When Ashton Gibbs went down with a knee injury last week, men’s basketball head coach Jamie… When Ashton Gibbs went down with a knee injury last week, men’s basketball head coach Jamie Dixon insisted his team would continue to play its normal game.

But although the Panthers picked up road wins over No. 25 West Virginia and No. 9 Villanova, they struggled to hit shots from the perimeter without their best 3-point shooter.

Gibbs, who underwent an MRI after practice on Tuesday, is a game-time decision for the Panthers’ match-up with South Florida (8-18, 2-11 Big East) at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Petersen Events Center

Gibbs practiced without contact, meaning he practiced, but avoided the physical portion of Pitt’s notoriously rough workouts. Monday afternoon.

“We’ll see what the doctors say [Tuesday],” Dixon said at a news conference Monday. “We’ll see if there’s any residual effect of going a little harder [at practice Monday] and doing some stuff, but I think it’s gone well.”

Dixon said Gibbs expects to play.

“Ashton already told me he’s playing, but he told me that last Monday,” Dixon said. “We can’t go too much by how he feels. We have to go by what the doctors see on the MRI.”

Without Gibbs, Pitt (23-2, 11-1 Big East) relied on timely inside scoring and defense to defeat West Virginia and Villanova.

“With the firepower of our offense, sometimes people may tend to look over what we have as a defensive team,” senior Gilbert Brown said. “Villanova was really big with Ashton being out. [Defense] was key for us because we weren’t hitting the shots that we normally hit.”

Gibbs is one of seven players in the Big East to average at least 16 points per game.

South Florida’s backcourt, on the other hand, has struggled all season — the Bulls haven’t filled the void left by Dominique Jones’ departure.

Jones, last season’s top scorer in the Big East, forewent his senior season with the Bulls and entered the NBA Draft. The Dallas Mavericks selected him in the first round — great for Jones, but not so great for South Florida, which hasn’t figured out how to replace his 21.4 points per game.

Bulls head coach Stan Heath has plugged five different guards into the starting role, but none of them has paid dividends. Jawanza Poland, the group’s most productive scorer, averages 10.2 points but hasn’t started in recent games.

The Bulls have lost four in a row and 15 of their last 18. After their most recent defeat, a 78-55 loss to No. 8 Notre Dame on Saturday, Heath said his players haven’t shaken off losses and have carried bad attitudes into the next game.

“That’s just a sign of immaturity. You can’t fix what happened yesterday,” he said. “That comes down to not having that total leadership evolved on the team, where there’s guys in the locker room rallying the troops and keeping everybody moving forward.”

South Florida trailed the Fighting Irish 41-17 at halftime.

Each game presents a different problem in the Bulls’ backcourt. Shaun Noriega stepped up Saturday and scored 23 points off the bench, but starting guard Anthony Crater went scoreless. Heath said he needs consistency out of his players, noting that Noriega’s career night gave the Bulls something they have lacked.

“Hopefully down the stretch he’ll continue to play like that,” Heath said. “We lack the shooting ability, and he gives us that.”

South Florida is last in the Big East in scoring. The Bulls average 62 points per game and stand 15th in the conference in 3-point shooting at 29.8 percent.

Their strength comes underneath the rim, where junior Augustus Gilchrist averages 11.9 points and 6.4 rebounds per contest. Gilchrist and the Bulls’ frontcourt defend the opposition well, Heath said.

“We’ve been very good defensively,” he said. “We held Marquette, the highest scoring team, to season lows. Outside of [a 72-49 loss to Syracuse], our defensive numbers are good.”

Dixon said that Gilchrist and the rest of South Florida’s big men make the Bulls a good rebounding team.

“They have good size,” he said. “They’re a big team, especially at the wings and inside. It’s a big team with good athletes.”

The Panthers remember that size from last year, when South Florida out-rebounded Pitt on the way to a 70-61 Bulls win in Tampa.

“They got the best of us in Tampa,” Brown said. “We just want to come out here and play our game and make a statement.”