Men’s Basketball: Pitt pummels Bethune Cookman, records largest winning margin in Pete history

Freshman center Steven Adams posted his first career double-double Saturday night, scoring 16 points and pulling in 10 rebounds to lead the Pitt men’s basketball team to a methodical 89-40 demolition of the Bethune Cookman Wildcats.

The 49-point victory sets the all-time mark for largest winning margin in Pitt history at the Petersen Events Center, as the home team thoroughly dominated every facet of the game.

The Panthers (10-1) shot 67.3 percent from the field and decisively cut apart the Wildcats’ zone defense possession after possession.

Meanwhile, Pitt’s defense held the Wildcats (4-8) to only 13 made field goals and 30.2 percent shooting. On the glass, Pitt received strong efforts from Adams as well as senior forward Dante Taylor, who cleaned the glass a game-high 11 times.

With the Panthers’ interior presence, Pitt scored 60 of its 89 points in the painted area, while holding the Wildcats to just 14 points in the paint.

“[Getting the ball inside] is first and foremost what we want to do offensively,” Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon said after the game. “That’s always our emphasis; we want to play inside-out. We have good passers in our bigs, we’ve got good decision-makers, so we don’t want to settle.”

As a result of Pitt’s strong offensive and defensive play, the Panthers out-rebounded the Wildcats by an incredible 29-rebound margin, 40-11.

Off the bench for Pitt, junior forward J.J. Moore scored a game-high 18 points. The scoring output from Moore was a nice sight for Pitt fans, especially after Moore showed a cold shooting stroke in his past few performances.

“I had a couple of bad games, but my teammates always told me to just keep shooting. Today was a good day for me,” Moore said.

But one impressive performance for Pitt pointed to by Dixon was not by a player who shot the lights out, but a player who shot only once — Tray Woodall. Woodall finished the game with three points, making the only shot he took, but the senior point guard dished out 10 assists in his 21 minutes of playing time.

“The guy who really stands out in my mind is Tray. He only took one shot and that really shows the mentality of our team and the unselfishness of our team,” a pleased Dixon said.

Of the 37 shots made by Pitt Saturday, 28 field goals derived from assists made by Panther teammates, further illustrating Dixon’s point.

“We just continued to play unselfishly all the way through, even with the big lead,” Dixon said.

On the other sideline, Bethune Cookman head coach Gravelle Craig wasn’t happy with his team’s performance.

“That was probably our worst game all year effort-wise,” Craig said. “We didn’t even show up and play.”

While the Wildcats might not have shown up, the Panthers certainly did.

The double-double for Adams also shows improvement in the freshman center, who continues

to take steps forward in his first 11 games as a Panther, as recognized by Moore and Adams’ fellow teammates.

“We’ve seen a lot of progress from [Adams],” Moore said. “He’s finishing high at the basket more. We emphasize on him to finish with his left hand in practice; he’s doing a very good job of that.”

With Big East play looming in a few weeks, and two more games before Pitt’s contest against currently undefeated Cincinnati on New Year’s Eve, Moore noted the Panthers are quite confident heading into those games, saying of the team’s confidence level that “it’s high” after two 40-plus point victories in a row.

“We look to go into conference play playing the same way as we’re playing right now, and I think our team altogether is looking very good,” Moore said.