Both papers had stories on the good health of the team this year. Well, yeah.
Luke Winn isn’t picking a winner yet for the NCAA Tournament, but has a top-3 that you should lean towards.
4. Are you a Pitt person, a UConn person or a Carolina person? Those are the only three teams I’d advise picking to win the national championship in your bracket. Vegas still views it as the Tar Heels’ title to lose — it likes them more than three times as much it as it likes the Panthers — but all three are viable options. Which one you pick is a matter of taste: Pitt is a tough, offensive-rebounding monster that can look vulnerable if DeJuan Blair gets in foul trouble; UConn is an athletic, shot-blocking force that’s the stingiest team of the three, but is missing its best perimeter defender, Jerome Dyson; Carolina is a high-octane scoring machine that’s prone to huge lapses in its perimeter D. As of now I’m a UConn person, because I tend to side with the superior defense … but I reserve the right to change tastes before my bracket is filled.
Bob Knight breaks down Pitt’s poor rebounding when Blair is out.
Brandin Knight doesn’t want to hear crap from people.
Nevertheless, skeptics remain. When asked if Pitt needs to advance beyond the Sweet 16 for the season to be considered a success, Knight nearly recoiled from the question.
“Everybody now is like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m a Pitt fan.’ You might have been a Pitt fan up until Charles Smith and those guys left, and then when things got bad you weren’t a fan anymore,” said Knight, 27. “Now, when you come back when things are going well, as soon as things get a little rocky, those are the people that turn around and are like, ‘Same old Pitt.’
“Everybody has their opinions. For some people, we have to get past the Sweet 16. Well, we have to get past the first round and the second round to get to the Sweet 16. Just getting past the Sweet 16 wouldn’t take this program to the next level. We want to win every game, and we don’t focus more on the Big East Tournament and just throw away the NCAA Tournament. We’re dedicated to winning every game.”
Love that. It just tells you how much the program means to Knight.
For all those wondering what Pitt was doing to get ready to deal with the press and teams trying to strip Pitt.
Pitt has averaged 20.5 turnovers in its past two games, and handling full-court pressure was a focal point at Monday’s practice. The whistles were put away.
“Coach Dixon told the press team to hack us and see how we are going to react,” guard Jermaine Dixon said. “We know we’ve got to cut down on the turnovers.”
Coach Dixon was apparently annoyed that the team spent too much time after turnovers whining at the officials. Let a team like Seton Hall chirp constantly. All it got them was 3 technicals in one game.
The ND, UNC and Dukes of the world wins pretty with their high octane scoring and fast-paced offense, but as we seen, they can be susceptible more than Pitt or UConn can.
An analogy could be the Big 12 South in football this past year. Great style points during the season but when they played real defenses,like in the bowl games, none of them excelled. UNC certianly has the talent to win it all and I wouldn’t be totally surprised if they did … however, I think it should be obvious that the field this year is wide open.
Or else, regardless of the notoriety the team achieves in terms of press clippings, rankings, or Big East Tourney success, look for the inevitable loss to validate their negativity towards Pitt and Coach Dixon.
I find the Vegas respect and the media attention absolutely amazing. Pitt has gone, all in the last couple of months, from a team that got NO national respect, to a team that gets maybe too much. All this for a program that, for all its wins, hasn’t gotten past the Sweet 16.
Don’t know about you guys, but I’d much rather fly under the radar, at least until having been to a couple Final 4s.
I hope Brandin wasn’t talking about Chas and the rest of us who take part here. We’ve been loyal through thick and thin.
I recall with pride the ’74 SI story about our local talent.
When the Big East came calling for a Pgh team in early 80s, they had to decide between Pitt and Duquesne. If Duquesne had the better program like they did back in late 60s (before Ridl), history could have been re-written and Duquesne would have probably joined the BE … wit Pitt stuck in A-8 (now A-10.)
Knight was just taking shots at the SLYs…”self loathing yinzers” – you know the type, they start whining when we go down 2-0 at the beginning of the game, when we’re down 5 at the half, and are just waiting for us not to win the NC to say exactly what he pointed out…”see, same old pitt”. Too bad having one of the highest winning percentages this decade, etc, is not good enough for these assholes because we haven’t been in the top 4 of a tourney yet. Its ridiculous.
They should all be George Mason fans.
For more history see:
link to en.wikipedia.org
(which would probably not even be listed if not for Buzz!)
Check out page D8 for a picture of the Oakland Zoo (“witty and effective but not vulgar”) and a piece on DeJuan. And they’re doing a liveblog during the game tonight.