Syracuse has never played with a deep bench. They have always relied heavily on a starting five, with maybe two — three if lucky — players off the bench. This year, Syracuse only goes about seven deep after Moustapha Diagne failed to qualify academically (Pitt is now actively pursuing the power forward).

Pitt forgot for large swaths of the game to exploit the lack of depth, and especially the soft gooey center of the zone, but came back to it late in the second half to retake control of the game and get the win, 72-61.

Pitt had one of those cold stretches that haunted them frequently in the previous year. In the final six minutes of the first half, Pitt went 1-8 from the field. Resulting in a tie game at the half. Pitt then started the next six plus minutes of the second half going an abysmal 2-10 (including Jamel Artis missing two free throws).

3-18 shooting over nearly 13 minutes, and Pitt was only down 8 points. Pitt shot 11-17 (9-10 on 2-point shots) the rest of the way, and truly decimated the inside of Syracuse’s zone.

Jamel Artis backed up all the zone-buster talk.

“This should be my game, we should have a great game, we should win,” Artis said. “I just know what to do against the zone, I try to get in the middle and we have open shooters and if they decide to cheat out on them, I pass it inside or I can hit my shot.

“It is basically I make good decisions and can look away guys and pass the ball. I think I’m very good at that and my guys believe in me and I can get them the ball in the right spots.”

That was exactly what he did.

To paraphrase Ice Cube:

“Get him on the court and he’s trouble, last night Jamel Artis nearly had a triple-double….”

Artis had 18 points, nine rebound and eight assists – he had one of the best no-look passes to the baseline for an assist to Michael Young and hit a bomb of a 3-pointer down the stretch as well.

He was pretty spectacular all night on both ends, to be honest, and that is saying something because Artis has been, ahem, known to take a possession or two off on defense.

I’ll slightly disagree with the defensive assessment. His defense was what it usually is. Tolerable at times, but prone to major lapses.

I honestly don’t think it comes from “taking a possession off,” so much as the hypnotic lure of that shiny orange rock. He sees an opposing player with the ball, and just starts drifting that way. Moving out of position (or if in a zone defense, space) and letting his guy either get a clean look or cut right to the basket for the easy score. I really think, that he believes he is helping when he does that. Defense is not his strength.

It speaks such volume for his offensive game, that he has always played the minutes he does in spite of his defensive struggles. Given Coach Jamie Dixon’s utilization of statistics, you just know he’s done the math and concluded that Artis’ output on offense outweighs what he gives up on defense.

Syracuse could only shake their head at all the second chance points Pitt had via offensive rebounds.

The Panthers pounded the offensive glass, hauling in 19 rebounds off their own missed shots. Those offensive boards resulted in 22 second-chance points. Syracuse, meanwhile, managed just two second-chance points.

“Obviously, being out-rebounded by 18 and 22 second-chance points ends up being the game,” Syracuse head coach designate Mike Hopkins said. “At the end of the day, the story was the 22-to-2 on second-chance points.”

19 offensive rebounds was a season high for Pitt. Aided by some really bad shooting from outside. Only 6-23 as a team, as Sterling Smith and James Robinson have noticeably cooled from the perimeter in the past two games (combined 4-27 — yeep).

The offensive rebounding effort was by special design — I mean beyond Dixon always harping on rebounding.

“Like I have said, if we are not making shots, a big part of our offense has to be rebounding, especially against a zone,” Dixon said. “When you have 19 offensive rebounds, that makes a big difference. I thought down the stretch we played more inside-out, that was something we talked about all week.

“We made the one adjustment of having [guards] Sterling [Smith] and Chris [Jones] crash down and it helped as they got a few offensive rebounds themselves, but also tipped the ball to help someone else get the offensive rebound. We have to get second-chance opportunities against them and we did.”

Pitt got solid contributions off the bench. Sheldon Jeter had a late game explosion to break what had been a close game into a double-digit win. Jeter was 2-7 in the first half, but scored all seven of his second half points in the final three minutes. With two thunderous dunks that electrified the Pete and Pitt partisans everywhere. He also very quietly grabbed 9 rebounds. Doing work inside.

Chris Jones also deserves some love for his game. He gave Pitt some surprisingly good defense, and came up big on offense when his opportunities came. 10 points on 3-5 shooting (2-4 on 3s) with that huge offensive rebound and putback to give Pitt the 60-59 lead that they never gave back afterwards.

If you can call 15 points and 7 rebounds a quiet game, then that is what Mike Young had last night. He was there. He was quietly effective and it was somehow not noticed among everything else. Which speaks more to how good Mike Young has become, that this was a quiet night for him.