Pitt’s defense has shown up

The men’s basketball team has recently frustrated several teams and coaches with its defensive… The men’s basketball team has recently frustrated several teams and coaches with its defensive play, and it could not have come at a better time for the Panthers.

After Pitt lost 65-62 to St. John’s on Jan. 18 at Madison Square Garden, the team has gone on a run, winning six of its last seven games, allowing no team to shoot better than 43.1 percent along the way. That includes suffocating defensive performances against St. John’s on Feb. 8 and Syracuse on Monday, which left both coaches feeling dejected.

“We didn’t make mistakes. We just didn’t make shots,” Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said, reacting to Monday’s 68-64 loss to Pitt, when his squad missed 38 shots in the game and made only 23 (37.7 percent).

This was the second time in less than three weeks that Boeheim has stepped into a post-game press conference expressing his disappointment about missing shots against Pitt.

“We got pretty good looks. We just didn’t convert them,” Boeheim said after the Orange’s 76-69 loss to Pitt on Jan. 29. In that game, his team only made 43.1 percent of its shot that night.

St. John’s coach Norm Roberts had the same empty feeling after the Red Storm missed 39 shots and managed only 44 points at the Petersen Events Center on Feb. 8 in an 11-point loss to Pitt.

“There’s nothing else we can do about [it],” Roberts said of his team’s 27.8 percent made shots from the field.

For the season, Pitt has held its opponents to 39.9 percent shooting from the field, all while hitting 48 percent of its own shots — which is second to Syracuse (49.8 percent) in the Big East.

The shots for the other teams have not been falling, because of Pitt’s inside presence with Chevon Troutman, Chris Taft, Aaron Gray, Levon Kendall and Mark McCarroll.

“We really couldn’t establish an inside game,” Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said following a loss to Pitt last Saturday. His team only hit 40.4 percent of its shots in a 68-66 setback.

The big bodies in the paint have forced teams to either take their chances in the lane or shoot from farther out. Either way, it’s been tough for teams to hit shots.

And missed shots have led to defensive rebounds for Pitt. Pitt has pulled down 520 defensive rebounds as compared to its opponents’ 252 offensive boards on the season.

The Panthers are out-rebounding teams overall by an average of about 10 per game. Pitt pulls down, on average, 38.1 rebounds per game.

The inside play has also led to several trips to the free-throw line — 178 more than Pitt’s opposition, leaving others in disbelief at the amount of times Pitt works its way to the free-throw line.

“I was like, ‘Man, the way they play D, we should be there five or six more times,'” Notre Dame guard Chris Thomas said following the Irish’s loss to Pitt. “That’s the battle against Pitt.”

It was also part of the battle Monday against Syracuse as Troutman single-handedly sealed the game with his 16 made free throws on 20 attempts. Pitt’s physical play put the Orange in foul trouble early. Hakim Warrick, Syracuse’s leading scorer, was on the bench with three fouls in the first half. This did not allow for him to be as physical as he would like to be because he had to be cautious of fouling out.

Another reason Pitt has been able to cause so much trouble is Jamie Dixon’s 2-3 zone defense, which he has been implementing more often. Pitt has been known for its man-to-man defense, but Dixon is changing that.

He has used it in foul situations and when the opponents have inserted certain personnel into the lineup. Most notably, he has used it to beat the school that prides itself on the 2-3 zone: Syracuse.

“We knew all year that the zone would be something that we use a little bit more,” Dixon said after the first win over Syracuse. “We’ve played it a lot in practice in past years, and we’ve worked on it a lot this year as well.”

Fives games remain in the regular season before the Big East Tournament tips off, and soon the Panthers will see if all their work will get them past the Sweet 16, which has been the team’s glass ceiling the past three years.