Kennedy, Blair meet once again

It’s well known by now that Pitt’s DeJuan Blair and St. John’s D.J. Kennedy are best friends…. It’s well known by now that Pitt’s DeJuan Blair and St. John’s D.J. Kennedy are best friends. The two were teammates from middle school through their days at Schenley High, where they posted a 103-16 overall record and went 57-0 against Pittsburgh City League opponents. When Blair and Kennedy were on the court together yesterday, it seemed as if they’d never parted ways. Blair lined up once at the foul line late in the first half to shoot with Kennedy in the slot to his immediate left. The two exchanged words, Blair laughed and then sank the shot. ‘I think he got me making my free throws, because I was trying to shut him up by making them,’ said Blair. While Blair has been getting the national attention lately for No. 1 Pitt, Kennedy has also been putting together a breakout year for a young Red Storm team. He’s nearly averaging a double-double per game with 13 points and 7.3 rebounds and scored 20 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in an upset of Notre Dame on Jan. 3. On Sunday, Kennedy never came out of the game and ended up with a team-high 18 points and seven rebounds, even though Blair is familiar with his game as anybody. ‘He’s the same D.J.,’ said Blair. ‘He’s a heck of a player. That’s how he was in high school. I was trying to tell [my teammates] he likes to pump fake a lot, and he got us a couple times, but his whole team did that. He did a good job this game, because last game he wasn’t shooting at all in the Garden, but he did that today.’ That last game was an 81-57 Pitt win on Jan. 23, 2008 at Madison Square Garden in New York, where St. John’s plays its home games. Kennedy had seven points compared to Blair’s 10 and relished the chance to play in front of family and friends in his hometown for the first time in college. ‘It was a great atmosphere,’ said Kennedy. ‘I was just proud of myself I got to play in front of my family and hometown crowd.’ He even told that to Blair when the two met each other and embraced after the national anthem. ‘We just told each other we came a long way. In high school we were thinking about playing on this level,’ said Kennedy. ‘It’s big for both of us. [Blair] got the W, his second, but I was just excited to have the opportunity to play.’ Football recruiting weekend This past weekend was a big recruiting weekend for coach Dave Wannstedt and the Pitt football team. The Pitt coaching staff hosted a total of 14 prospects on official recruiting visits, eight of whom had already committed to Pitt before visiting. That number soon escalated when Wannstedt brought the crew of recruits to yesterday’s game. Kolby Gray, who Rivals.com rates as a three-star quarterback recruit from Texas, committed to Pitt on Sunday and solidified it via the Oakland Zoo’s famed dry-erase board. Before the game Gray walked over to the student section near midcourt and checked an open box next to his name ‘- the method made famous when LeSean McCoy did the same thing two years ago. In the second half, New Jersey cornerback prospect Jason Hendricks did the same thing when Cam Saddler, regarded as Pitt football’s most adamant and charismatic player and recruiter, lured him out to the court. Free-throw woes Despite the undefeated record and the No. 1 ranking, Pitt still seems to be suffering from the same problem that it has for years ‘- its bafflingly inconsistent and at times abysmal free-throw shooting. In the first half, the entire Pitt team only made one more free throw than Kennedy alone, shooting 7-15 from the line ‘- less than 50 percent. The Panthers, however, shot 7-8 from the line in the second half, and Blair made 9-of-11. As successful as Pitt has been in the last decade since Ben Howland took over the program in 1999, dismal foul shooting has seemed to be a constant. Up until Sunday, however, Pitt wasn’t fairing too poorly from the line, shooting 66.8 percent as a team, just slightly worse than its opponents’ mark of 71.8 percent. ‘That’s what we’re going to need down the stretch,’ said Blair. ‘If you watch Memphis last year, they were missing free throws and they didn’t win the national championship. The way we rebound and crash the boards, we get fouled a lot. If we would have made our free-throws, we might have got 100, so we need to work on that.’ Dixon rebounds Jermaine Dixon rebounded in a big way from perhaps his worst game of the season on Jan. 3 at Georgetown. Dixon scored just two points on 1-of-7 shooting in Pitt’s biggest win of the year at Georgetown on Jan. 3, and looked tentative at times, passing up several open shots. Any carry-over from that performance was soon forgotten, though. Dixon ended up with 17 points on 7-of-12 shooting, scoring aggressively on fast breaks, baseline drives and pulling open looks from 3-point range. He also had four steals. ‘Jermaine got a couple passing lane steals, got the crowd into it, and we kind of put the game away,’ said Levance Fields. ‘Jermaine’s doing a great job getting extra shots up before and after practice, and he was good today.’