Pitt blows by Red Storm

The soft-spoken, budding star of the Pitt men’s basketball team is letting his play do all of… The soft-spoken, budding star of the Pitt men’s basketball team is letting his play do all of the talking, and Sam Young certainly is ensuring it is loud and clear.

Young led the Panthers with 26 points, 18 in the second half, en route to a dominating 81-57 victory over St. John’s at Madison Square Garden last night.

At one juncture, Young tallied 10 consecutive Pitt points in effectively putting the game away in the second half.

The blowout win moved Pitt back up to a tie for second in the Big East. The Panthers are now 4-2 in the conference and 16-3 overall.

The Red Storm dropped to 7-10, 1-5 in the Big East.

A balanced Panthers attack kept St. John’s on its heels, with every player contributing to the final result.

Ronald Ramon played another strong game at point guard, scoring 16 points and pulling down five rebounds. DeJuan Blair added 10 points and eight rebounds, out-performing his former Schenley High School teammate, St. John’s’ D.J. Kennedy, who scored seven points.

Anthony Mason Jr. paced St. John’s with a game-high 29 points on 12-of-17 shooting from the field. No other Red Storm player had more than seven points.

Pitt (No. 13 AP, No. 17 USA Today) shot 53.6 percent from the field and connected on 8 of 15 3-pointers. Young hit 3 of 6 from beyond the arc.

St. John’s shot 46.2 percent and was hindered by abysmal free throw shooting, making only 6 of 16 from the line.

Pitt raced to an early lead on the Red Storm, never trailing in the first half. Blair scored six of Pitt’s first 10 points.

Gilbert Brown scored five straight points, including a thunderous alley-oop on a fast-break pass from Keith Benjamin to give the Panthers their biggest advantage of the half at 33-20.

St. John’s ran off seven in a row, but Pitt tallied the final five points of the half, with Benjamin knocking down a 3-pointer for a 38-27 lead after 20 minutes.

Young’s 10 straight points in the second half built a 57-40 lead. A phenomenal sequence where Young stole the ball, missed a runner but grabbed a one-handed offensive rebound, made the putback and was fouled, raised the advantage to 62-43.