Not good so far this evening for the Big East with Notre Dame and Marquette falling.
Hopefully that was just a Pac-10 aberration.
9:27: Okay, just ugly shooting so far. Neither team looks particularly comfortable. There’s a good amount of bumping and physical activity. Pitt down 4-2 but Sam Young shooting foul shots after the break.
9:39: Pitt down 13-12, 10:20 until halftime.
Pitt 6-6 on free throws. Shooting struggles continue. Pitt forced a short flurry of turnovers and that resulted in Michigan State starting to hold onto the ball a bit more rather than trying to move the ball more. Right now the Spartans are hitting shots and Pitt is not.
9:47: Right now, the question is whether Pitt can shoot above 25% from the field before halftime. On the stunning side, Pitt is 8-8 on FTs.
9:55: Crap, but Neitzel is shooting well tonight. I guess on the positive side, MSU has been hot while Pitt is cold this half. Yet it is still quite close.
10:08: Fields did nearly everything in that half. That steal was tremendous, and he finished this time. Of course, the rest of the team stood there and watched as Kailan Lucas took it all the way and right to the hoop.
Pitt down 30-28. All told, Pitt should be happy to be down only 2. 9-29 shooting and being outrebounded. MSU shooting fantastic. 12-25 shooting, 4-5 on 3s.
Pitt has stayed close because of getting turnovers and shooting 8-8 from the line.
The team has to shoot better in the second half.
10:35: How can Pitt still be missing these shots? More activity on defense, but no conversions on offense.
11:32: Sorry, Pitt finally went on a run when I backed off any posts, so I went with it. That didn’t last. Kiddie stuff then interfered with any more posting.
So the season comes to an end. Looked like the legs were finally giving out on the players. So many shots that just seemed to hit the front of the rim.
Michigan State made the tough shots. Have to give the Spartans credit. Neitzel had the hot shooting game, they needed. Kalin Lucas was able to attack off the dribble and was simply faster.
Pitt missed the open looks. Unbelievable number of open looks — especially from the perimeter — that Pitt left short. Pitt shot 2-17 on 3s, which was somewhat offset by shockingly good FT shooting — 18-19.
DeJuan Blair struggled with too much size inside from Michigan State, and being the only Pitt player inside all too often. When Levance Fields is the second leading rebounder, that never bodes well.
Hate to see Ronald Ramon and Keith Benjamin go out like this. Neither of them able to do much on offense.
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Too bad that when we’re getting open looks, we’re missing them. I’m hoping our shot comes back quick and we dont go all ND here…
Watching on-line at CBS when it’s not on the local CBS affiliate.Looking a little tight to start the game. Need to get that first jumper to go and we’ll be okay.
YOUNG!! SLAM!
and TAKE BIGGS OUT. what was that shot?!?!
and i’m calling it now. gilbert brown is my new favorite player!
They’re starting to let MSU get away with a lot of shoving compared to earlier…not as good for us somehow…looks to me like we’re getting out “physicaled”.
How come they get the moving screen call, but we don’t on that last 3 pointer? Anybody? I guess we don’t dive well enough…
Just in time to see Blair put it in!
Good D on the shot clock violation.
ridiculous
Holy shit, Ramon chasing that kid around isn’t going to get us anywhere….we need fields or blair to help on that…or he’s going to keep burying that same shot over and over again…
Unreal that we’re missing all our open shots when we get them….i guess we were due.
either way they are shooting lights out compared to the Temple game.
I am getting a bit nervous on this one…they just look flat…or maybe MSU D is just that stifling.
DaveD
DaveD
Fields is the only one on our team shooting over 33%. Yikes. Young needs to get hot and go off for 40. He’s getting his normal shots, he’s just not making them.
Thank GOD for Fields being back!!! yea baby!!!
He definitely is too amped up right now
DaveD
and they respond by driving it right down our throat and basically doing the same thing…..
Lets just hope their shooting goes cold in the second half is all I can say..
so do you think we can get some offense goin’ the 2nd half?? Blair definitely needs to do a little finishing.. just go up a little stronger. He definitely needs to work on his jump hook shot over the summer.
Well, they’re shooting 50 percent from the field. Can’t let that continue.
A lack of turnovers and good free throw shooting are keeping us in the game. Not to mention inspired play by Fields.
We look sluggish. Hopefully Salesi (sp?) can come up with some miracles in the training room at the half. Some choice words from Dixon would help as well.
The second biggest thing is we’re getting killed on the boards. -7? Unacceptable. We have to fight harder.
& a profound ‘Thank You’ to Fields for keeping us in the first half. But don’t end the half by bitching about no foul call and then get burned for a lay up. The fewer the foul calls, the better for Pitt.
No team has ever gone to 3 final fours.Let’s all concentrate on Pitt though ….they will need all our karma to win this one!
What i don’t understand is how that kid can make that shot (running, spinning and firing, knowing someone is coming to come across his face), but Ramon, Benji, Young several times, all have had MUCH better looks from 3, and can’t hit the broad side of the barn. On the other hand, Fields refuses to miss. He’s had much worse looks, he just doesn’t care. And lets not even get started on Blair missing layups all day.
That was just a wonderful finish to a bitch-led team who, for like the billionth time this year, lost with a (wow) full sack of testicles bereft of impregnating sperm, “Just call me “Tom†sulked off the court (again, many times again) in some sort of US civil war quick-step demanding not a zero ounce of respect by opponents. (Really now, a complimentary hand-shake at the end of this one – or a mere-respectful hand-shake to the victor (or a reach-around, for that matter), else someone tell me I’m wrong, ‘cause really would like to give some fragment of credit to these golden-birds (BE brethren, as someone’s already referred RE WVU)…just a singular hand-shake btw HCs stands in the way.
MU newbie’s deserve no such near credit as UConn, Orange etc. Made the BE conference better? Jut a tad only more competitive.
So happy they went packing regardless of conference.
I said it before for lack of jogging the brain for something better than “gay†references, but like coach so goes the team. (Congratulations for your loss to basic Ivy Leaguers (peanut gallery be silenced FFS’s).)
MU must look for a coach that will not incessantly embarrass and discredit his team, nor most importantly the GD BEAST.
Well, let’s just watch this contest unfold v MSU. And because I think we lose by four it must then be our win by that margin or more.
Hail to Pitt!
Back to the same old problem for Pitt ..not scoring enought points in big games.
Need Brown to step in…or we are dead.
There is nothing more to say. We must start making WIDE OPEN JUMP SHOTS and LAYUPS or we’re going home. We’ve gone ice cold.
I hope that’s wrong but Pitt has no O tonight…
Ramon looks f’ing horrible…
They need to turn this around soon…it’s starting to slip away.
DaveD
MSU shooting 42%
Pitt shooting 27.3%
absolutely attrocious.
There is no reason for BLAIR to miss these lay ups. Just as someone mentioned earlier, he is doing his best Aaron Gray impression tonight.
Wow he would be close to 20 if he made half of those attempts…
Here’s hoping the butterflies are starting to fade…
DaveD
For the glass half full people: we’re “due” – obviously. Its not possible to miss ALL YOUR OPEN SHOTS FOR AN ENTIRE GAME, RIGHT?
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
We’re going to need a Fields miracle to pull this one out.
Let’s all think positive thoughts only…Pitt exhausted…why does one shooter always kill us!!!
Its far from over, but someone else is going to have to make at least one shot, or they’re just going to double fields.
Ramon guarding Nietzel has completely worn him out on the offensive side of the ball.
It’s been a team effort tonight
Young has been cold outside all night…he is a 39% 3-pt shooter he makes even 1 of 5 they are tied.
DaveD
there that should work
This really sucks!!!
simple examination of what happened.
Pitt played sub-par, nailed their foul shots, but missed wide open looks and layups.
MSU made shots with hands in their face, and generally played better than Pitt.
MSU advances. Fuck Neitzel
Ramon finally a basket.
Maybe Young doesn’t go pro now because he can’t leave things like this.
Blair has got some maturing as well
DaveD
backcourt – everyone but fields must really like pittsburgh, because their all their games screamed of wanting to be back home.
Combination of the BET run and the thin air?
Who knows all in all a disappointing end to a good season, considering… it stings like a B’ tho don’t it..
Ramon and Benjamin finish a combined 2/10 with 4 points.
That senior leadership and experience for you in the NCAA tournament!
Only person who played worth a damn was Levance and he got called for a BS charging foul on Neitzel.
HAIL TO PITT!
you want to go in hot but playing those 4 nights of murderere’s row (any of the top BE teams) may have made this team a bit fatigued.
MSU had good D but Pitt had a lot of open looks that they were short on.
So is the BE championship and subsequent 4th seed worth it?
I don’t have an answer…just asking the question.
DaveD
Hail to Pitt….a team full of guts and defense.
Let’s find some offense in big games and take it all the way in 09!
Out of scotch …wife bitching…going to bed!
Looking ahead…Blair, Young, Fields and Brown back next season looks good. Throw in Nasir Robinson and some new guards to watch and we could have a stellar season.
Anyways, Congrats to MSU. Thank you for a great year Pitt. Good Luck to Ramon and Benji, 2008 Big East Champions.
maybe next year…
5 point swing…the most important 3 all night that we needed and he was wide open for it.
Making that single shot on a lousy night (1-8) would have put us down to 2 with about 1:30 left I think.
Wow I still can’t believe he didn’t make a single 3
DaveD
Hate Neitzel and Goran. Oh, Izzo too.
yet despite this loss, no one can take from us what we have accomplished this season – pitt went from being a final four contender to an nit bid back to bob knight’s tournament champ in the span of three months – when everyone wanted to write us off (including myself), jamie dixon and the players refused to allow their season to end and in doing so gave the university, the fans and the city something to believe in
do i wish we had won? absolutely – but not for one moment can we discredit the coaches or the players because despite all the frustrations, all the painful losses, this has been and will always remain one of pitt’s most storied seasons
until next season . . .
HAIL TO PITT!
oh and.. FUCK those refs!!
(at least we didn’t get beat like Texas A & M just did by UCLA… shit, there goes my bracket.)
You know, the guy who will just rain threes on you no matter what. Guys in his face, no problem. You want to reach through your TV and punch guys like that when they’re on the other team.
Ramon was supposed to be that guy for us when he came in, and don’t get me wrong he had a decent college career with us, but he was never that guy. I like Ron and it’s sad to see him leave after a terrible performance like tonight’s.
Fields is all heart. He was Gary Robers and Hines Ward combined out there (sorry for the Pens/Steeler reference). I was scared for next year when he went down late, but he got back up…. kids like him always get back up.
Blair is young and he’ll get better. He seemed to be missing a lot of stuff under the basket. That seemed to happen with Aaron Gray late in seasons too when he played for Pitt. The difference is Gray was a Jr/Sr. while Blair’s still a freshman. He’s going to make us all happy fans before it’s said and done.
I look forward to seeing Gilbert Brown progress. And I really hope Sam Young stays. If he feels he can get the money and leave, I don’t blame him though.
This was supposed to be a an “off year” for us, and it turned out to be a roller coaster.
High when we beat Duke in the Garden, low when Cook goes down then Fields in the Dayton blowout. High when we kill Georgetown without Fields, low when we slump later on in conference play. High when Fields gets back to normal and we rampage through the Big East tourney, low when the ride finally crashes tonight against Michigan State.
If there was one thing you can say about this season, it wasn’t boring!
We’ll be back (and hopefully Sam Young will be too) and we’ll be deeper and more experienced. This one hurts, but it feels more like a beginning than an end.
That being said, if Pitt has better possessions down the stretch they could have won a game in which they shot 32 percent from the field. Still, we all know this wasn’t a Final Four team and they got a Big East title out of the season. Benjamin had a great senior year and it sucks Ramon’s last game was this bad, but he played great in the BE Tourney and had a great career. Even if he makes one of those open 3s, it’s a different game and I know that will kill him, but they weren’t going to beat Memphis in the next round.
But, I am SICK AND TIRED of watching us lose in Round 1, 2 or 3. Yes, I realize that things could be worse. We could be cheering for PSU basketball. Instead, we are cheering for a fine program in Pitt. But, dammit! Why can’t we win when it counts? I am WAITING for Pitt to live up to it’s potential.
OK…..maybe that rant got it out of my system. We don’t have the All-American High Schoolers coming to Pitt for basketball. We have to survive on the second tier….but still, I am frustrated. I don’t want to think of ‘next year’. I just want to open up another adult beverage and wallow (vicariously) in the pain my team must be feeling.
I’m not even goign to complain about the refs, we should be better than a handful of bad calls. How can any team win a game when their shooting guard can’t shoot? MSU realized in the second half that Fields was the only option and played D on him. The dared us to shoot WIDE OPEN SHOTS all night, and no one could make them. Thier shooting guard was hammering shots falling sideways, hands in his face, etc. It wasn’t even that awful of D on him. Its the same old story. 6/7ths of the team goes cold, we lose. End of story. I just want to know when i can stop watching this same game over and over and over again.
And, again, the MFing Hoopies go further in the big dance than we do. I can’t stand it. Just can’t stand it.
Good night. Fuck Neitzel, and that freshman.
I think my post above said it all. They had heart, it didn’t pan out in the end, but they had heart. You can’t ask for too much more than that (well, other than a championship finally!!! haha)
Ironic thing was that we nailed our free throws all night and still lost! Weren’t we sure that ft’s could be our undoing in the tourney after we won the BE tourney?
We’re good year in and year out and can’t get past the Sweet 16, yet they show up once every 3 years and do better than us.
BTW – both teams shot 52 times. We also got to the line twice as many times. We just could not hit a goddamn thing. Unreal. Actually, completely real, i’ve seen this before.
And what do you do about the BE tourney? 7 of the last 10 national champs have also won their conference tournies. The last time we lost in the first round, we did the same thing in the NCAAs. We shouldn’t be tired. We weren’t friday. We weren’t 4 days in a row. We just shot like shit.
- I still like Pitt.
- Ramon had a way better season this year I (or anyone else) expected.
- I hope Sam Young sticks around for his senior year.
- Dixon is the coach for Pitt. He should get a lifetime contract (this will get heads boiling!).
- Wanny is ok with me.
- I don’t like WVU or PSU.
- The way I fill out my bracket is too emotionally tied.
- Beer is tasty to munch on.
- PittBlather.com not being available earlier today really upset me.
- My Oakland Zoo tshirt is obnoxiously bad luck. What gives?
- I am done with this list.
Hail to Pitt. Fair play to Michigan State.
-Dez
How can you think about Pitt football? That just more misery for me(except for beating WVU of course).
Press conf on Fox right now
Go Girls!!
Blair nor Young is ready for NBA. Come one, neither is polished enough for that.
Pitt needs a go to scored. Dixon has yet to win the game in the tourney that the country considers Pitt has made it. Pitt needs a big time recruit to finish the deal.
Credit to Neitzel and MSU.
- Revenge against GTown in the Big East Final.
- UCONN wins nothing and loses in the first round.
- Syracuse misses the tourney again thanks to a ridiculous loss at home to Pitt.
- The program’s second Big East Tourney title in five years and 7th Finals appearance in 8.
Awesome.
- I’d like Pitt better if they didn’t choke on the national stage every year
- Ramon was better this year, and the team was better for it, but for all his heart and grit, he was ultimately inconsistent and I’m not overly sad to see him go.
- Sam should do what is best for Sam. I’d like to see him stay, but after witnessing what happened to Cook first hand, I wouldn’t blame him for bolting.
- Dixon is the coach for Pitt. Or maybe he isn’t. I don’t really care at this point. If he leaves, I don’t think a guy like Miller would do worse.
- Wanny still has a lot to prove.
- I don’t like WVU either, but once again they march further into the dance than we do.
- I’ve learned my lesson about emotional brackets, and I’m really glad I picked MSU in my bracket. I knew we’d get Izzo’d.
- Beer IS tasty to munch on. Bourbon is tastier.
- PittBlather.com rocks.
- My Oakland Zoo T-shirt no longer fits (see tasty beer comment).
- I’m going to bed.
Hail to Pitt.
The starting 5 next year
Fields, Brown, Young, Blair and Wallace/Biggs/Robinson. Not bad.
Hail to Pitt. Lets just hope the football team can start performing.
Our 2 freshman scored 3.5x as many points as our 2 seniors. Our top 2 juniors scored 8.5x as much as our 2 seniors. We may be in for a little rought start with a lack of depth next year, but we’ll be much better by the end of the year.
Biggs and Wannamaker better take that ass to the gym/court over the summer, and drag McGhee with them. We’re going to need someone that can do something off the bench. The only weak link of the starters may be Biggs, unless he plays like he did last week every game.
Or we need one of the freshman to come in and be a legitimate, CONSISTENT threat at the 2.
I wonder whos gonna be the starting QB?
But I just don’t know how a team can miss so many open looks like that.
Can you honestly blame it on playing too many games the past week? or playing at 5,000 feet!?!?
If their nerves were getting to them too much, how come they hit so many foul shots?
I’m just sick and tired of PITT beating THEMSELVES in the tournament.
As someone commented earlier, we just witnessed a very PEDESTRIAN team of MSU beat us on national TV because they hit their shots when push came to shove.
I was worried all day (contrary to my first post in this thread) that a Neitzel who went 1/8 all of two nights ago, would light us up when it meant most to his team, and of course it happened.
I’m going to bed, good season, good night.
Young – 1 rebound. Nuff said.
Great season guys.
Sam, please come back next year!!!
Everyone else, keep it up. Pittsburgh is finally gaining some respect from the basketball world.
Gary and Brad, please don’t think I’m too creepy for busting into your room intoxicated on St. Patrick’s Day!!! haha
Looking forward to next season. Hail to Pitt!
If Sammie has dreams of going to the NBA, last night showed he is not ready.
I too went to the game, in short they laid an egg over the last 9 minutes of the game.
They had open looks, they beat themselves by shooting poorly
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/clubhouse?teamId=221
…it’s not my intention to rub salt into our wound, but FCS the guy sounds like a GD prophet.
The site says this about Robinson “Slightly undersized, Robinson does not appear to be a low-post terror. Watch him in action, a different opinion will form. Despite playing against players at least two inches taller, he is a rebounding machine. Averaged 17.1 points, 11.3 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 1.6 steals and 1.1 blocked shots heading in the PIAA Class AAAA state playoffs.”
256 more minutes
3 more FG made
7 less 3s
16 less points
His defensive stats improved, but he was brought onto the team to be a pure shooter. He never provided the offense this year that we thought he would.
Then again, he was invaluable in some games. If not for him, we may have been swept by WVU.
Nevertheless, I don’t think he met expectations.
I’m already looking forward to football and hoops 2008-2009.
People talk about physical play in the BE, but nobody in the BE puts that many big bodies on the court at Pitt faced last night. G-town has Hibbert and Pitino plays Padgett OR Caracter, and Adrien plays alongside Thabeet, but nobody has a front line like Izzo put out there.
Suton could have posted Young all night and Blair had a ton of trouble shooting over whoever was near him. You combine that with some hot Neitzel shooting (which has been missing most of this year) and Pitt was in trouble.
I’ll take a BE championship any year, though, so I consider it a very successful campaign given the team Dixon had.
I’ll give him a ton of credit for winning as many games as they did with Blair basically playing alone inside. I mean, what were Young and especially Benjamin supposed to do in the lane last night with all the big bodies around them?
He needs to get some front-line recruits in to support DeJuan now. He got desperate with Diggs and McGhee and they’re not the answer, but I can see why he had to do that because Biggs and Wallace have been disappointments.
It’s no fun playing against a bigger, stronger team……..and I doubt Dixon wants to find himself in that situation again.
I certainly believe Pitt could have won more games in the NCAAs this year had they gotten a different 2nd Rd matchup, but eventually they were going to come up against a team that doesn’t have a 6’7″ center, a 6’6″ PF and a 6’1″ 3-man.
Looking at last night’s game in retrospect could Dixon have done some things different.
I know we are a man to man team but having your outside scoring threat (Ramon 50% from 3-pt range) cover their little gnat nietzel man to man after playing 6 games in in 10 days seemed to be a bad call.
It appeared to me that once the outside perimeter threat appeared non-existent the MSU team collapsed the inside and made a very good defensive team look great.
Could Dixon have implemented a zone to give Ramon some rest?
Could they have decided to man up Nietzel with someone else? If so who?
It seemed like a tactical decision…
btw, do you think Sam Young’s poor performance bought us one more year?
thanks,
DaveD
PS…wow what a lousy night to make matters worse during the game I am eating dinner and I was getting so frustrated I nearly bit my tongue off…talk about adding salt to the wound 
Scottie, nice post.
I hope JD spends the rest of the spring and summer getting these guys into shape. 4 games in 4 days should not be a factor going into the NCAA’s. These are 18-21 year-olds who grew up playing 4 games in one day in AAU ball.
Just look at AG all of last year or most of his Pitt career for that matter. “Lumbering” comes to mind. Then he gets himself into phenomenal shape to enter the NBA draft.
We didn’t get beat by a better team yesterday. We got beat by a better conditioned team. They had their legs, we lost ours. It’s not like we even had a full practice on Friday. They watched film and had a shoot-around and obviously worked on their free throws.
All of our losses in the NCAA’s the past few years we’ve been flat and slow. This has to stop and if JD wants to make a run prepare the players to run a marathon by training to run 2.
Great season however. BE Champs is great for this team and they should hold their heads high.
Spring practice here we come.
Being the BE champs is nice but a deeper run into the tourney is something we all want.
Nietzel worked for his shots and he converted with someone in his face, also we had poor shot selection, wait until next year…..
Hell I went to the game, talk about a rocky mountain let down….
1. Thank you Keith and Ronnie for believing in PITT…great careers, thank You!
2. Michigan State put a lot of people on the floor and they hit the boards hard. They wore us down, plus the altitude (and playing only 7 bodies) all add up to a team that played hard, but just ran out of gas. The shots that continually hit the front of the iron are usually (not always) indicative of not getting the jump in the legs. Regardless, they never quit.
3. We had 4 assists, not a hallmark of a passing team. Too often, we had little motion in the offensive flow…again, that might be just due to tired legs.
4.I do look forward to next year for the men, and wish the women all the best the rest of the way.
5. It was a good year, filled with great highs, and tough lows (the injuries and last night’s loss)….but in the end, these are our Panthers, and I love them!
6. Again, thank you Ronnie and Keith..and best wishes in whatever you do in life…you are always PITT Panthers!
Hail to PITT!
-al-
A zone defense would not have worked for us- Neitzel would have shot all over it, and we would have been outrebounded worse. I was thinking the switching defense we ran against Vaughn in the BE tourney, but that may not have worked with Neitzel zipping in and out. I think we just played the best D we could and weren’t tall enough to rebound and not big/deep enough to box them out.
Great run though, team. Thanks!
These kids grow up playing multiple games a day in AAU. The fact is, demanding practices should always be tougher physically than games. Games are the fun part where the exhausting practices pay off.
These tournament games are 40 mins of ball broken up by about 25 interruptions for TV timeouts, coaches timeouts and halftime. Unless you’re playing a team like Tennessee, it’s hard to break a sweat during one of these half-court games.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/sports/high_school/rankings/basketball-ranking.html
For everyone who thinks that being tired had something to do with it, were they tired every other game where they couldn’t hit any of there threes? I doubt it. I just think we don’t have good enough shooters to be consistent game in and game out when it comes to knocking down shots. I could be wrong, but it seemed like most of our losses came when we couldn’t hit our shots.
Going 18-19 from the line doesn’t seem like they were too tired either. And it’s extremely difficult to hit your fouls when you’re tired.
Im not sure what all this talk about “big men” and crap is. They had 4 guys in the lane bothering Blairs shots – thats why he was missing “layups.” The problem is the lack of making a single jumpshot the entire night.
I think our two biggest problems next year are A) a repeat of this performance cause we have no shooting guard as far as i can tell, and B) no depth after our front line. Who here wants to see a McGhee, Wannamaker, some freshman, and a JC transfer as your bench?
We better pray our starting 5 are ready to play 40 minutes a piece. They will be as good as any other starting 5 in the nation, but after that…ugh.
I’m just pissed off we went out this way. Why couldn’t we just get beat by a memphis or a UCLA? I sure as hell wasn’t pissed off like this last year. This game was just disgusting. Miss 800 open shots…awful…we beat ourselves to death.
They packed in the lane, fouled us if we drove, and let us shoot wide open jumpers (except fields). We just sucked ass.
Maybe we should have switched Fields to the 2 and had Ramon run the point…he’s the backup PG anyways, and was worthless at shooting…other than that, i have no idea how to deal with what we saw. You just don’t get better looks than we got all night. You just don’t…
Lets go Pitt!!!