Panthers hold off Duquesne

Duquesne head coach Danny Nee is full of praise for Pitt guard Carl Krauser. But he can think… Duquesne head coach Danny Nee is full of praise for Pitt guard Carl Krauser. But he can think of one thing he dislikes about the redshirt senior – his presence.

“I wish he’d have went to the pros,” Nee joked.

Krauser finished with 23 points to lead all scorers in the Panthers’ 71-60 win over the Dukes. He also tallied a game-high eight assists, but attributed that less to his passing skills than to his teammates’ ability to convert.

“It was just really believing in my teammates,” he said. “We’re feeling real comfortable out there together.”

One of those teammates was Aaron Gray, who pulled down a game-high 17 rebounds to go with his 14 points.

“He had another double-double, and he’s doing a great job down low,” Krauser said of the center.

Gray was pleased with his performance, but admitted that he didn’t start out as well as he would have liked to.

“I came out and I played tentative,” he said. “I wasn’t as aggressive as I should have been.”

Neither were the Panthers. The entire team looked shaky at the beginning of the game. In the first five minutes, Ramon picked up two quick fouls and Krauser was called for an offensive foul and also for a carry. But the Panthers quickly turned things around.

After a McAllister free throw tied the game at 13 with 11:12 left in the first half, Pitt went on a 12-1 run, fueled by a Krauser trey and layup. The Panthers built their lead to as many as 12 with 1:30 left in the half, and looked to be in control.

They did so slowly, as play in the first half was back and forth. The big difference in the first half came on the offensive side of the ball. Pitt shot 45.8 percent from the floor in the first half, while Duquesne hit only eight of their 29 attempts. Four of those came from McAllister, who scored 11 of his team-high 18 points in the first half.

“We’ve just got to shoot the ball better,” Nee said. “You can’t shoot 27 percent in the first half. I thought a lot of times they got us into a hurry and forced some shots.”

Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon echoed what Nee said.

“Our defense was good the whole way,” he said. “Every basket they had to earn.”

He felt that his team worked hard to create good opportunities, and though he didn’t think the Panthers shot the ball as well as they could have, he was happy with the shot selection.

“We didn’t shoot it great,” he pointed out, as his Panthers shot 44 percent from the floor for the game. “But the shots were all good.”

The Dukes looked like they might get back into things after McAllister’s basket-and-one closed the gap to six points, 37-31, with 16:32 to play. On the Panthers’ ensuing possession, Krauser’s lob from the foul line sailed just out of Gray’s reach, and Duquesne had a chance to get closer than they’d been since 9:43 left in the first half.

But the Pitt defense forced a bad shot out of Ryan Lambert on the defensive end. The Panthers brought the ball down and Krauser drove the baseline, only to feed a wide-open Benjamin, who hit another three from the left corner to quiet the crowd.

Next time down the floor, Benjamin again created problems for the Dukes, missing from three but getting his own rebound. Gray hit a layup and was fouled. After he hit the foul shot, Krauser stole and went for a lay-in, and suddenly it was a 14-point game again.

Duquesne narrowed the lead to eight twice later in the half, and McAllister came within inches of cutting the lead to six with 9:23 to play when he narrowly missed a stepping in front of a pass with nobody between him and the basket.

But Krauser snatched the pass out of the air and found a wide-open Ramon on the right where McAllister had left him. Ramon converted, and the Pitt lead was back in double-digits for good, 55-44.

This was the first road test for the young Panther team, and Krauser feels they passed it, and that they won’t have issues on the road if they remember that they always have teammates around them.

“I just tell them, ‘You have a senior leader here who’s ready to take over the game,'” he said. “As long as we stick together as a family and a unit, we’re going do real well.”

Pitt returns to action Saturday at 2 p.m. when they take on Penn State.