Sloppy Pitt still wins

You know it’s a sloppy game when one of the game-changers involves a missed shot.

Pitt’s… You know it’s a sloppy game when one of the game-changers involves a missed shot.

Pitt’s Levon Kendall freed himself up for a wide-open jump shot with about nine minutes left in his team’s tight contest against invading UConn. This two-point shot would create some necessary breathing room for a Pitt team that had struggled on offense all game.

These are the kind of shots that the Panthers always hit, especially at home when the game is on the line.

Nothing came so easily on this night, though, not even Pitt’s bread-and-butter.

The senior clanked it off the rim and the ball squirted out toward the key. It appeared to be just another missed opportunity to put away a scrappy opponent. Luckily for Kendall and the Panthers, though, UConn wasn’t too sharp on this night, either.

Kendall’s fellow senior Aaron Gray snatched the rebound and kicked it back out to him for second crack at it. He made good on his attempt this time, and as the ball swished through for a 41-34 score with 8:52 left, the largest lead the Panthers had enjoyed all night, it looked like Pitt had gotten its break.

“That was part of the run, when we started getting open shots,” Kendall said of his shot, part of a 16-2 game-changing Pitt run. “It got the crowd into it and got everyone going. Guys started to get some energy. It came after a [defensive] stop and a fast-break.”

A few more defensive stops, including a Kendall charge, and a couple more Gray layups, and the Huskies just couldn’t recover.

“Every team that loses games finds one reason to be happy,” Calhoun said afterwards. “I can’t find one g–damn reason I should be happy. What should I be happy about?”

Not much on this night, for either team that is. Interestingly enough, the sloppiness came only three days after Pitt played its sharpest game of the season which included a near-perfect offensive showing in Saturday’s 74-69 win over Georgetown. Dixon’s team shot 60 percent from the floor, handed out 22 assists and committed only seven turnovers in the win.

None of that offensive success seemed to carry over into Tuesday, and the statistics told the story.

Errant play set in early on, and it didn’t wash away until the final buzzer sounded. Missed shots and dropped passes dominated an opening 20 minutes that featured anything but crisp play.

The teams shot a combined 19-for-55 and turned the ball over 12 times (the Panthers guilty of eight of them) before going to the locker room with Pitt slightly ahead at 24-22.

Despite coming into the game boasting the nation’s best assist-to-turnover ratio, the Panther offense operated like it had never seen a zone before. Passes sailed over the recipients’ heads, balls were dribbled off of shins and nearly every shot, assuming the possession to be turnover-free, was contested.

UConn’s active 2-3 zone kept the Panthers looking for easy offensive answers, forcing turnovers all along the way. The Huskies helped themselves to 20 extra points off those Pitt turnovers, usually coming in the form of wide-open, fast-break dunks that made the capacity crowd groan.

The second half didn’t get off to too much of a promising start either. Pitt turned the ball over on its first possession, an errant pass that flew out of bounds. It appeared to be a sign of things to come as neither team sharpened the entire game. The Panthers finished with 18 turnovers to the Huskies’ 12. The shooting never entirely picked up for UConn either, which finished shooting 36 percent from the floor.

“I don’t think they had a lot of good looks on offense,” Dixon said. “I thought we contested almost every shot. I thought our defense was very good for 40 minutes. We didn’t have to make too many adjustments defensively.”

Pitt, meanwhile, hit 67 percent of its shots in the second half, bringing the Panthers’ final percentage up to 44.4 for the game.

“I think we did a little better job executing in the second half,” he said, referencing UConn’s stout defense all season. “I think our offense got better, and we got good looks.”

The good looks came only after the miscues, though. Another testament to the sloppiness came with about two minutes left when even Kendall, the source of so many big plays down the stretch, had to leave the game with his fifth foul.

It wasn’t just the players, though. Even the crowd was off on this night, so much to the point that, in one instance, a drunken fan hollered out an obscenity at Calhoun, even while the rest of the crowd lay dormant. Nothing out of the ordinary, right?

Gray was shooting free throws for Pitt. The fan screamed and Gray, naturally, barely grazed the rim with his shot.