Lack of depth hurts Panthers in loss to Braves

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. – March Madness is the time when the men are separated from the boys…. AUBURN HILLS, Mich. – March Madness is the time when the men are separated from the boys.

The fatigue of playing successive games just to stay alive in college basketball’s defining month proves that it is indeed the size of the fight in the dog, not the dog in the fight.

Just ask Iowa, Syracuse and Kansas, which all lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament after winning the Big Ten, Big 12 and Big East conference tournaments, respectively.

And after yesterday’s stunning loss to No. 13-seed Bradley, ask Pitt as well. What worked so well for the Panthers all year is what inevitably led to their fall in the second round – depth, or in this case, lack thereof.

“You never know who you’re going to need,” Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon said after the team’s first-round win over Kent State Friday. “Playing guys all year long, they’ve all been in these situations before and I think it’s been a big part of us.”

Depth has been the Panthers’ story all year long. Pitt has boasted a sometimes 10-deep rotation capable of wearing down more shallow opponents en route to victory.

For Dixon’s Panthers, the postseason wasn’t supposed to be much different. Pitt planned on continuing to utilize a long rotation to place themselves in the “men” category.

In fact, Pitt accomplished its healthy substitution even when short-handed in the first round.

Against Kent State, the Panthers were without top reserve Keith Benjamin because of illness and key contributor Tyrell Biggs because of leg injury. Still, seven Panthers logged double-digit minutes while 10 saw game action.

And for the first time all year, six Panthers scored 10 or more points.

“I thought the guys were doing a pretty good job, they looked rested and they didn’t look tired at all,” Dixon said. “The minutes were pretty well spread out- a lot of guys stepped up for us and we’re proud of our guys.”

There was no reason for the third-year coach not to be proud, in fact. The Panthers combined to shoot a school-record 67.4 percent from the field. Both junior Aaron Gray and sophomore Ronald Ramon were a perfect six of six.

But as much as Gray and Ramon’s statistics stand out, Dixon believes that the team effort contributed as much to the stellar shooting performance as anything else.

“I think we did a good job all game long of finishing plays and finding the open guy and making the extra pass,” he said. “Eighteen assists on 31 baskets is actually lower than our normal percentage.”

But, Pitt’s depth worked in more ways than one, carrying into the first half of their second-round matchup against Bradley yesterday. The Panthers found themselves in a dogfight early against the No. 13 seed. Gray, Carl Krauser, Levon Kendall and Antonio Graves all tallied two quick fouls in the first half, forcing Dixon to call on his bench a little earlier than expected.

With both Kendall and Gray in foul trouble, Dixon called on junior Doyle Hudson who answered the summons by pulling down four rebounds in five minutes.

To aid the smaller first-half Pitt lineup, freshman Levance Fields hit two of three from behind the arc and paced the Panthers with eight points in twice as many minutes. Fields finished with a team-high 18.

“We’re a deep team and there’s been situations like this before,” the freshman from Brooklyn, N.Y., said. “Unfortunately today it wasn’t enough.”

It wasn’t enough because both Benjamin and Biggs were still missing. And in their absence, Bradley’s Marcellus Sommerville and Lawrence Wright took the game over offensively.

“Keith [Benjamin] would have helped us [guard Wright],” Dixon said. “We would have definitely used Keith and maybe I should have played John DeGroat more.”

All in all, the Panthers missed Biggs and Benjamin more than they thought they would. The amazing shooting percentage Pitt tabulated against Kent State disappeared as many thought it would, and the Panthers couldn’t disguise their hurt for two of their top reserves.

“We missed not having those guys,” Dixon said of Biggs and Benjamin after the loss. “We would have liked to have been full strength-but those are things that happen in college basketball.”