Men’s Basketball: Gibbs picks up two postseason honors

It’s been a good week for Ashton Gibbs.

Last Thursday he hit an impressive… It’s been a good week for Ashton Gibbs.

Last Thursday he hit an impressive 3-pointer at the buzzer to give the Pitt men’s basketball team a 73-71 win against Providence and on Saturday he scored 13 points in the Panthers 83-54 win against Rutgers to close out the season, giving them a second-place finish in the Big East after being picked to finish ninth in the preseason coaches poll.

And now he’s added some hardware to his resume.

Yesterday, Gibbs was named to the all-Big East second team, which is also voted on by the conference’s 16 head coaches. He’s the only Panther to make any all-conference teams, and is joined on the second team by Georgetown’s Austin Freeman, Marquette’s Lazar Haywood, Seton Hall’s Jeremy Hazelland and Syracuse’s Andy Rautins. With Gibbs on the second team and Georgetown’s Greg Monroe on the first team, only two sophomores were named to either team.

And today Gibbs became the sixth Panther in the last 11 years to win the conference’s Most Improved Player Award. He follows Ricardo Greer (1999-00), Brandin Knight (2001-02), Carl Krauser (2003-04), Aaron Gray (2005-06) and Sam Young (2007-08). Gibbs led the Panthers in points per game (16.2), minutes per game (35), free throw percentage (89) and 3-point percentage (40.4). In his freshman year, Gibbs averaged 4.3 points a game, and his 11.9 point per game increase from last year to this year gives him the second largest single-year jump in Pitt history behind Larry Harris, who’s scoring went up 15 points between the 1974-1975 and 1975-1976 seasons.

Gibbs and the Panthers are back in action Thursday night as the No. 2 seed in the Big East tournament at 7 p.m. Because Pitt is the second seed, it has a double bye into the quarterfinals. Pitt’s possible opponents for Thursday’s game are Providence, Seton Hall or Notre Dame.