Pitt looking to tame Tigers

Use a pencil when filling out an NCAA bracket this year, because Carl Krauser and his… Use a pencil when filling out an NCAA bracket this year, because Carl Krauser and his teammates are looking to make a disturbance.

“We mess up a lot of brackets,” said Krauser, whose Panthers will face eighth-seeded University of the Pacific in the first round of the NCAA tournament this afternoon. Pitt is a slight underdog at the nine seed, but Krauser feels that Pitt plays its best basketball when placed in this role.

“Since I’ve been here, I have realized that nobody in this college basketball game gives us any type of respect and I’m kind of used to it,” he said, adding, “That’s why we like being the underdogs.”

Good thing, because the Panthers will be in that position, barring any upsets, if they wish to reach the Sweet 16 for the fourth consecutive year and second time under head coach Jamie Dixon, who had an extra couple of days to prepare his team for the tournament after Pitt was sent home early in the quarterfinals of the Big East Championship.

The time off could work to Pitt’s advantage.

“Well, we had two days off to stay off our legs, and today we had a pretty good practice,” Chevon Troutman said on Sunday after it was announced that Pitt (20-8) would be traveling to Boise, Idaho for the first round. “I feel like it was good for us.”

Pacific, however, is coming off a loss to Utah State in the Big West Championship game, which ended the Tigers’ 22-game winning streak.

Pacific rode that winning streak to a quiet 26-3 record.

“I’ve only heard of Pacific, like, two times,” Krauser said on Sunday.

That surely means the names Christian Maraker and Guillaume Yango have not registered in the Panthers’ heads before, but the two Tiger upperclassmen will shortly make themselves known.

Maraker, a junior forward, and Yango, a senior center, are both 6-foot-9-inches tall and average 13.3 points per game. Yango recorded seven double-doubles in the regular season, while collecting 7.4 rebounds per game.

Dixon explained on Sunday that he was familiar with Pacific’s program and some of its players, pointing out Yango as a potential threat.

“I saw him play, coming out when he was recruited,” he said.

Maraker, also a threat, could look at what West Virginia center Kevin Pittsnogle did to Pitt twice and cause the same matchup problems with his size and ability to step out and hit the 3 (38.5 percent on the season).

And the Tigers will not hesitate to shoot the 3. “Pacific loves the 3-pointer,” is what sticks out on Pacific’s scouting report.

Not exactly what Pitt or its fans want to hear going into Thursday’s first-round matchup, because defending the 3 has been an arduous task for the 2004-05 Panthers. Villanova and West Virginia both used long-range shooting to defeat Pitt this season.

Pitt’s opponents are making a low percentage of their 3-point shots, but teams this season have combined to toss up 552 3-point attempts, making the low percentage null and void. At 33.3 percent, Pitt’s opponents have made 184 3s — 17 more than Pitt has made.

The Tigers have hit 183 3-pointers on the season, connecting on 38 percent of their shots from outside the arc. Pacific’s David Doubley, a 6-foot-1-inch senior point guard is the Tigers’ most dangerous weapon from behind the arc, shooting 42.7 percent and averaging 12.2 points per game.

Pitt, likewise, has three of its starters, Krauser, Troutman and Chris Taft, averaging double-figures on the season. In fact, Pitt is very statistically similar to Pacific.

The two schools both average 72.4 points per game, while holding opponents to about 63 points per game and about 40 percent accuracy from the field. Each also outrebound their opponents on a consistent basis.

So who will come out on top?

“It’s who’s ready to go and who has the better game that given day,” Dixon said of the tournament’s unpredictability.

That uncertainty leaves a possible second-round matchup against either No. 1-seeded Washington or No. 16-seeded Montana.

“I don’t care who is waiting for us,” Taft said of possible future opponents.

Whoever faces Pitt will have to deal with a team that is on a mission.

“We got a couple of chips on our shoulders,” Krauser said. “We hungry, we’re ready to play hard. It’s going to bring us together, like a family, and we just going to do it right.”

“We should play a great game out there,” he added. “We ready to roll, we ready to roll.”

The Panthers rolled into Boise Tuesday afternoon and will tip-off against the Tigers today at 12:40 p.m. at Taco Bell Arena.