Home season opener in the Big East tonight. A New Years Day match-up with Cinci at 7pm. Lots of questions. Not sure if this is an absolute must win for Pitt, but it’s close.
Cinci seems to have come together after their brawl with Xavier — gutting out wins without big men. Going with 4 and even 5 guard line-ups at points. Doing whatever it takes.
Pitt is struggling mightily. Woodall will be a game time decision, as rushing back for the ND game seems not to have been the best choice. Ashton Gibbs, already having a rough year, is battling an ankle injury.
Travon Woodall is a gametime decision. Gibbs is expected to play. The real question, though, is whether the rest of the Pitt team shows up for 40 minutes.
It’s easy to put the blame on Gibbs. Or Taylor. Or teams exploiting Pitt’s weakness at point guard with Woodall out. But we are seeing breakdowns all over — and on both sides of the ball. Zanna had a solid enough offensive performance against ND, but was invisible defensively. Nas only had one rebound in the second half of the ND loss. Johnson and Wright are adding nothing on the offense. There is just a lot not working for Pitt right now. A lot that needs to be fixed.
So on that note, there will be a liveblog tonight. The game is on ESPN3.com, ESPN FullCourt, Root (formerly Fox Sports Pittsburgh), MSG, MASN, College Sports Southeast, FSN-Ohio, Cox-NO, Cox-NE, TW-WI and Altitude-2. Should be able find it somewhere.
Need big game from our bigs, as theirs are suspended. With Stillers on a 415 and students home on break, Pete won’t be “packed”. Someone wake Dante up and tell him we need a big game from him (Gates is out). Happy New Year. HTP
As you point out…maybe facetiously..I’m not sure we’ll be wanting for that great NY-area TV coverage of our Panthers. (As an aside, Comcast customers are now missing MSG coverage of EVERYTHING).
The BE sans Pitt and SYR will no doubt lose panache come 2035(?) when the BE cuts us loose. The addition of a Memphis or a Temple won’t make up for it. As you say, your SNYs and MSGs will likely be covering the ACC instead.
But here are 2 more timely topic: Why are the underclassmen Sleepy and Patterson becoming team spokespeople instead of the seniors?
and
Pitt guard Woodall will miss tonight’s Big East home opener
Sunday, January 01, 2012
By Ray Fittipaldo , Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pitt junior point guard Tray Woodall will not play in tonight’s Big East home opener against Cincinnati.
Woodall missed five consecutive games with an abdominal injury before returning for the conference opener at Notre Dame Tuesday night. Woodall did not recover well from that game, according to Pitt coach Jamie Dixon.
Senior Ashton Gibbs will start at point guard and Cameron Wright will start at shooting guard.
Read more: link to postgazette.com
Signs of panic, rushing injured players back into the lineup, as they did with Woody. They would have been better off not playing him until he was fully 100%, as I think I suggested BEFORE the ND game. Now his healing process has been interrupted and his recovery will take longer and he will miss even more games.
Since it was ONLY GAME 1 of the BigEAst season it made absolutely no sense to risk him. Not with the whole BigEast season in front of us. Not looking at the big picture here, the idea is to have him completely 100% for that stretch against the Top teams AFTER the first 4 easier games. And the end of the season and the BE tournament where you could, perhaps have a UConn like run.
Sometimes I wonder…….
steve, I remember about a year or so ago you were wishing that Pitt would join the ACC. The year 2011 was good to you. BTW, MSG is broadcasting the Pitt – Cinci game this evening out our way. No doubt MSG will load up on Pitt’s games when they actually begin to play in the ACC. My guess is SNY will follow suite: dump the BE basketball games in favor of the ACC. (The highly paid professionals at MSG and SNY undoubtedly follow this blog. They realize that viewers have no interest in viewing games played within a dysfunctional conference where a number of schools that have a basketball team in the league don’t also have a football team in the conference.)