Young wins big in Big East tourney at MSG

NEW YORK – Sam Young didn’t win the lottery this weekend, but he came awfully close.

The… NEW YORK – Sam Young didn’t win the lottery this weekend, but he came awfully close.

The 6-foot-6-inch forward willed what was once a down-and-out Pitt to its second Big East tournament title on Saturday, capping off an unexpected, four-day, four-win run with an emphatic 74-65 defeat of the top-seeded Georgetown Hoyas.

Young, named the Tournament’s most valuable player, had 16 points, six rebounds and three blocks in his fourth consecutive crowd-pleasing performance. The junior from Clinton, Md., finished the tournament averaging 20 points, seven rebounds, 2.5 blocks and more than one steal in four games.

“I feel like I just won a million dollars,” said Young, whose smile exuded the kind of relief only a Pitt player could feel.

After all, the soft-spoken Young and his team of tenacious hoopers hustled their way past three nationally ranked teams and a fourth team eager to prove itself en route to the Panthers’ sixth win this season at Madison Square Garden. On the biggest stage Pitt has played on this season, the Panthers excelled.

And, like the king of New York, Frank Sinatra, they did it their way.

Brutal, sometimes suffocating defense and scrappy rebounding returned to a Pitt team that had seemingly lost its way over the course of the taxing regular season. The Panthers fell from 11-1 to 22-9, a middling 10-8 in the wake of injuries and inconsistent play.

The Panthers, under current coach Jamie Dixon and his predecessor, Ben Howland, have established themselves as a program focused on stingy man-to-man defense and dominant rebounding. Over the months leading up to Pitt’s big week here, that identity slipped away. Teams were not only outrebounding the Panthers, they were beating them to loose balls, scoring easy baskets and even blowing them out.

Pitt (26-9) had fallen from a top-six team to an unranked one, greatly suffering from four critical injuries that sidelined three players for the season and another star player for two months. Many speculated that while the remaining players had performed admirably, they had hit a wall.

But call this the spring beginning, a fresh start. Pitt slapped around No. 9 Georgetown all night, outrebounding the Hoyas, 41-29, while limiting the Hoyas’ paint presence.

“We had to outrebound them, we talked about it,” Dixon said. “For whatever reason I didn’t think we were playing as aggressively as we were maybe 10 games ago, but when we got all our guys back and were able to get back into it and do the things we do, we were more aggressive, more physical, more the way we are.

“More like Pitt.”

Along with Young, freshman center DeJuan Blair asserted his physicality and oozed confidence under the nation’s hottest spotlight.

Blair had 10 points and 10 rebounds, amassing his 13th double-double of the season. One play set Blair’s night apart from his rival center, Georgetown star Roy Hibbert, who somehow managed to score 17 quiet points.

With 7:24 to play, Young missed a free throw off the back of the rim. Blair snatched the offensive rebound and missed his initial layup.

Pitt guard Keith Benjamin grabbed the second offensive board and missed his putback, then Blair ripped down his second rebound of the sequence and banked in a putback. The 6-7 Pittsburgher was fouled, too.

After Blair’s made his foul shot, Pitt took an 11-point lead. Georgetown never got closer than five after that.

“They just played like they wanted to win,” Georgetown guard Jessie Sapp said. “They made a lot of hustle plays and you wouldn’t have known they played four days [in a row]. They just played hard.”

Young and Blair didn’t do it alone. Pitt’s New York-native guards, Levance Fields and Ronald Ramon, dominated the backcourt defensively, holding Georgetown’s stellar group of backcourt stars to 10-of-28 shooting.

They weren’t so bad on offense, either. Ramon led Pitt with 17 points. He also had five rebounds. His 3-pointer with 3:50 served as the final dagger, and the 6-1 senior scored 10 of Pitt’s final 18 points.

Fields energized the offense with his confident and consistent ball-handling skills. The 5-10 court general had 10 points, six assists and five rebounds.

The Brooklyn native was so excited after the game that he had pieces of the Panthers’ cut-down net wrapped around his ears.

Ramon, Fields and none of the other celebrating Panthers showed any signs of exhaustion from winning four games in four days. It was all smiles, all the time.

“I’ve always felt we were capable of beating anybody we play,” Dixon said. “We’ve dealt with harder things than playing four games in four days this year.”