Well, it looks like a good chance that Nasir Robinson will miss most of it. At Monday’s practice, Robinson tore the meniscus in his right knee. He had surgery to repair it today — he is apparently doing fine.
Robinson will be out three to six weeks. At the short end, he misses the first few games of the season. At the full six weeks, he wouldn’t return until maybe Maryland — Eastern Shore.
Robinson may be challenged offensively at times, with a shot that had many last year screaming, NO!” That said, he was one of Pitt’s most aggressive defenders and would get after things. Being undersized at power forward did not diminish his overall effectiveness in Pitt’s game.
The other side of this, is it opens the door for Talib Zanna, who seems to have made huge strides from his redshirt season.
The brow-raising performance came from redshirt freshman power forward Talib Zanna, who scored 15 points and grabbed nine rebounds to help the Blue team beat the Gold team, 66-52, at the Petersen Events Center.
Zanna, 6 feet 9 and 225 pounds, was 7 for 10 from the field and showed a nice touch around the basket.
“Talib is tough,” said Gibbs, who scored a game-high 22 points for the Blue team. “I think he’s one of our best rebounders. In practice last year he was doing some major things to our starters, so it’s not a surprise to us.”
His stand-out performance at the Blue-Gold scrimmage was echoed in the comments as well as the play of J.J. Richardson. So, there are expectations that Pitt won’t lose too much — other than experience — while Nas is out.
It’s just one more thing to watch closely during the first few weeks of the season as Pitt sorts out the rotation.
Other stories of note. This Basketball Prospectus write-up from Pitt at Big East media day: Coach Dixon trying to tamp down the hype, while the players embracing things.
Weekend feature on Coach Dixon and Pitt’s program that got totally obscured by the whole car accident stuff. Players coming back to finish their degree and spend time hanging out around the program.
This will probably hurt a bit on the defensive end, but the additional offense should make up for it. Plus Gilbert played the 4 almost exclusively last year, therefore he should be accustomed to defending the position.
Finally, this is early in the year. Nasir should be back in time for the Big East and March madness.
I agree that it will give others a chance to step up, and Jamie may find an unexpected star among the bunch.
Speedy recovery, Nas. Pitt will need your toughness in BE play for sure.
We scrimmage Northwood University of Florida Saturday. They are coached by a Big East classic head coach Rollie Massamino- a guy who managed to win a National Championship (without stumbling/driving around drunk, banging waitresses in backrooms, shoplifting, etc.). Tipoff is supposed to be at 2pm. I wonder if they will push that back because of the L’Ville game.?.?. Hopefully we can get some reports of how things go at The Pete.
Hope the surgery went well and that he has a full and speedy recovery.
I don’t see JJ Moore playing power forward this year, even with Robinson injured. There are still three players at that position ahead of him. But you never know. Sam Young played PF because the team was small and required rebounding contributions. Biggs was still a 6th man at that time…However, something to think about, an intriguing line up would be if Gilbert slides to 4 and JJ comes in at the 3. And say Gibbs at 2 and Woodall at point. That could be an exciting alley-oop and shooting fest.
I like Nas as a player because he is the epitome of the typical Pitt/JD player (undervalued, unddersized, underappreciated, overdelivering)…
Spinning this postively, it might be good to see our second tier players step up and develop for the future.
While it is hard to tell anything from one scrimmage, my first impressions of him were not great. He didn’t appear to be very big, quick or athletic. His shot looked ok, but he missed the couple of shots I saw him take. He didn’t have any great assists.
My first of impressions of Woodall from two years were that he didn’t belong in D1 basketball. I didn’t get that sense from Epps, but I certainly don’t expect him to contribute to a final four run this year. With the depth of this team and the fact that he missed the Ireland trip, I expect him to redshirt. I am sure he’ll develop over the next year and will be a solid player. Could he be the starter in 2012? Absolutely.
Boubacar Aw: Am I misreading this or are you including last year’s performance? If so, I’m VERY puzzled by that statement, because I can recall Jamie putting the ball in his hands a few times in critical last-minute situations and Woodall delivering. So one of the nation’s best coaches thinks he belongs in D1 baskeball, but you don’t? Just looking for some clarification or justification of that statement.
I know you follow these guys in the offseason more closely than most so if you think Epps may redshirt, I’m buying it.
Omar: Regardless of his age, he’ll need to make those off-court adjustments, like class work, to stay on the team. A redshirt year would be valuable there, and this would be the time to do it with the team being so deep. You may end up owing Boubacar Aw a beer.
