So, yeah there’s a basketball game tonight at 7. Eastern Kentucky comes to town. The Colonels are picked to be a middle-of-the pack team in the Ohio Valley Conference. They won their season opener against West Virginia Wesleyan (D-2) 102-71. They didn’t impress their own coach on defense and they have no player taller than 6-7.
That’s probably a good thing since Coach Dixon wants better rebounding from the Pitt players.
“We’re not worried about our height or size or anything,” Robinson said. “We just have to put a body on somebody and go rebound. Coach preaches about it every day in practice about how we have to outrebound our opponent. So I just try to focus on that, box out and beat my guy to the basket and grab the rebound.”
Some of the other issues have been inexperience and personnel changes. Wanamaker played mostly shooting guard his first two seasons, but he is playing small forward because of Gilbert Brown’s academic suspension. In Pitt’s offense, the small forwards crash the boards when the shot goes up and the shooting guard retreats to play defense in the event of a miss.
Wanamaker has admittedly had a tough time remembering to crash the boards. Getting the small forwards and guards to contribute more in the rebounding department is the main focus as the Panthers get ready to play Eastern Kentucky tonight in another non-conference game at the Petersen Events Center.
“We’ve played teams that have shot a lot of 3s, so there are a lot of long rebounds, and I don’t feel like we’re getting enough of those,” Dixon said. “But I’m always concerned about our rebounding. We’ve been the best rebounding team in the country in certain years and I’ve still been concerned about it. You’re never satisfied with rebounding or defense. We have to get our guards to rebound more, especially on the long 3s. [Binghamton] was taking deep 3s, and the guards have to get those.”
Coach Dixon had noted the problem rebounding by the guards right after the Binghamton rout.
