Not the best effort in the second half. Hard to maintain that intensity when the game was so in control by Pitt. Akron had no size inside. Biggs, who seems to be getting a little more comfortable as a starter, grabbed a lot more rebounds — admittedly, more than a few came from his own misses (2-8). The big 3 were steady and as expected.

Jermaine Dixon after a great start to the season fell to the earth a bit in shooting. His defense on the perimeter stayed consistently strong.

Sprinkler problems before the game. I was unaware that Maurice Polen had transferred to IUP. So, there’s that along with former Pitt assistant, now HC Joe Lombardi, coming back to the Pete this afternoon.

Sam Young got ridiculous comparisons from Akron’s coach.

“Young reminds me of LeBron (James) a little bit,” Akron coach Keith Dambrot said. “Obviously, he’s not as good but with his quick-twitch ability and the way he gets to the basket. There’s some similarities.”

Dambrot coached James at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School. Dambrot got to know Young last night.

Young scored a game-high 26 points – 16 coming during a dominant first half – as the No. 6 Panthers (3-0) surged to a commanding 18-point halftime lead and cruised from there.

“I was a little more aggressive offensively,” Young said. “I knocked down a couple three’s and that set up the rest of my game.”

I love Young, but that’s just being silly. You no more compare Young to James than anyone ever should Vince Carter to Michael Jordan or Adam Morrison to Larry Bird. Just crazy talk.

Hard to believe Fields is saying he isn’t at 100% yet. He has looked excellent and like he’s been playing with the guys all through the fall.

While Coach Dixon wasn’t happy about the second half defense, he took the blame for it.

Dixon took some of the blame for the poor second half. He said his substitution patterns took the Panthers out of their game. Dixon once again liberally substituted his freshmen into the game at all times, which led to some of the team’s breakdowns in the final 20 minutes.

“I kind of took us out of our rhythm,” Dixon said.

“I took Levance out early. I tried something different. But to their credit, they just kept playing hard and kept battling and getting after it. They have tough kids.”

Young scored 16 of his points in the first half and led the charge to a 45-27 halftime advantage for Pitt. The Panthers built the lead to 21 points early in the second half before they lost their focus, according to Young.

“We played real good offense and defense in the first half,” Young said.

“It wasn’t until the second half where we got sloppy and lost focus when we were up by 20. We kind of lost our intensity. If the game was a little closer, we would have maintained our intensity and our motivation.”

That’s one of the reason the players have always played hard for Dixon. He will always do what he can to take the blame off of them. It’s been that way for him since he took over as head coach.

As for Akron, coming into the game their coach was already conceding.

”It is a good game for us. We will go in there, let our hair down and play,” UA coach Keith Dambrot said. ”We will try to win, but we are realistic. That’s one of the best teams in the country.

”It will be difficult to win. They are not going to lose many there. But in the long run, it will benefit us.”

Here’s the thing. There was a little playing up of the fact that Akron hadn’t beaten a top-25 team since the 80-81 season. The dirty secret is that Akron preferred not to play high majors. Even the Ohio papers knew that.

Too big, too strong, too quick, too fast. The No. 6 Pitt Panthers displayed all their wares to the Akron Zips Friday night in a disarmingly easy 86-67 victory that left Pitt undefeated on the season and the Zips literally and figuratively looking for a rebound.

It has been several seasons since Akron (2-1) has stepped up in class during the regular season to play a power conference team. Pittsburgh (3-0) was not a good choice to be reintroduced. By halftime, Pitt center DeJuan Blair already had 10 of his 13 rebounds, leading a board attack that left Akron behind, 29-9, by the break and 41-24 for the game.

Okay, that’s mostly it for b-ball talk today.