Okay late decision, but I’m doing the liveblog.
not making the extra pass, Blair trying too hard for his Steeler buddies, shooting too quick, and playing defense like the 1st half against DePaul — guys driving to the hole and a few wide open shots (how do you not cover Ruoff?)
they just had a great chance of making their 2nd half run but had 2 breakdowns on back to back defensive possessions
great win though
hail to pitt
Partial because WVU was hobbled equally by fouls.
The answer: Sam has to play within himself and within the system, as Fields said last night. He can’t do it ALL by himself.
Even if WVU hadn’t had foul trouble, this game still would have been won easily if the Panthers just make better decisions. Too many wasted trips down the court. They look so impressive at times, but they tend to lose focus and it allows the opponent to stay in the game.
Strong shooting from Wannamaker again. And Young was much better in the second half, playing with more control and picking up some rebounding slack.
This is a final four team, but they need to start remedying these problems – dumb fouls, poor decisions – if they are going to do it.
However, if you think we can without Blair next Monday against the likes of Thabeet and Adrian, you are being naive
Remember the good old days a couple yrs back when Sam Young got all his points on mid-range jumpers in the lane and on cuts and quick post-ups? Watching him force things from the perimeter now is painful. He’s great on the break, though. I wish he’d satisfy himself with letting others set him up in places where he’s a natural scorer…..like on the break and on the block and in the lane.
I guess we always knew it, but what’s become more and more apparent to me is how unremarkable a team Pitt is when Blair is on the bench. He just changes the game that much. When he’s out, Pitt’s not any better than 5 or 6 teams in the Big East and probably 25+ teams nationally. What an effect he has……it’s amazing.
I thought Fields was smart last night. Knew he had a freshman on him and took it to the hoop more because of Bryant and because WVU doesn’t block many shots. Unfortunately, he’ll have a much tougher time against smarter, quicker, more experienced guards on teams like UConn, Nova, Marquette and L-ville.
For me, anyway, Shulman, Bilas, and Raftery kept an ugly game interesting. When Raftery said of Blair, “You’d need a roll of quarters to get around a derriere like that”, and Bilas paused and said “I don’t think I want to know what that means….” — well, that’s stuff you don’t get from John Sanders and Bob Wenzel.
“It was a strange game,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “Their two best players were in foul trouble and two of our guys were. And yet we played through it. That’s a tough thing to play through, but we found a way.
“You have to find ways to win. You’re going to have guys in foul trouble. They did and we did. You have to find guys to step up, and we did.”
The difference was that Pitt had Sam Young to pick up the scoring slack, and the Mountaineers had no one capable of filling in their scoring gaps. Young scored 20 points and had seven rebounds to lead the Panthers. Fields came back strong and finished with 13 points and seven assists.
“When he’s playing within the offense the shots will be available and he plays much better,” Fields said of Young. “When he’s playing by himself, that’s where you see him struggle, when he deviates from the offense.”
What’s your problem?
2) It actually is a surprise how much Pitt struggles without him, because the Panthers are unusual, for a Top 10 team, in how little frontcourt depth they have. Biggs is an average rebounder (at best) and might be 6’6″, we all know McGhee’s limitations and it pretty much falls to Sam Young and the guards to grab rebounds when Blair is out. That makes “life without Blair” problematic. Dixon’s hands are tied — he has no athletic size to bring in off the bench to cover those periods when DeJuan is down. Normally there would be a green, but talented, freshman big man who could plug a hole for a few minutes and just concentrate on rebounding. Jamie has to coach without that contingency this year.
the whole winning without blair question would completely go away if Pitt could just get more production out of mcgee and biggs
Might be wishful thinking, though. Don’t want to project too much on what that kid could be. Assume Dixon’s holding him back for some good reason.
But against “better” teams, we should just save blair for the second half. Sit him once he gets one foul!
I know that really isn’t a good coaching move, but Blair really needs to understand his
importance.
I rather have Blair in the game when we are trying to close a team out late in the second half.
He is simply just amazing and at times just unstoppable.
he is a part of the team, and we need him, just as any other team needs thier stars. Our star just
happens to grab fouls. i do like how jamie kept him benched after his technical and didn’t put him
back in the game.
I can’t wait to see him against a much improved thabeet. Blair always tends to show up against the big
boys. Thabeet has really picked up his game and it should be a good battle. I think blair gets his
boards due to his bulk, but offensivly it seems like a challenge seeing how thabeet is blocking everybody
and thier mom.
He needs to watch some tape of Hansborough. (Not saying he is better or worse, but tyler draws
fouls and foul troulbe with him isn’t as big as a concern)
Also not looking ahead to Uconn,,, but Cinci is a tough athetlic team that presses, so I’m
glad we get some further experience against a team like that. Really work out our press breaking.
Considering how sloppy we handled it agaisnt nova and ville. And Vaughn is a complete beast, like to
see how jermaine handles him.
2 weeks ago after the Nova loss, I wrote a few posts on this site about Dixon stripping Dwight Miller’s redshirt because we have no real big man threat — yes, he is inexpereinced but is talented and athletic, and even if he is only able to get a key rebound or two (or FG or two) in a big game, whether it means a better seed or in a NCAA team, it may be worth it. Note that I hate see redshirts wasted (ala Dorin Dickerson) but since this team has a chance to go very far, it may be worth it. Another reason for getting Miller some experience is the possibility that Blair goes pro which would make McGhee the ONLY returning big man with any experieince.
Having said it, I realize that it won’t happen not to mention the fact that I assume that Jamie would do the correct thing.
Most Fouls Per Game Since 1996 (minimum of 500 games called)
1 Curtis Shaw 39.8 fouls per game, 1168 games
also on the crew,
58 Karl Hess 36.9, 966
72 Joe Lindsay 36.4, 641
Our old favorite Tim Higgins is #35
McGhee still has a long way to go, but I’m confident he’ll be a legitimate contributor before his time is up at Pitt.
On espn360, my son, who lives in Europe, had that problem too. He changed to a firefox browser, and it cleared up. espn online web support was very good too; they chat with you live.
If Blair gets into foul trouble against one of the better teams in the NCAA or Big East tournament, then Pitt will lose. Just like if Blake Griffin gets into foul trouble Oklahoma will lose and Duke with Gerald Henderson and Villanova with Cunningham and UCONN with Thabeet and Louisville with T-Will and Wake with Jeff Teague etc., etc. When a team loses their best player they aren’t as good. Is this insightful commentary? No, it isn’t. Pitt isn’t as good when their best players aren’t playing. No reason to analyze it, because it is a fact. Dejaun Blair starts for a reason. It’s up to him to stay out of foul trouble. He had two stupid fouls yesterday. He should no better
But I’m willing to bet that the Griffiths, Teagues, and Hendersons of the world are less likely to get in foul trouble tha Blair, and I’m pretty sure Thabeet probably hasn’t got whistled moe than 3 times in any game all year.
All I’m saying that if Blair goes out and we lose a close NCAA game, aren’t we going to second guess the redshiritn of Miller who the local PG writer says is athletic and has been practicing against Blair and Biggs since early December?
Blair has made some dumb fouls without a doubt, but he also has it a little tougher than Thabeet or Griffin being undersized.
thru 23 games, UConn has 1008 total rebounds — Thabeet 235 (23%) Adrien 232 (22%) Dyson 98 (9.7%)
The fact is we depend on Blair much more than UConn depends on Thabeet for rebounds and scoring but probably not as much as Griffith for Oklahoma
When he goes out, all the Panthers need is for some rebounding slack to be picked up. There is enough scoring punch on the rest of the team to survive some Blair-less minutes, but there isn’t enough size or rebounding to beat good teams when he’s out and that’s what deserves discussion.
How does Dixon get enough inside bench production to get by and why is he in a situation where he has nobody on the bench who can rebound and play D inside for 10 minutes?
