Panthers Looked the Part
January 25, 2009 06:58 PM | General
(6:58 pm)
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No. 4 Pitt looked like a well-rested, well-prepared team full of veteran players against West Virginia on Sunday. As a result, the Panthers were able to exploit the Mountaineers’ inexperience in the second half.
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| Forward John Flowers watches from the bench as Pitt defeats West Virginia 79-67 in Morgantown on Sunday.
All-Pro Photography Dale Sparks photo |
“That’s a legitimate top five team,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. “When you can throw DeJuan Blair and Sam Young on the front line and that’s a heck of a basketball team. And then (Levance) Fields controls the whole game.”
Just as it did in the second half at Marquette (another senior-laden team), the Mountaineers couldn’t get the offense and/or the stops on defense they needed to knock off a top 10 team.
Pitt coach Jamie Dixon decided to put forward Sam Young back into the game with 15:54 remaining after quickly picking up his third foul and the move paid off for the Panthers, now 18-1.
Young hit a pair of free throws to give Pitt a 47-45 lead. Five minutes later the margin swelled to 10 and eventually it got to as big as 16 as Young scored 16 of his game high 22 points in the second half.
“They stayed in what they wanted to do and we kind of got out of what we wanted to do,” said Huggins. “It’s a close game and we’re doing a good job of running offense and then all of the sudden we kind of go off on our own and we turned the ball over which led to lay ups and three-point plays.”
Young and 6-7, 265-pound DeJuan Blair combined to score 38 points and grab 15 rebounds, but the difference in the game really came from Pitt’s deep bench. Nine different players wound up scoring for the Panthers.
“We told them before the game, you can’t be on the side of them where they can make a direct pass (into Blair or Young). We constantly got caught on the side,” Huggins said. “The guy from Syracuse was 270 pounds who just bullied us last year and they moved him wherever they wanted to move him.”
Levance Fields scored 13 points and handed out five assists. Jermaine Dixon scored eight of his 11 points in the second half with six of those coming on a pair of 3s.
“He shoots 21 percent from 3 and he goes 3 for 5. When we left him open he made them,” Huggins said.
The only bench player to score for West Virginia was freshman Kevin Jones, who finished with six points to go with a pair of rebounds.
Pitt shot 53.6 percent for the game, assisting on 18 of its 30 baskets. Conversely, the Mountaineers shot 41.1 percent and committed 13 turnovers. Eleven of those 13 turnovers were Panthers steals.
“We were physically mismatched inside. The other thing when you’ve got a good team, they made open shots. Any time we left them open they made them and there were times when we had open shots and we didn’t make them,” Huggins said.
After nearly a month of play, the Big East appears to be shaking out into a three-team race between Pitt, Connecticut and Louisville. The next two after that are probably Syracuse and Marquette.
As for West Virginia, the Mountaineers must simply chalk up Sunday’s loss as a learning experience and not let today’s result lead to another disappointing performance against St. John’s Wednesday night.
“We’ve got to take these next two days and figure out how to beat St. John’s,” Huggins said.
