Men’s Basketball: Pitt hopes to recover from loss

The Pitt men’s basketball team traveled to Florida on Tuesday with a mission to firmly… The Pitt men’s basketball team traveled to Florida on Tuesday with a mission to firmly entrench itself as an NCAA Tournament-worthy team.  Instead, the Panthers left the Sunshine State with an ugly loss to South Florida and another blemish on their resume.

As Ashton Gibbs, Travon Woodall and the rest of the team endured a brutal 63-51 defeat at the hands of South Florida Wednesday night that snapped their four-game winning streak, the Seton Hall Pirates topped Rutgers to halt a devastating six-game losing streak.

Fortunately for the Panthers, Seton Hall — a team they will face on the road at noon on Sunday — doesn’t bear much of a resemblance to the South Florida team that terrorized them on the interior Wednesday night.

Unlike the South Florida Bulls, Seton Hall only has one player with size, athleticism and experience down low: Western Pennsylvania native Herb Pope.

Pope, who played high school ball about 45 minutes north of Pittsburgh at Aliquippa High School, is averaging a double-double with 15.9 points and 10.2 rebounds per game.

The big man, who transferred to Seton Hall after spending his freshman year at New Mexico State, shoots 48 percent from the field. When Pope doesn’t play or scores less than 10 points, the Pirates are just 1-5.

Point guard Jordan Theodore is the other half of the Pirates’ dynamic senior duo. Theodore scored 24 points in Seton Hall’s 59-54 win over cross-state rival Rutgers. He is second on the team in scoring, averaging 15.4 points per game. He also leads the team with 6.8 assists per contest, good for second in the Big East.

But for as much star power as the Pirates bring to the table, they lack depth and experience. Head coach Kevin Willard — the son of former Pitt coach Ralph Willard — played each of his starters, including two true freshmen, for more than 30 minutes on Wednesday. The only reserve who earned more than 10 minutes of action was sophomore forward Patrik Auda.

Freshmen guards Haralds Karlis and Freddie Wilson also saw time off the bench.

Though Pitt has struggled on the road this year, winning just one of six matchups away from the Petersen Events Center, the good news for the Panthers is that they are 5-1 against the Pirates in their previous six meetings. Pitt cruised to an easy 74-53 win over Seton Hall at home last season, but fell to the Pirates 64-61 the last time the teams met in New Jersey in 2010.

One thing is for certain: this Pitt team is not like Pitt teams of the past. The way the Panthers have played at times this year is a far cry from the Jamie Dixon-coached squad that took the floor just last season.

Gilbert Brown, who started at small forward for last year’s club that won the Big East regular season championship, isn’t quite sure what the difference is between that team and the current team that is struggling to keep its head above water in the conference.

“I think it’s just the simple fact that, the way we competed, there were never games when we lost by 20 or more. We were always better than that,” Brown said. “There were guys that were on that team with us that are on this current team that just haven’t shown [that mentality].”

While the 2011-12 Panthers have only lost one game this season by more than 20 points, if their wildly inconsistent play continues, they risk falling to 4-9 in Big East play when they take on Seton Hall this weekend.

At this point, with an overall record of 15-10 and the nationwide race for a spot in the NCAA Tournament heating up, it wouldn’t be a stretch to call Sunday’s game a “must-win” for the Panthers.