Gameday for Panthers vs. Hoyas

After a few early rough patches, both Pitt and Georgetown appear to be playing at the… After a few early rough patches, both Pitt and Georgetown appear to be playing at the expected level, given that the teams were picked to finish No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in the annual preseason Big East poll.

What better time for the recent success than right before the two tangle in front of a national audience?

ESPN College Game Day will come to Oakland tomorrow as Pitt plays its biggest game of the season when they tip-off with the Hoyas at 9 p.m. on ESPN 2.

Georgetown (11-4 overall, 1-1 Big East) took in a few shocking losses to start the year, dropping home contests to Old Dominion (75-62) and then-unranked Oregon (57-50) before falling just short to a top-10 Duke squad (61-52) on the road.

The Hoyas responded with seven consecutive wins, though, just having their streak broken the other night with a 56-52 home loss to Villanova.

Pitt (15-2,3-0), meanwhile, has bounced back from two December road losses to win five straight of its own, including a key road win over Syracuse last week. Pitt is off to a 3-0 start to Big East play for the fifth time in the last six seasons, the latest win a 59-49 conquest of DePaul on Wednesday night, giving the Blue Demons their first home loss this season.

Getting to 4-0, though, will mean getting past a Georgetown team that not only has the matchups to worry Pitt, but has also beaten the Panthers the last two years. A big part of that success has been the work of one player.

The Hoyas boast star junior forward Jeff Green, a 6-foot-9 junior that lit up Pitt for 22 points in last year’s 61-58 win in Washington, D.C. While Green is only averaging 11.6 points a night for John Thompson III’s team this year, he has had some of his best games against the Panthers.

Still, the junior’s biggest struggles have come in the team’s defeats. In the Hoyas’ four losses this year, Green hasn’t registered in double figures, including a horrid two-point performance in the loss to Old Dominion. What’s more, he didn’t even take many shots, hitting seven of his 17 shots from the floor in that four-game span.

Georgetown also has another thing that few other Big East team’s have – a 7-footer to match the Panthers’ preseason Big East Player of the Year Aaron Gray. Roy Hibbert stands tall at 7-foot-2, and he leads Georgetown with an 11.7 points per game average. He and Green combine for more than 12 rebounds a game

One bad piece of news for the Hoyas, though, is that it appears Gray is finally back. After putting together a beautiful performance in Pitt’s 95-89 double-overtime loss to Oklahoma State back on Dec. 21, the senior hit a mini-slump, failing to reach double digits in Pitt’s next four games. While all proved to be Pitt wins, Gray seemed relieved to have a solid 18-point outing against DePaul Wednesday.

“Obviously I was real excited for the opportunity, being one-on-one, playing man-to-man defense,” he said after the game, which marked the first true man-to-man defense, without double teams, Gray has seen in weeks. “I feel I took advantage of it. At the same time there are a lot of things I think I could have done better. I need to continue to be better for this team to be better.”

Many share his sentiment about a Pitt team that is currently ahead of everybody else in the Big East conference, but even in the midst of Gray’s struggles his teammates have elevated their games. Sophomore point guard Levance Fields scored eight points Wednesday, ending his streak of seven straight double-figure scoring outings. He and the rest of the Panthers have been torrid from the 3-point line, hitting 40 percent from downtown on the season.

Dixon has said all along that Gray doesn’t need to score to make his presence felt – just being out there attracts attention and brings opportunities to his other players.

“Some games he’s going to have more [points],” Dixon said after Wednesday’s win. “I thought [DePaul] would double-team more, and they didn’t do that. Aaron is such a good passer. We’re going through him every game. If you look at the stats and don’t see the game, you might see less shots, but that doesn’t mean he’s not getting as many touches.

“We count touches, not so much shots.”

Helping out the Pitt offense, though, has been the Panthers’ recent defensive stoutness. After not holding an opponent under 50 points all season, the Panthers have held firm the last two contests, keeping both South Florida (48) and the Blue Demons (49) beneath that mark, a far cry from the 89- and 95-point embarrassments felt by the Panthers in nationally televised losses to No. 14 Oklahoma State and then-No. 7 Wisconsin last month.

Dixon hasn’t made a big deal about his team’s sub-par defensive performance. In fact, he is optimistic that things are starting to look up.

“You’ve got to realize that we are, still, a relatively young team,” he said, referring to junior transfer Mike Cook and his sophomores Fields and Sam Young in particular. “I don’t know if we’ll ever turn the corner defensively, but we are getting better. We’re improving, I think, and we get better every day. We’ll probably get better tomorrow.”

A sold-out crowd will hope that improvement is enough to deliver a primetime victory.