Basketball: Panthers move on without Woodall, prep for VMI

The Pitt men’s basketball team is still adjusting to life without its starting point… The Pitt men’s basketball team is still adjusting to life without its starting point guard.

Despite picking up a 61-56 win at Tennessee over the weekend, the Panthers’ offense struggled to find a rhythm for much of the team’s first game following the announcement that redshirt junior Tray Woodall would miss four to six weeks with abdominal and groin injuries.

“People had written us off without Tray being in there,” Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon said after Saturday’s victory. “We’ve got to get [our other guards] better.”

Those guards would be freshmen Cameron Wright and John Johnson, who both will see a steep rise in minutes while Woodall is out.

Senior guard Ashton Gibbs said the Panthers are confident the two freshmen can play well while filling in for Woodall.

“Our expectations are high for them,” he said of Wright and Johnson at a press conference. “They work really hard in practice. It was only a matter of time before they got their chance, and now they’re taking advantage of it.”

The No. 14 Panthers (7-1) will try to pick up another win without Woodall Tuesday night when they welcome the Virginia Military Institute Keydets (3-4) to the Petersen Events Center at 7 p.m.

Facing the Keydets’ extremely fast style of play will provide the Panthers and their point-guard-by-committee trio of Gibbs, Wright and Johnson with a unique challenge.

Although VMI enters the matchup with a losing record, the Keydets still boast the 12^th-highest-scoring offense in the country, at almost 84 points per game.

Forward Stan Okoye and guard Keith Gabriel each average about 17 points per game to lead the Keydets’ potent and balanced attack. Seven VMI players average more than five points per game.

But VMI’s defense, which has conceded 100 or more points already four times this season — including an incredible 114 points in a defeat at Charleston Southern last Saturday — has cost head coach Duggar Baucom’s team dearly during its current three-game losing streak.

“Defensively, it was absolutely atrocious,” Baucom said of the Charleston Southern game. “It was a pitiful performance and [there was] no excuse for it.”

If Pitt’s last two wins over Duquesne and Tennessee, in which the Panthers out-rebounded their opponents by a combined 67 to 45 margin, are anything to go by, the boards might be where Jamie Dixon’s team can counter VMI’s scoring threat.

“We ground it out, and that was good to see,” Dixon said of Pitt’s rebounding in the Tennessee game.

The Panthers’ depth in the front-court has been apparent in the last four games of the team’s current five-game winning streak. In each game, a different Panther big man recorded a double-double.

Khem Birch against Penn, Talib Zanna against Robert Morris, Dante Taylor against Duquesne and Nasir Robinson against Tennessee each recorded at least 10 points and 10 rebounds in their respective high-scoring games.

And with VMI entering Tuesday’s game as the 270^th-best rebounding team in the nation, Pitt’s big men will have another opportunity to win the battle inside the paint.