Advertisement

Pitt Wednesday News and Notes

By Paul Zeise 8 years ago

CORAL GABLES, FLA. –

No. 12 Miami 65, Pitt 63

Pitt: FG 43.5 pct, 3FG 23.1 pct, FT 100 pct, Rebs 35 (12 O), TOs 9

Miami: FG 45.1 pct, 3FG 30 pct, FT 72.2 pct, Rebs 29 (9 O), TOs 9

This was as disappointing of a loss as I can remember for the Panthers and mostly because they had a real opportunity to steal a road win against a ranked opponent and didn’t get it done.

Miami was really ripe for the upset here, the Hurricanes didn’t play well for long stretches of the game and slept walked through the first half – yet somehow they found a way to win.

That could come back to haunt the Panthers come March because this was the kind of win they needed to put their NCAA Tournament chances in a very good place.

Now, they still have to scramble because they are 0-4 against ranked opponents and because if you strip away your emotion and your attachment to this team and are honest about it, their resume is still a bit underwhelming.

Think about this – the Notre Dame win is definitely a plus and looks better each week but what is the Panthers second best win? Davidson at Madison Square Garden? At Florida State? Maybe Virginia Tech?

There just isn’t a lot to get excited about when trying to make an argument that this is an NCAA Tournament team because while I still think it can get there, it has to start to make a better case for itself.

Pitt is now 17-6 (6-5 in the ACC) and has seven games remaining – at North Carolina, at Syracuse, at Virginia Tech, at Georgia Tech and then home to Wake Forest, Louisville and Duke.

Obviously winning two of four on the road and two of three at home is a minimum, I think, for this team to even think about being an NCAA Tournament team given the nonconference schedule it played.

That would leave them at 21-9 (10-6) and though there have been teams from power conferences with 20+ wins and a winning conference record left out of the field, the Panthers RPI would likely be high enough that they would get in and be like a 10-seed or 11-seed.

But I don’t think that is a guarantee – I actually think the Panthers need to go 5-2 down the stretch to make sure they are a no-brainer and a lock.

Again, the good news is they have plenty of opportunities left -- because they are in a good conference – to notch some big wins but the reality is they are slowly but surely running out of time.

One other thing – people ask me all the time about what their chances of getting into the NCAA Tournament is and I say two things “they need to win games” (duh, captain obvious) and the other is “it depends on what everyone else is doing.”

Right now, the biggest thing in Pitt’s favor is that the bubble is full of a bunch of teams that aren’t very good and aren’t winning enough. And that’s a huge part of the Panthers chances, to be honest, as they will be compared to a lot of other teams who aren’t doing a lot, either

It is a long three or four weeks until the ACC Tournament so a lot can and will happen but Pitt missed an opportunity last night and now must get ready for another one Sunday at North Carolina.

Here are some News and Notes:

*** The most interesting development from the game was the Panthers zone defense – they went 3-2 which is different than their normal zone, a 2-3. And it worked. It really did cause some issues for the Hurricanes, especially in the first half. Miami spent the first 10-12 minutes settling for bad 3s and struggling to attack it and that was a big reason the Panthers built a first-half lead. It was actually a brilliant move on Jamie Dixon’s part from the standpoint of he caught the Hurricanes by surprise. The problem is this – when you pull out all the stops and unveil something new, you need to win the game. Now, every other team has that zone on film and won’t be caught off guard. Still it is good to get a third defense installed and the Panthers showed they can play it well because it could help solve some of their defensive issues if they become the “changing defenses” team for the rest of the year. We also saw a little bit of full-court pressure and a trap or two. Again, everybody has seen this on film now and so it is likely to be a little less effective in the future but it is at least something that the Panthers can look to during those games when they seem to be out of answers defensively.

**** Here is the other thing the 3-2 does for Pitt – it enables Dixon to play his best offensive combinations without getting killed defensively. Damon Wilson is long and athletic but not a great defender yet – this zone was perfect for him. The same can be said for Jamel Artis, Cam Johnson and Sheldon Jeter – and that has been a bit of Dixon’s frustration. He has a lot of guys who are good at scoring but not so good (and not so committed to becoming good if you listen to what Dixon says in his news conferences) on the defensive end in man-to-man. It has been an issue for the Panthers all season – how does Dixon get his best offensive team on the floor for long stretches without giving up buckets at the other end. He may have found a solution because at one point he had Artis, Wilson and Johnson out there together and the Panthers were still able to get stops. I know the company line that is constantly given to us is “we have to hang our hat on man-to-man defense” and that’s fine to say and whatnot but that’s just not realistic. I don’t know of any rules in basketball above say 5th grade league that says you HAVE to play man-to-man defense. Jim Boeheim and company have won a few games over the years and they haven’t played man since 1996. That doesn’t mean abandon the man-to-man defense but it does mean when it isn’t working don’t act like zone is a four-letter word and a gimmick.

*** I think that “we need to play man” stuff and the constant party line of “we need to be great defensively and rebounding” is part of a larger problem with this team. It is something we’ve discussed on the air and also I’ve written about and it is that this team is still trying to decide its identity. Is it a defensive-minded team? Is it a tough, physical team? Is it a great offensive team? Like, I’m not sure and the fact that the players all say they need to be something some of them don’t truly want to be is a problem. I’m not saying you have to be able to define every team in one or two easy words but think of this Pitt team, what it does well and then tell me what its identity is and what it can hang its hat on when things aren’t going so well. If you ask me it should be in making buckets and pushing the tempo at every opportunity but that doesn’t seem to be what this team is trying to be. You can’t win consistently if you don’t know who you are. And when I constantly hear “we have to be great in our man-to-man defense” and “we didn’t defend well enough” after one of the best defensive games this team has played in a long time, I’m not sure this team really knows who it is. Again, I’m not saying that this team should turn into Loyola of the early 1990s, but it needs to commit to a style of play that it can be effective and build on it each game.

*** Just think about it this way – Pitt is 17-0 when scoring 70 or more points and 0-6 when they fail to score 65 points. This isn’t a defensive team right now, it is a team that wins when it scores buckets. And that should be the mentality – it is nice to want to grind it out and try to win the old fashioned Pitt way but that’s not realistic with this group. So continue to work to get better on defense but understand that this team needs to score and that may mean push the ball in transition at every opportunity. But that also means guys have to understand that when shots aren’t falling – get to the basket and try to get to the foul line to score. One of the great fallacies of defensive-minded coaches is that “if your team has an off night shooting, you need to be able to get stops to win.” I agree to a point – but how about this one “if your team has an off night shooting, you can still score if you attack the basket and draw fouls and pass the ball on the interior for dunks and layups.” Too often Pitt in recent weeks has settled in a just jacked shots even when they aren’t falling. That, not always poor defense, has been their problem. They need to find ways to score when they are off and last night they were off.

*** The last play was probably a little bit of a microcosm of what drives Dixon crazy with this bunch – here you force Miami to settle for a 3-pointer and they miss it but you can’t get the rebound. And not just one rebound, two rebounds as the 3-pointer missed, Davon Reed tipped the ball back to the basket and that shot missed and then Angel Rodriguez, who is generously listed at 5-feet-11, tipped it in. That’s frustrating for Dixon who said that play showed the problem with playing zone – it is hard to rebound out of. Dixon has forgotten more about hoops than I will ever know but I have to respectfully disagree on this one --- yes, it can be tough at times to rebound out of a zone but that had nothing to do with why the Panthers failed to get this rebound not once, but twice. If you watch the replay of this last sequence Pitt had players in position to grab the rebound and neither boxed out their man or even fought to get inside position. This wasn’t about scheme, this was about effort. I won’t name the two guys who missed their block outs to protect the innocent but you can find the play online a bunch of different places and see for yourself. The zone wasn’t the problem on the final play, that isn’t why Pitt couldn’t get a rebound. James Robinson said it best when he said “it is a 50/50 ball and we have to come up with it.” But I’d take it one step further and say this – it wasn’t a 50/50 ball if Pitt’s two players just made a simple fundamental block out. I’m 45 years old, have a bad back and all kinds of other health issues and haven’t played hoops competitively for at least ten years but the reality is – if I have position, I can still block out properly and grab a rebound against just about anyone, especially a guy who is smaller than me.

*** Jamel Artis was a no-show offensively last night and that hurt Pitt because the Panthers need him to score. They need him to produce offense. Yes, this team has a number of guys who can score at times but Artis is their best offensive player. And there aren’t enough other guys to compensate for him scoring only five points in a road game against a good team. Pitt needs him to score and what was a little bit troubling about last night is he settled for too many jumpers. Anybody can have an off night so the fact that he was 2-of-10 is just a part of that – until you see he was 1-of-6 from the 3-point line. That means he wasn’t attacking the hoop as he had only four field goal attempts that weren’t 3s. Artis is a good scorer and some games when his shot isn’t falling, he has abandoned it and attacked the rim and still put up good offensive numbers. And the other thing is, he is such a good free throw shooter that when he drives, he draws contact and can score from the free throw line as well. But last night he was 0-of-0 from the free throw line, which is a kind way of saying he had ZERO free throw attempts. That’s why I don’t look at his 1-of-6 from the 3-point line as troubling – guys have off nights shooting. The troubling part of his game is that he only took four shots from inside the 3-point line and not one that I can remember was a drive and as a result he didn’t score at all from the free throw line. If Pitt is going to get to where it wants to go, Artis needs to be a big part of it offensively and that means on nights when his shot isn’t falling, find other ways to score.

*** Ryan Luther had another excellent game and frankly he is becoming one of the Panthers most reliable players. And the reason is because he plays hard and he has worked on becoming a better post defender and post player on offense. He goes to the offensive glass as well as anyone on the team, he has a knack for getting his hands on loose balls and rebounds and he can pull bigger centers out away from the hoop and drive them. It is clear that he and Jeter need to play the bulk of the minutes in the post at this point because they are the best options Dixon has. Jeter was in foul trouble last night which is why his minutes were down but Luther – who had 12 points and 7 rebounds – clearly picked up the slack and continued to make a case for why he deserves to play 20+ minutes every night.