Pitt ends up losing 80-55. Will their high water mark be a December win over us?
Pitt trailing at Dayton, 75-50 with 5:00 to go.
Cheers,
Lavabe
Pitt ends up losing 80-55. Will their high water mark be a December win over us?
Well. don't forget, they lost starting guard, Mike Cook in our game to a season-ending ACL injury. That has to be devastating to any team.
Seems their win over us was of the Pyhrric type.
Pitt also lost Fields (?) in this game, with a sprained ankle.
Lavabe
Dayton is a good team and a tough place to win at. Throw in Cook's injury, foul trouble, and Blair taking his first free throw w/ 1:19 left in the game (he shot 15 FTs against Duke) and you've got a blowout.
I hate to say it, but on a daily basis I think Pitt is closer to Dayton than Duke. Funny how things happen, huh? That's why it's so tough to win a title.
Pitt was sorry even with Cook. Duke just happened to have a miserable shooting night against them.
Pitt has had some really brutal player losses, but I still think this strengthens the argument that we lost to a considerably inferior team talent wise -- no way we should have lost if we had played even a hair smarter or tougher in the second half and overtime. That was certainly my feeling watching the game.
I will preface my comments by saying that I didn't watch Pitt play before they played Duke. However, I believe that saying we lost to an inferior team talent-wise does much to diminish the great game that Pitt played. I hated seeing them lose Cook, and I felt that there would've been an asterisk associated with the victory if we had come back and won after Cook went down. Granted we had our problems in the game, but why can't we just credit Pitt with playing a great game? Otherwise we start sounding like the Carolina fans/players that we make fun of because of their "we beat ourselves" arguments. YMMV
... stepping down from soapbox ...
Things get worse -- Levance Fields is out 8-12 weeks with a broken foot. Pitt's basically done without him. Down the road, when they finish in the middle of the pack in the Big East, the Pitt loss will look like a "bad loss" on Duke's schedule. But the committee isn't a bunch of idiots -- they'll realize that Pitt had Fields and Cook at the time.
Their season is far from over. They have a very good front court with Blair, Young and Biggs (I'm not high on Biggs but he's certainly a Big East quality player) Ronald Ramon has played point for them in the past and is certainly capable of doing so again, he won't be Fields quality as a point guard, but he's respectable. You should know that Pitt fans thought the team was Final 4 quality before the injuries, so they have the talent to spare. They were starting 3 stars (Fields, Blair, and Sam Young who didn't have his best game against Duke but leads the team in scoring) and 2 solid senior leaders who can put up points in a hurry with favorable matchups (Cook/Ramon). They still have 2 of those stars and one of those leaders, plenty enough t o have a decent Big east record and be in the tourney when Fields comes back in March.
Ramon is also hurt with a sore shoulder. And now Pitt is down to 9 scholarship players , with 40% of the starting 5 out, I think they are done for the year.
The BE has been seriously hit with the injury bug - Syracuse, Louisville, now Pitt.
~rthomas
I'm not saying Cook isn't an important part to Pitt's team and that he's not a good player, but from what I remember he really wasn't a factor in the Duke game. Maybe I need to watch a tape from the game to see if he does all the little things for their team, but in the box score, Cook had two points (1-6 shooting) and four rebounds. I know that it's hard for a team to lose a senior leader and a starting guard, but in that game...when he went down, it's not like he had been lighting it up.
Pitt had an eight-man rotation before the Duke game. They lost Cook, then lost by 25 at Dayton. Now they're missing Fields, who is an elite point guard. They simply don't have enough on their roster to replace those guys. They'll be hard-pressed to make the Tourney, at this point.
I'm not going to try and argue with you because this is all speculative...
But I would warn you that Pitt has won with under the radar players (Jaron Brown, Ontario Lett) in the past and they can do so again. They still have the second best frontcourt in the big east behind Georgetown, and they have a very nice tourney resume with Fields, so if they will be getting him back for the tourney and can manage at least a .500 record in BE play (very possible given that the bottom of the league is far from intimidating) they'll be able to make the tournament with a midlevel seed and whatever top seed has the pleasure of drawing them in the second round will legitimately be getting screwed.
oh wait thats not happening...
why are all my teams getting killed by injuries?
even Duke got them over the summer...