Troutman, Pitt open with win

True freshman Ronald Ramon ignited the crowd with his three first-half three-pointers, leading… True freshman Ronald Ramon ignited the crowd with his three first-half three-pointers, leading Pitt to an 81-55 season-opening win over the Howard Bison on Saturday.

Ramon was the first freshman to start a season opener for the Panthers since 1997, when Ricardo Greer opened the season against the Bucknell Bison. Against this Bison team (0-2), Ramon finished with six assists and 12 points, all coming on three-pointers.

However, it was senior Chevon Troutman who got the scoring started at the Petersen Events Center for Pitt (1-0). He played for only 19 minutes, but finished with 18 points and 11 rebounds. It was his fifth career double-double.

Howard’s coach, Frankie Allen, said after the game that they had no answer for Troutman.

“He was just too strong for us,” he said. “We were just overmatched there in the beginning.”

The first two Panther buckets scored were layups by Troutman, giving his team an early 4-0 lead.

Ramon followed his two layups with his first collegiate shot.

Guard Carl Krauser took an inbound pass and tossed it across to a wide-open Ramon. With a defender in his face, he fired a shot from behind the three-point arc, and it went right through, without touching the rim.

“He’s one of the best shooters I’ve seen in a long time,” Troutman said of Ramon.

Following a Chris Taft layup that gave Pitt an 11-0 lead, Bison forward Clifford Ault scored Howard’s first points of the night. He drove toward the basket, pulled up, and hit a jump shot from just outside the paint.

Ramon answered quickly, with another three-pointer, putting Pitt up 14-2.

The Panthers then went on a 16-6 run to give them a 30-8 lead with less than six minutes remaining in the half.

The run was highlighted with another Ramon three-pointer.

Pitt forward Mark McCarroll controlled an inbound from the baseline and passed it out to Krauser, who then dribbled the ball out to the center of the three-point arc. Ramon ran around McCarroll, who had set up the screen, and accepted a pass from Krauser. Ramon settled and calmly knocked down the three.

“It’s nothing new,” Ramon said. “I’ve been doing it since high school.”

Yuri Demetris and Krauser both finished off the half connecting on three-pointers of their own.

The most exciting play of the first half, judging by the crowd’s reaction, was a slam-dunk by Taft. With less than two minutes remaining in the first half, Krauser drove down low, passed around a defender back to Taft, who caught the ball standing in the paint and leapt into the air, dunking the ball with authority.

The Panthers cruised on to a 40-15, halftime lead, because of the Bison’s poor shooting percentage. Fourteen of their 33 attempts in the first half were taken from beyond the three-point arc, and they missed them all.

“We felt like they were the only shots we could get,” Allen said of his team’s decisions. He also blamed the poor shots on nerves.

On the other side, Pitt was hitting its shots under the command of point guard Krauser, who finished with only five points, but recorded six assists. Head coach Jamie Dixon said after the game that Krauser was more to the offense than what the stat book reads, because assists to assists are not counted.

“I thought Carl did a great job offensively,” Dixon said.

There was one number that stuck out to the coaches on the stat sheet — 25 turnovers. Dixon said that he took his team into the locker room at the half and told them that he wanted the team to focus on controlling the ball. At that point, Pitt had 11 turnovers, and they would only commit more in the second half.

“The number obviously sticks out,” Dixon said, “but we’ll get better at that, too.”

The Panthers look to overcome the turnover woes when they take on Robert Morris at the Pete, Wednesday at 7 p.m.