts. It’s hard to even get winded when there’s a break every 3 minutes.

These kids are used playing AAU tournaments with 2-3 games back-to-back in an afternoon. They’re not tired…..
Practice is the hard part — the part where you should see kids extend themselves and puke out of (I’ve seen plenty of that)exhaustion.

So can we stop this whole “they’re tired and they’re banged up” bullshit? Sure, they’re banged up…….by March you’re supposed to have an injury you’re playing through. Big deal.

So has anyone tried to figure out the BE seeding formula here?
link to bigeast.org
It seems like we could drop as low as a 9 seed with a loss to DePaul…

hey leave poor stu alone….come on now! Who else submits as many posts as he does, and who else has time or CARES to re-watch the game and count the “errors” or “errors per minute”.

Who else can blame a ref as much as he does, or be as vulger as he is or complain about the fans like he does.

We should all thank him for NOT HAVING A LIFE, posting as MUCH as he does at all different times of the night. Ask yourself, where would we be without him on this board.

I might take time and actually see how many “posts per minute” we get out of good ole Stu……….

DJ, I heard during the game last night, that we (Pitt) could drop no lower than eighth seed for the BE tourney.

Does anyone recall a Pitt team under Dixon or for that matter Howland that has had more blowout losses in one season. A bad Pitt loss used to be 9 or 10 points, now 20 poits seems to be common place. Where is the D??? I see a first round exit coming in the tourney.

I’m glad some other folks are tiring of Stu as much I’ve been.

i stopped reading his posts a while back; when i see his name, I just skip to the next one because I know it’s either going to be mindless over-analyzed drivel or a bunch of misplaced anger directed at something the rest of us don’t care about.

No one has metioned the Higgins/Burr ref combo. Never forget that we have a losing record over the last 5 years when these 2 refs show up as a combo. Not that they sucked any less for WVU. The calls they make/don’t make baffle me and I can’t understand how they continue to have a job. They suck and they like to see themselves on TV. Hell I don’t even know the names of most refs but those two together = shitty calls/non-calls for both teams.

Rex- to your comment about the blowout games, I agree. Previously, even if they didn’t have the offense working, they could always count on their ‘D’ to keep teams in check.

I have a theory that their sluggish offense leads to bad defense, and it’s a vicious cycle. I also attribute their struggling offense to a lack of consistent performance inside the paint; i.e., from Blair. He’s playing gun-shy…missing easy layups, and getting routinely blocked/frustrated by opponents. He needs to play more powerfully, and take the pressure off the perimeter shooters.

Pitt is beat up and worn down….playing to or below their talent level.

I still say the only way to win with this team is to play up pace games in the 80’s and use our transition to wear down opponents. Can’t be any worse!

So tired of seeing every Pitt BB Team look like champs in December and get totally worse the rest of the year.

Dan-this past year not withstanding, let’s face it: Pitt hasn’t had a particularly tough schedule through December, at least not in the past several years.

Fortunately, I think having had a decent December 2007, against some fair competition, is what’s going to give Pitt their NCAA ticket this year. Conference wins alone wouldn’t have done it.

Its remarkable how little actual insight goes into the comments offered by fans of other teams. I’ve never understood this…why would you go to the blog of another team’s fans and just incite them with “Oooh, we’re better” ? Its kind of like the Marquette guy a few weeks ago that came on during the discussion of the D-Wade/Zavackas taking his shoes off game and said “I was at that game, it was great, yay go Warriors!!!” He, of course, had no reply to why he would do such a thing either.

You want to talk about being a more talented team? Get a clue. There’s no QUESTION Pitt is more talented…Young, Benji, Gil, Blair and Fields are more athletic than anyone on West Virginia. I doubt Huggy or Belein (who recruited most of them) would disagree. I’m also not sure what the point of discussing talent is. Syracuse has more talent than all but about five teams in the country. Paul Harris, Donte’ Green and Jonny Flynn are all absurd ballers, and Devendorf is very very good. And we put an 18-2 run on them in crunch time in their building. Talent means very little. One thing I will readily concede is that WVU is often very well coached. Bill Raftery was basically drooling at all the back-cuts and passing, and as usual WVU is up there in assist/turnover ratio in the conference, and I believe leading the league in assists. They run somewhat gimmicky offenses, and definitely did so with Gansey, Herber and Co., and they run them very very well. Often, those teams give certain teams fits. WVU over UCLA two years ago comes to mind, when UCLA was a Final Four team. Are they BETTER than the teams they beat? Well…sort of. I mean, really, winning is all that matters. So if WVU and Pitt are 1-1 against each other, and both wins were at home for the teams, I’d say that’s a good indication that they’re fairly close. I think Pitt has a more well-rounded team and a better chance to go deep in the tournament, but fortunes change quickly in March. Is Joe Alexander a really really good player? Yes. Is he a 30-point per night player? No. He’s a very good shooter on a hot streak, and I’m very impressed with the way he played. Him hitting a turn-around 19 footer with a defender draped on him is exceptional. But lets all be honest…if he could do that every night, he’d be getting the same media coverage as Michael Beasley. Its been his night more than once this year, a good indication that he’s a good player. But the OPEN shots are the fault of defensive breakdowns as much as good offensive sets. The Ruoff triple from the top of the key when Biggs and Benji both came halfway out to guard him and then LEFT was a good indication of the fact that at least those two guys were clueless about implementing the zone scheme we had in place. Also, why they didn’t know Ruoff would shoot an open three is questionable.

Let us also stop pretending Stuart is the first person to point out the classless behavior of WVU fans. When I went to Pitt’s first game @ Louisville on ESPN’s Thursday Night Football, I was nervous about heading into hostile territory with my Pitt gear. Instead, we got invited to tailgates, handed beers, and pressed into earnest discussions about what our offense might do against them, who could get to Brohm (no one) and our take on the upcoming conference slate for both teams. I was also asked by more than one Louisville fan “Hey, are West Virginia fans always such assholes?” in regard to a trip they’d taken to Morgantown for a game. The jokes about West Virginia trailor-dwelling, sister-mating hillbillies are definitely getting very old. But the complaints about the uncivilized, incoherent, belligerent fans are dead on. There’s a difference between supporting your team and demeaning humanity. That line gets crossed more often by WVU fans. I would still venture to speculate that the line is only crossed by some small percentage of fans…but its a significantly higher percentage than at other places, and that’s the problem. As much as I dislike WVU, I’ll give you this: Puskar Stadium rocking as 50,000 fans scream in unison “Let’s GOOOOOOOOOO Mountaineers” creates a great homefield atmosphere for your team. Slashing tires in the parking lot of PA license plates, throwing things at Pitt fans, starting profanity-laced chants, and basking in the reputation of being a DANGEROUS place to play from a safety standpoint is ridiculous. For the record, I also think its ridiculous that the Pitt fans yell “SUCKS” after every opposing player is introduced. I think its amazingly classless that almost every crowd in the country yells “YOU SUCK” after the “HEY” in Rock and Roll Part 2 (The “Hey” Song). There’s a lot of blame to go around, but I think that WVU fans deserve a healthy dose.

As for Stuart, I have to agree with him: There’s a big difference between swearing on a chat board and starting a fuck you chant on national tv. One speaks to the way an individual behaves in a social situation among friends when he is cutting loose, the other is how someone behaves when everyone is watching and they’re acting as a representative of their university (and in this case, their state, since most people know almost nothing about WV other than the school). Stuart’s analysis of Pitt games, players, coaches and programs is often opinionated and occasionally harsh, but its ALWAYS thoughtful and whether you agree with it or not, he gives you his reasoning. Its why he’s one of my favorite posters.

Finally, now that we don’t have to play you for at least a week, good luck Hoopies. I hope that you don’t blow your NCAA bid, because I want as many BE teams in there as possible. I don’t like your team, and I love to see you lose, but not against non-con opponents…not when representing our league. Our league gets shit on too much by the national media, we all need to stick together. (And now that we basically toasted the Cuse’s chances for a bid, SOMEONE has to step up.)

I’m still trying to figure out what kind of offense we’re running. When was the last time the high pick actually worked where it freed either Levance or the big who set it? It’s become such a staple of our offense that I’m not sure we’re even doing it right anymore.
Watching teams like Kansas and Duke play you’ll note the difference is spacing. They space the floor well. Us? Not so much. We run into each other on cuts and often have two men working to the same point on the floor. Total confusion.
Of course, you need to have consistent outside shooters for said spacing to work — and we don’t.
So the long and short of it, we have an undersized team that cannot shoot consistently from the perimeter and has difficulty finishing inside. How is that supposed to garner victories?
Some of the things Sam Young does rub me the wrong way, but if it were not for him, I truly believe we would be a .500 team this year. He’s having a heck of year and he’s carrying the team.

A brief sidenote, has anyone else noticed on Lunardi’s Bracketology that Pitt move up in seeding every time they lose and drops after every victory? Just thought it was odd.

I though fields played krauseresque yesterday.

We have too many guys who have to be involved constantly to “get into the flow” of the offense. If Blair doesn’t get the ball for two or three possessions, suddenly he’s nowhere to be found on the offensive glass either. Ramon didn’t take a shot until about 5:00 left in the game yesterday, and he’s supposedly our marksman. (And I do like his shot, though he’s been hot-and-cold.) Benji and Sam seem to similarly lose interest if they’re not getting their touches. And all of this is exacerbated when Fields runs into a 16 foot pull-up with a man in his face. I hate to say it, but I couldn’t agree more…Krauseresque last night. The d lost us the game, but the offense was bad. And I agree with Dave, the spacing has been a problem all year. Ironically, Tyrell Biggs, who usually makes a night out of whacking his own teammates on screens, had the best night, spacing well and setting up entry passes when he was out on the high post (or beyond). Definitely some things to work on, good thing its coming up on Spring Break…two-a-days?

Fields was forcing it a bit much. I realize he was trying to get things going, but part of the drive is supposed to be the occasional dish, and there was none of that.

The offense is quite stagnant. There is not enough ball movement and that high pick does little in the way of creating opportunities. Dixon needs to revisit that and, of course, figure out how to get this team to play some sort of defense.

Young, in particular, should be embarrassed by his D.

Scottie excellent post as usual, and Dave I couldn’t agree more. For all of Young’s weaknesses, we’d be muccch worse without him. Take his points out of the line up and a poor offense would then become pitiful. No one is going to confuse him with a defensive wizzard, but then again, who does play defense on this team. And as Scottie mentioned, give up on this exhaustion excuse. The same players that are supposedly exhausted, would be and are, the same guys that wanted more playing time. In my opinion, Dixon has pulled some of these guys off the floor when they weren’t even tired and broke our momentum. Heck, the way these guys foul, they can’t play enough minutes to break a sweat.

Hey maz, I defense of the Zoo shouting sucks after each player….we do that to everyone because it is funny and insulting. It’s not degrading and it’s not very profane. Dixon has expressed that he wished we would say something else, and there was a big poll on the Zoo’s blog as to what to do instead. The alternative failed miserably, and the students resorted quickly backed to sucks, and now they play music over us in an attempt to drown us out, but it doesn’t work. I personally think it is great. Yelling “sucks” is not very bad, and most people who hear that we do it laugh. But you can go too far, for instance, yelling “Taser!” for a guy who had a life-altering encounter with police. That’s a bit too personal and arrogant.

Of every away game I’ve watched on TV, I’ve never been able to hear any chants about that incident. Fields has said in interviews that he gets heckled everywhere he goes, but nobody was as inhumane as WVU. That was just plain ignorant. Sure, you can make fun of him for it, but to make it your main chant on defense…that’s low. And I didn’t think it was possible for WVU fans to get any lower than how they acted before and after 13-9!

Hell, even Penn State fans are more civil than WVU (and we have a worse rivalry with PSU!!) I can hate PSU and still have a civil football or basketball conversation with a PSU fan or student. That is impossible with WVU. The minute I try to talk about football, I get the “Fraudriguez blew that game on purpose…Pitt sucks!” Thanks, WVU….very intelligent. Looks like you crime school and CIA training has got you a little too ancy for a conspiracy.

I’m trying to use channelsurfing.net to watch some soccer and neither the IE or Firefox streams will work. In IE, I get a black screen with that red X in the corner, with Firefox, I just get a black screen with an ad for johnq or something. Anybody had a similar problem and figured out how to fix it??

I have to agree that WVU has the least classy fans ever. I am married to a WVU grad (who now roots for Pitt, bless her heart) and she used to tell me that it made her proud when Hoopies would light their city on fire after a football or basketball game (win or lose). My wife is a well educated, well paid attorney, btw, so it isn’t about being a low class trailer trash hick. There is just something within WVU fans, the smart, successful ones and the drunk trailer dwellers, that makes them take pride in being such nasty people. They see it as passion, but the rest of us see it as disgusting.

My wife took me and my brother to the Brawl in Morgantown for Fitzerald’s sophomore season. We were there in our Pitt jerseys and were threatened in the men’s room; threatened in the parking let; threatened in the stands; and pelted with batteries during the entire game. Batteries, not food or something like that. Batteries.

When we finally left the game with 5 minutes to go, there were Pittsburgh news reporters outside asking if it was really as bad and dangerous inside as was expected ahead of time. What does it say about your fan base if the media is there covering safety concerns that arose based on fan comments before the game? There is a line, and WVU fans are so far on the other side of it that I think the line is just a rumor to them.

Prowler, I agree with your basic point, and echo the threats I got at that same game you’re talking about. Also, don’t leave out the number of slashed tires. Someone came up and cut my tire WHILE I WAS IN MY CAR. That’s some class.

The harsh reality is that we are not playing well right now. The individual parts are there but there seems to be no synergy. Poor defense, poor shooting, and consistently out of position seem to be the major issues. The BE tourney will be a real test for how this team can respond.

Eff ltl and scottie. win or lose these two douche bags have something negative to say. why they continue to post on a pro-pitt blog is beyond me.

Omar, it’s apparent, as usual, that you hate any opinion other than your own. If your goal is to be a cheerleader rather than an OBJECTIVE fan I suggest that you purchase a cheerleading uniform, but chances are you already have one based on your posts. Try opening your bias eyes for a change and recognize the fact that this present Pitt team has some glaring weaknesses. Trust me, it won’t make you any less of a fan if you are honest for once.

Obviously the team has issues. I simply choose not to focus on them and try to refrain from insulting players. Believe me, some of the things the kids do, especially defensively, drive me nuts. I’m sure they drive the coaches nuts. However, I’m not going to come on to an internet site that I’m sure some of them may read and bash their games. The players try as hard as they can and they aren’t getting paid. They don’t need to be told what they can’t do by you and me.

Omar, for the sake of not getting into a sparring match with you over what should or shouldn’t be posted on this site, let me simply refer you to the posts on this site under “Backyard Brawl Live Blog in Morgantown.” Please tell me that the players that you are supposed to be protecting would relish the comments of those reporting on the game as it unfolded. If you’ve ever competed at a high level, you understand that being evaluated positively and negatively goes with the turf. I believe you are more sensitive than the players. I heard Fields’s and Benjamin’s interview after the WVU lose, and they were harder on themselves than anyone on this site could possibly be. They were being realistic about what is going on with this team. Do you not think these kids listen to tv. analysts and Pittsburgh talk show hosts hammering this Pitt team? And read the paper once in awhile, nothing good is being said about this team. It’s not about hating the players, it’s about recognizing that they are playing extremely bad. We are quick to praise them when they’re good, but in the 2008, we need to coddle kids and tell them they’re good, when indeed they stink. That philosophy is just what’s destroying our nation, tell a kid a lie if it makes him fell good, that really prepares him for life after basketball. That’s exactly why the modern day kids are getting fired left and right from jobs the first time they hear something, they don’t like. Athletics better prepare young men and women for the real world, because through sports, they often have to learn to deal with critism. Lastly, if you think these guys aren’t getting paid, check the price tag attached to a scholarship these days.

We can agree to disagree on this. It isn’t like you are constructively criticizing these players. Mocking their height, speed, athleticism or lack thereof etc. isn’t intelligent commentary or criticism. The basketball team brings in between $5-10 million dollars a year and these kids get about $100,000 in a scholarship over 4-5 years if they are out of state players. Approximately $60,000 if they are in-state kids. Is that the same as getting paid? I don’t think so.

Omar, I like the agree to disagree thing. When you factor in books, miscellaneous expenses, private tuitoring, etc., please don’t feel sorry for the major college athlete. And with practically all high profile sports’ figures today, there are many other perks that the normal college student doesn’t enjoy. Furthermore, how many individuals get funds given to them for doing something they absolutely enjoy. Yes, practicing gets old, but the thrill of competition makes it all worth wild. Also, college sports in general provides a stepping stone for athletes dreaming to get to the next level of their perspective sport. Like it or not, height, speed, athleticism, strength, etc. are all elements to consider in partically all sports. Combines, camps, and showcases have become the normal for colleges, as well as pro programs, in determining to the best of their ability who will succeed at various levels of sports. It’s the nature of the beast! My point about lack of height, speed, and athleticism on this Pitt team is not meant to be critical of the players, but to simply emphasize the enormous challenge these guys must overcome to be successful on a regular basis. In my opinion, the recruiting practices of late have put this team at a tremendous disadvantage. Again, how can three small guards and two undersized big men seriously compete at this level and in this conference. The answer is: they can’t night in and night out. You can cast the blame anywhere you want, but for me, the buck stops at the top.

The lack of athleticism with a Ramon and Fields backcourt is a problem against some teams. Ramon in particular is an issue because his offense has been unacceptable this year. I will agree with you when you make articulate points.

I disagree with the frontcourt. It isn’t like Blair and Young are being beat because they can’t matchup with the opposing teams height. They just don’t understand position and help defense. I understand a true freshman making errors, but a junior with a year of prep school should not be having so many issues defensively. Young has given up so many layups in this 7 game stretch. It is truly mind boggling. He wasn’t this terrible early in the year either. Hopefully he makes a commitment to defense. If he does not, then we cannot regain the early season form.

Blair is going to make a lot of mistakes. But we can’t have two players that are unable to defend a simple pick and roll. If we are going to give up uncontested layups, then we might as well switch on all screens. Blair and Young will be better off trying to stay with a guard, rather than missing the rotation every single time.

Omar, excellent post! With a little give and take, I think we can coexist. (LOL)

Does anybody know if Dixon has addressed the screening issue in interviews or anything? It is such an obvious, and, it would seem, correctable problem.

Awesome ltl. I look forward to it.

The defense, or lack thereof, isn’t Dixon’s fault. On a pick and roll you either hedge and recover or switch. There is no other way to defend it. The way Pitt is playing the hedge they should just switch. It isn’t even the player that is hedging who is making the mistake. The 3 players that are not defending the pick and roll have to recognize which side the screener is on. The defender opposite the ball has to leave his man and help on the player rolling to the hoop. When the player hedging recovers, then the help defender finds his man and things should be okay. Our help defender is ALWAYS too late. Young and Blair are ALWAYS the culprits. I’ll be honest the hedging hasn’t been great either (you have to do something to disrupt the dribbler before recovering) but the help defense has been beyond awful.

Our zone is also pathetic. That is why I suggest simply switching on all screens. I’ll take my chances with Young or Blair defending a quicker guard and Fields or Ramon defending a big. I’m sure Blair will end up with 2 fouls in 5 minutes, but that happens most of the time anyway. It isn’t ideal, but it is better than giving up uncontested layups in man-to-man and uncontested threes in the zone. Not to mention 3 offensive rebounds in the zone as well.

BTW, early in the year Pitt was trapping on those screens. That was working much, much better. Either opposing teams have watched enough tape and realize that Pitt is going to trap (this is a distinct possibility considering how many bigs are just faking the screen and cutting to the hoop immediately) or we have just been a step slow and are allowing the dribbler to get free. I don’t know which one it is.

glad you two worked out your differences and have agreed to co-exist.I’m also glad we’re allowed to constructively criticize players and coaches again.

I’ve got to disagree on the Blair/Young frontcourt thing. Yes, they play bad defense, but even if they played good D Pitt would still be under-sized with no depth in the frontcourt which is no recipe for success in this conference.

Blair is playing out of position at the 5-spot because Dixon didn’t bring in any big man recruits who panned out for the last few years and maybe that wouldn’t matter so much if Young could hold his own on the boards….but he doesnt want to box out and he’s often at a size disadvantage too.

Dixon likes to play a grind-it-out style sometimes, and you need a big strong team to do that. He hasn’t done a good job of finding the right players to drive his strategy and we have to hold him accountable for that. Biggs is the best he’s done over the last 2-3 yrs until Blair fell into his lap, and think about how scary that is………considering Biggs is consistently overmatched against strong comp.

But it’s not just the frontcourt size/strength/toughness thing. There are obviously also shooting problems and major defensive issues at hand. Let’s get real about this squad. I was trying to get everybody to see that during the early season wins, but nobody wanted to listen then.

I feel like Jamie’s kind of crested a wave and he’s headed down the other side and now it’s time to turn it around by bringing in some better recruits and tightening up how they play. He’s had a few years and seems much more comfortable in the role and in his own skin, so I’m hopeful he can get the momentum rollling again.

I truly have to disagree on this. I don’t think size is an issue at all. The only team that gave Pitt a true problem with size was UCONN and nobody can match up with Adrien AND Thabeet. Ain’t happening.

The rebounding is also a function of our piss poor rotations. Nobody knows where they are supposed to be and their man has an advantage because of it.

This team can play with any team in the country when they feel like it. See Louisvile who I think is playing better ball than every team in the top-5 right now. Pitt almost beat that team by playing hard and not being out of position. Yes Blair had problems with Padgett, but Padgett had problems with Blair too. Their performance basically canceled each other out. Pitt was in the game because they weren’t giving up layups. Then Louisville decided to run pick and rolls to ice the game and lo and behold, Pitt cannot defend it. Any time a team needs a basket they simply have to run a pick and roll. It’s that easy.

I agree that blaming size isn’t a totally legit argument. Size may be an issue. Blair would be better if he were two inches taller and Pitt would be better if they had a solid 7 footer on their team. But lets not forget that Blair had no trouble whatsoever with Roy Hibbert who is generally viewed as being pretty good. We really started seeing problems with Blair after the UConn game and that tells me it isn’t about size, but confidence. Consider that Blair had probably never been overmatched in his career. Add to that the fact that his biggest games came against Duke and Georgetown. He had to feel unstoppable. Then against UConn, everything he threw at the hoop got swatted off the court. He has played without confidence much of the time since then, altering his own shots as if he was about to get blocked again.

The loss of confidence would manifest itself not only on offense, but also on defense if he has gone from believing he is the man to realizing that he is a small fish in a big pond.

I do think it is mental, but it is also something that the coaching staff needs to work on with him because he is one heck of a talent.

Regarding Blair, I think that confidence could be part of the problem but when you’re consistently missing cupcake layups and you’re 6’7″ you have to put part of the blame not focusing. I just don’t think he focuses enough when he gets the ball down low and tries to lay it in. Sometimes it seems he’s not even looking at the basket when he shoots.

Size/strength……..I don’t care what you call it….Pitt doesn’t have it top to bottom. It’s not a question of how tall Blair is — it’s the fact that they start the game with Young and Benjamin at the 4 and 3 spots besides Blair. That’s a front-line problem. How is that team supposed to bang with anybody? Especially when combined with two guys in the backcourt who can’t help because they’re very small.

You could usually go to battle with that size team if you were planning on running and pressing, but the fun of Dixon’s situation is that this small team isn’t especially fast either and he wouldn’t want to play that way even if he had the horses.

The only option Dixon has had is to play Benjamin more at the SG position and I think he’s really hurt his squad by not using that lineup more. Ramon could come off the bench to play PG or SG and having Brown in gives him more size/athleticism at the 3.

Having Cook around would have helped a little because he’s a more versatile player than Benjamin or Brown, but it wouldn’t have solved the problem.
I think Dixon is in a bind right now and he’s probably not real happy about it.

Scottie, you saved me a lot of typing, well said. If we had the old Brown and Page combo, you could have gotten away with the lack of size in the above mentioned positions, but sad to say they are gone, and we presently are getting killed in those positions. The intangibles are simply not there with this present line up, and I’m sure Dixon, if he’d be honest, would agree with us.

The size has nothing to do with uncontested layup after uncontested layup. A few of our guys don’t understand how to defend a pick and roll. That’s the issue. Let me ask you a question. How did Marquette eat us alive a month ago when they have one guy in the starting line-up over 6’6″ and he is a bum that can only make uncontested layups? What about WVU a few nights ago? Those losses had ZERO to do with size. Actually I can’t point to size being a problem defensively against any of the teams we have lost to including UCONN. Dayton doesn’t have size. Neither does Notre Dame or Villanova. UCONN’s size was a problem offensively. Size is the least of our concerns right now. This is my honest opinion. Look at the last few weeks and you will see that size is not an issue right now. Help defense is the biggest issue on this team, BY FAR. It is the reason we are getting shredded and why our rebounding sucks. It’s easy to get a rebound when nobody on the other team knows where they are supposed to be or where their man is. This team needs to spend the next week doing nothing but practicing help defense or they should switch on all screens. It’s that simple.

Having Cook was essential, because nobody is running pick and rolls from that position. Cook was easily the best help defender and we can see that now. He was always on the weakside and knew when to rotate, where to be and why. More importantly, he told the other players what they needed to be doing. Even in that WVU debacle you saw him talking to Biggs about help defense. Losing him was more of a problem than any of us could have realized. Maybe that’s why Dixon was in tears when he went down.

No one is arguing the point that the defensive issues you alluded to exists, but our size has been a factor in several games. It’s hard to actually determine how much of a factor, because of how lousy our D is at present. But another point you are getting away is athleticism. Our inability to match up with Marquette’s athletic guards without doubt cost us that game. Our lack of height/athleticism at the guard position reared it’s ugly head in the second have of the ND game. Heck, ND simply missed an abundance of open looks in the first half, or they would have blown us out of the gym. Honestly, the Dayton win was probably a fluke based on the fact their guard had a career night, but he’s not the only guard to have a career night against us. Could lack of speed and athleticism possibly have something to do with that or does guards simply get hot only when they play Pitt? And has far as Villanova goes, shame on us for losing to them once, they aren’t that good this year. But in the WVU game, I believe size was a problem at times. Alexander shot over people at will, and Ruoff at 6’6 had no trouble this time around shooting over our smallish guards. Blair held his own inside with 7’0 Smalligan, but got very little help from anyone else. On the offensive end, Blair’s all alone for the most part with Young drifting far from the bucket looking for a three. That alone wouldn’t be a bad thing, but with a three guard offense it’s a killer. So yes, I can see your point, but being undersized is definitely still too much of a challenge to overcome. Especially with a team that can’t play fundamental defense.

The lack of athleticism with a Fields and Ramon backcourt is definitely an issue. I have already conceded this point. Ruoff’s height may have been helpful, but it didn’t matter because no player was within 5 feet of him when he shot. He was wide open. Honestly Ramon doesn’t deserve to be on the floor as a 2-guard. He should back-up Fields at the point and play sparingly at the 2. He has played awful at the 2 for the entire season including the non-con. It’s not going to change now, but I wish it would.

Alexander was having a career night after Young fouled out. Young can usually neutralize him, but the refs decided they didn’t want to see Sam play. I’m glad Alexander went off for 20 in the second half of a blowout. We know if it was a close game he would be nowhere to be found. He and Greg Paulus are kings at hitting threes when their team is up 10 points+. If you need one late, I hope you’re not counting on those two to make a play because it isn’t going to happen.