Hoyas sack off-kilter Pitt

Ronald Ramon looked helpless.

The junior guard slowed his sprint slightly past half court… Ronald Ramon looked helpless.

The junior guard slowed his sprint slightly past half court with three minutes to play and watched in vain. Georgetown’s Jonathan Wallace, flanked by Hoya muscle in front of a chasing Mike Cook, dribbled toward the Pitt bucket. He was running away with the game, the leading spot in the Big East conference and possibly a two-seed in the NCAA Tournament.

There it all went, becoming more and more unreachable with each of Wallace’s steps – right, left. Right. Left.

Ramon and the Panthers (24-5, 11-3 Big East) weren’t always in such a vulnerable position, though. Just eight minutes before, Pitt owned an eight-point lead and had held Georgetown’s Jeff Green to just three points.

“We thought we had them on the ropes,” sophomore guard Levance Fields said. “We have to learn how to put teams away when we have the lead. In that situation, we could have put them away.”

Many thought the Panthers wouldn’t have even been in a position to contend with the No. 12-ranked Hoyas at home in Washington, D.C., much less be leading midway through the second half. When Pitt’s 7-foot superstar Aaron Gray injured his ankle against Washington last Saturday, many dismissed the damaged Panther lineup without a healthy Gray to contend with Georgetown’s 7-foot-2 Roy Hibbert.

“He was very anxious to play,” Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon said. “Considering he hadn’t played in a week, I thought he did a great job. But obviously, he wasn’t 100 percent.”

Although he didn’t start, Dixon called for Gray with a little more than five minutes elapsed in the first. The 7-footer, seeing his first action since the injury, lumbered onto the court to a roar from the healthy crowd of Pitt fans in the upper levels of the Verizon Center.

And when Gray entered, his presence was classic. On the next Pitt possession, Gray drew two defenders to the post, leaving Ramon wide open to pick up three of his 11 points.

“I told [Dixon] if I’m not producing, take me out for that reason,” Gray said. “Otherwise, let me play.”

Despite logging a respectable 10 points and six rebounds in only 21 minutes, Gray was sluggish. He was slower than normal getting around the Hoya defense and was beaten by Hibbert several times. Hibbert also has two inches and 53 pounds on Levon Kendall, Gray’s replacement.

Right. Left.

Even without their centerpiece, the Panthers set the table, as usual, for a win. They did what they do best and what’s had them atop the Big East standings for the past two months: rebound – they out-rebounded the Hoyas, 37-31, including a season-high 22 offensive rebounds; pass – they assisted 13 of 19 baskets; protect the ball – they narrowly edged the Hoyas (22-5, 12-2) in turnovers, 13 to 14.

The only glaring Pitt statistic was the one that helped them most in beating the Hoyas at home on Jan. 13. The Panthers shot a miserable 32.8 percent from the field – a mark Pitt nearly doubled in the previous win over Georgetown. The Panthers also converted a dismal eight of 16 from the free-throw line compared to Georgetown’s 22 of 29.

“It’s rare that you lose a game when you get 20 more [shot] attempts and have less turnovers than the other team, but that’s what happened,” Dixon said. “It just came down to the team that got to the free-throw line more.”

Green, who finished with 14 points and a team-high three assists, and Hibbert both converted and-1s and flustered the Panthers enough to force crucial turnovers on several key possessions in the waning minutes.

Pitt was only down four when Sam Young, who finished with 11 points, emerged from underneath the basket with an offensive rebound and brought the ball back out past the 3-point line. Simultaneously, Wallace read Young’s eyes and began to break toward the top of the key.

Right. Left.

Young, looking to Ramon at the point the whole way, left a lofty pass hanging in the air, begging to be poked the other way.

Right. Left.

And Wallace was the one to do it. The game’s high scorer slapped the ball out of the air and was dashing toward two of his 17 points before Ramon knew what happened.

There he went: right, left, all the way to the hole, leaving the Panthers with a year’s worth of promise and practice without any payoff to date. A few minutes worth of fouls and free throws later, Pitt lost, 61-53. Its six-game conference road-game winning streak snapped.

After the game, the door to the visitor’s locker room, to which a “Pitt” logo was taped, opens briefly. Inside, sophomore Keith Benjamin sits at his locker, staring blankly at the carpeted floor.

The Panthers, who were once considered a shoo-in for the conference tournament’s top-seed, are now 0-4 against ranked teams and are looking up at the Big East-leading Hoyas.

Again, the locker-room door swings open and the towering Gray emerges. He humbly answers several questions from local reporters before carefully heading to the team bus with a medical boot on his sore ankle.

Two cement hallways, a few sets of double doors and a world away, Hibbert is all smiles. Surrounded by a barrage of lights, cameras and recorders, Gray’s adversary confidently says, “I wanted him to play.”

A first-round bye in the Big East Tournament now far from guaranteed, the advantages of a two-seed in the Big Dance virtually impractical and two more tough games to play against West Virginia and at Marquette, the Panthers move on.

“This one was tough to swallow,” Fields said before he disappeared around the corner at the end of the hall, trudging toward the team bus.

Right. Left.