A couple things I forgot to include in the basketball post from earlier.

Once again, the free throw shooting in the final minute played a role in making the game tighter than it should have been. With a minute left, Pitt had a 9 point lead, 70-61. Pitt shot 4-8 on free throws down the stretch. Dante Taylor was fouled and missed both FTs. Then Nasir Robinson went only 1-2 when he was fouled.

The good news, was that Pitt worked harder to make sure Ashton Gibbs got the ball in his hands in the next possession. Gibbs, in fact, took the last four free throws. As we saw in the Tennessee game, the struggle with FTs made the final score tighter than it needed to be. Just going to have to keep sweating that for a while longer.

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Coach Dixon sounds the realistic and optimistic thoughts after the win over Oklahoma State.

“We have work to do,” Dixon said after the Oklahoma State game. “This is a good win, but we have a lot of work to do. I look forward to this next week as we can try to get better. We have improved a lot. There’s no question about it. But we have a lot we can improve on.”

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“We’re off the radar because of our youth,” Dixon said. “We have six freshmen. It’s understandable. We didn’t want to be one of those elite teams in November. We want to be one of those teams late in the year.”

It wasn’t a great win, but another good win. We are seeing players make strides. Some are stumbling. It is all still, very uneven. So say it with me again: “Progress and improvement are not straight lines.”

Sophomore forward Lamar Patterson, a first-year starter, believes the Panthers are close to becoming a team that can control games from start to finish.

“I feel it,” Patterson said. “You can see it on the court. We have little [spurts] where you can see our potential. You can see how dominant we can be. Just being able to do that throughout the game, that will come with more experience and guys getting on the court more. We have so much potential. We’re just going to keep working.”

You can see some players like Lamar Patterson and Dante Taylor are finding a level of comfort right now. A better sense of how they should be playing and awareness of what they can and cannot do.

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