Final game at the Pete for the season. Aaron Donald will be there.
Game is on ESPNU at 9pm. Mike Patrick and LaPhonso Ellis calling the game.
Not sure what kind of effort will be coming from the Wolfpack. Obviously not the effort they gave versus UNC last week. Or Syracuse the week before. They likely won’t be as pathetic as they were in the games immediately after those losses.
N.C. State (17-12, 7-9 ACC) will play at Pittsburgh on Monday after a sobering letdown in an 85-70 home loss to Miami on Saturday.
The Wolfpack poured everything into Wednesday’s game against North Carolina, an 85-84 overtime loss, but couldn’t duplicate the effort against the struggling Hurricanes.
Gottfried understood those challenges before the season. He had talked to his team about the danger of Saturday’s game with Miami.
He saw the same pattern after a difficult loss to Syracuse on Feb. 15. The Wolfpack couldn’t avoid some of the same issues that cost it a 73-56 loss at Clemson after the Syracuse game.
At this point, the goal for NC State is to finish at .500 in conference play. They end the season at home against BC, so this should be a big deal for them.
It’s obviously a big deal for Pitt. Especially for the seniors.
“We will be ready, we need to rest up and get our bodies right,” Patterson said after the Panthers beat Notre Dame, 85-81, Saturday in overtime. “This means a lot, my last home game, last game at the Pete. I want to make sure we go out with a ‘W.’ I let Pittsburgh down with a loss on senior night so why not go out and get a ‘W’ in our last game at the Pete.”
Coach Dixon is also bothered by the play of Pitt at home.
Coach Jamie Dixon said he believes the best way to honor his senior stars is by winning their final game before a pro-Panthers crowd at the Pete.
“It’s the last home game. It’s not senior night, but in a lot of ways, it is,” Dixon said. “Most importantly, we have not played as well at home as we have on the road. To me, that’s got to change. We’re 6-2 on the road and 4-4 at home, and that’s never been the case with Pitt. We’ve got to get that changed. We can’t deal with what’s past, but we can deal with what’s in the future. We’ve got to go and play well.”
As usual, Coach Dixon looks to rebounding as being key.
As inconsistent as NC State has been, T.J. Warren has been the one constant. Even when the rest of the Wolfpack was mailing it in against Miami, Warren went for 20 points and 7 boards. He will get his points. Pitt has to do what they did last time with him. Which was make him work for it and have to take a lot more shots to get them.
NC State to be successful needs to attack the basket. Pitt will probably be playing a fair amount of zone to limit their penetration. Just as they did in the first meeting. Their frontcourt is still playing raw, and their 3-point shooting is actually more inconsistent than Pitt’s.
The facts are these. Every year Dixon has coached, we have been the kings of December and early January and looked tired And less enthusiastic in Feb and March. Record reflects that. And here we are again!
It may be the change in refereeing, anyone that breathed hard on Warren got called.
So you have to factor that into the recruiting. If he stayed well it was a bonus.
His answer was signing a stiff and a cripple in desperation.
I just don’t see Young playing the 5, it would be a real waste of his talent and shooting ability.
Adams told Dixon he was gone in late March, early April. After he went to Australia after we flamed out of the NCAA’s.
Uchebo wasn’t signed until May 6th.
Sometimes I think we are being unreasonable, If this team makes the tournament, then Dixon has still only missed it once in his tenure.
But I don’t think anyone can say there aren’t some legitimate concerns and there is evidence this program has become stagnant.
Dixon set the bar high, and as fans we want more. Everything is there for this program to be a consistent top tier program.
I hope Dixon sees what some of us do, and looks for ways to get this program to where it can go.
I haven’t given up. I still think we have a good coach, who wants to be here and isn’t looking for his next job.
The next few years are very important to this program and for Jamie Dixon…
We are not DUKE, NC, Kansas, or Kentucky yet and have yet to recruit the same type of players those schools get year in and year out and yet this team has shown it can play with anyone in the country and has had a shot of winning most of games we lost. Many of you complained about the SOS early in the year and yet it seems you bought into those early wins with this team.
We lost a very good player Durand Johnson to injury not to mention that JJ Moore & Steve Adams both left. We have 3 freshmen playing considerable time because of this and Zana is NOT really a center. At the start of the season to make the tourney with this team would look like a good coaching job and yet people on here want to blame Jamie Dixon for every loss and expect to win every game.
I feel very confident in saying that Jamie will have a Pitt team in the final four in the next 4 years. We will get the foul call, or the last second 3, or have a guy in the zone at tourney time.
If your pissed I get it I think ALL Pitt fans are are but coming down on the program and the best coach in it’s history (JD is that guy) isn’t going to put anymore points on the board or remove the L off the record so what’s the point?
Good post man. Sometimes I think we’re spoiled.
The one thing you said though, the no NBA players on the roster. That is what a lot of us can’t grasp. This program should be able to attract more of those types of players. whether it is Jamie not wanting to go after that kind of kid, or that kind of kid not wanting to play in this system is the question.
The bottom line is, Pitt needs better players. There are times where it is so apparent we just don’t have the athletes some of the other teams in our conference has.
I have always believed it was just a matter of time before Dixon got this team to the final four. I have to admit I”m not as sure anymore.
Said it in my previous post, next few years are very important for Dixon and this program…
Let the bubble talk begin.
Better Win in Clemson and get one win in ACC or it is NIT.
Hindsight being 20/20, I would have liked to have seen Jamie come out of the zone quicker and let Young/Artis try to force Warren to put it on the floor and drive, where maybe they could have had some help.
No excuse for the lack of offensive rebounds, though.
Dixon deserves praise for sustaining the core & vibe that kept Pitt relevant in the BE; however now he’s challenged to resurrect the program as an outsider in new conference. I don’t think he knows how to use a new model, the kids he has now don’t play defense not because they can’t, because they don’t want to. Everything about Dixon is trending down. I think its more likely in 4 years we’ll look back at the blown opportunities v Villanova and Butler as the Dixon era highpoints.
Durand was the closest thing we had to a top talent athletically but they made him the 6th man. That is the JD way.
Outrebounded by 16 to one of the worst rebounding teams in the conference? That’s where I think the game was lost.
I am not giving up on this team. But after last night my mind started to wander to the question: will we be better, the same, or worse next year?
You want Pitt to recruit elite talent but then you don’t realize that sometimes it will make you leaving. Birch leaving is the killer. If Birch was on Pitt, then Pitt would be a legit contender this year. It’s not Dixon’s fault Birch left. He left because the guy who recruited him wasn’t’ there. But say Dixon would have recruited a Chevy type guy instead, most of you would have said blah he’s not elite, but that kind of player would have helped this year’s team a lot. You can’t have it both ways. When you start recruiting elite talent you are going to have bigger swings in performance.
Pitt could make the Final Four in 2015-2016 really easily. 2015 is going to be a really good class, JR and DJ will be seniors and all the Freshman will be battle tested Juniors. 2016
I think James Robinson slows down the offense more than Dixon does. James Robinson was in foul trouble most of last night and there was rarely any burn down the clock. Newkirk will push Robinson a ton. Robinson better work on his game this offseason.
Jp, since I always pay extra attention when DJ is in the games, DJ was not ready to start until right before he got hurt. His freshman year and the start of this year he was mistake prone and a bit of a gunner. But then something clicked and right before he got hurt he was doing all the little things. I actually liked DJ coming off the bench because he gave the team instant offense. Starting doesn’t matter, minutes are what really matter.
Pitt is on the bubble according to USA Today but as someone on this blog mentioned, USA Today is the least reliable sports prognosticator and should not be taken seriously. But…
Been that way for about 3 years now. Don’t know why.
Like they’re in a trance.
Thanks Mr. Obvious. The Pitt teams haven’t been as good as they have been in the past.
Hence, we lose more games, even at home.
Some real genius’ out there.
It’s a game. It has to be fun, you have to have confidence that the next possession, the next shot, the next defensive stop is going to be successful. You could see the tension rise again last night when Warren got nuclear hot in the second half. Every shot he took was done confidently. Then the other NCSU guards started stepping into their shots and the dam was broke.
Pitt conversely continued to tighten. Lamar was frustrated at the foul line, the defense grew frustrated with every made shot by Warren, then on offense they started to pass up on open looks in search of the “perfect play” that rarely materialized.
The mojo is lost. It’s up to the team leaders and the coaches to find it. PDQ.
We could actually benefit from sliding a seed or 2 at this point.
@SOS – if we slide a seed or 2 at this point, we suddenly move to a line on the NIT brackets.
1 – 2 (lose to Clemson, win one ACC tourney game)?
1 – 1 (beat Clemson, lose first ACC tourney game)?
I think if we go 2 – 2 we are in, and in for anything better than that. I think we are out if 0 – 2.
So those two are the question.
The bigger question is; does it even matter? I don’t see them doing much damage in either the NIT or the NCAA.
His numbers at Fairfield. For a scrub scrub team that is 7 wins 24 losses.
Gilbert is avg’g 2.6 ppg and 2.8 rpg in 27 games.
You can have 1 year where you miss some, but as our upper classmen suggest after this year, it’s been several years of recruiting blunders. Doesn’t take long for a program to tumble in hoops.