Berenato will improve women’s basketball team over time

Some random thoughts on random Pitt sports …

-Pitt’s women’s basketball team finished… Some random thoughts on random Pitt sports …

-Pitt’s women’s basketball team finished the season by losing its final 12 games. Regardless of how the team finished in the standings, first-year head coach Agnus Berenato did a great job this year. Let’s face it; former coach Traci Waites left the program in shambles, which is probably the number one reason why she was shown the door after five years.

-Berenato’s bunch finished the season with two Big East wins, but got those wins with only one player who even sniffed the floor last season. Give Berenato a few years; she’ll turn things around.

-So much for the theory that Pitt’s men’s basketball team was slumping at the worst possible time. The Panthers played what was quite possibly their best basketball of the season Tuesday night at Providence. A conference win on the road against any top-25 opponent is a major achievement. But to blow out the No. 12 team in the country 88-61 on its home court shows that this Pitt team is for real.

-Pitt fans would call Tuesday’s win at Providence a dominant performance by the Pitt offense. That’s not the way ESPN analyst Jay Bilas saw things. Bilas said that Chevon Troutman and Chris Taft’s combined 47 points were a result of Providence’s worst defensive performance of the year.

-Does it really matter if the Panthers win the Big East Tournament again this year? The stark reality is that people will only remember this team for what it does in the NCAA Tournament.

-Speaking of the NCAA Tournament, who cares if Pitt gets a No. 1 seed? The team has gone on the record saying they don’t care. And neither should anyone else. In all likelihood, St. Joe’s will finish the season undefeated and be given the No. 1 seed in the East. Pitt would have a much easier road to the Final Four as a No. 2 seed in the East than as a No. 1 seed in the Mid-west.

-Pitt’s men’s swimming and diving team just finished winning its eighth consecutive Big East title. Does anyone care? I think so. While swimming is obviously not a big spectator sport, most of the student body and faculty take pride knowing that Pitt has one of the strongest swimming and diving programs in the country.

-Another gifted Pitt athlete you may not have heard of is senior gymnast Alyse Zeffiro. If all Chris Carter does is catch touchdown passes, then all Zeffiro does is break school records. Zeffiro owns the school records for the vault and floor exercise and is the first Panther ever to win East Atlantic Gymnastics League specialist of the week honors on multiple occasions.

-Many are wondering if Pitt’s baseball team will break the 36-win plateau this season. The answer is yes. It looks like Nick Evangelista has picked up where he left off last year. And if P.J. Hiser stays healthy, the Panthers should definitely win more games than last year … as long as this Pittsburgh weather cooperates.

Ryan Walker is a senior staff writer for The Pitt News and can be reached at rpw973@pitt.edu.