Resourceful Panthers win by sharing responsibilities

There is no superstar on the Pitt men’s basketball team.

So what?

This is the dumbest… There is no superstar on the Pitt men’s basketball team.

So what?

This is the dumbest excuse for why the Panthers can’t be that good of a basketball team. But apparently, most people around college basketball believe that Pitt isn’t very good.

Let’s see – Pitt was disrespected in the preseason polls by being ranked 22nd while the Syracuse Orangemen were ranked a lofty No. 7 and UConn seems to always find its way back up to the No. 1 spot.

Pitt spanked Syracuse on in its own house, and had the Panthers eliminated some of their mistakes against the Huskies, they would be 20-0.

The Panthers actually moved up a spot to No. 7 in the AP Poll this week. They are finally getting respect, more than two months into the season. Doesn’t that bother anybody?

Obviously, Syracuse was overrated and UConn is questionable after losing to Providence, yet another unranked team. Nobody is saying much about why Pitt played UConn so closely, but an excuse that I have heard from a friend who is a Syracuse fan is that guard Gerry McNamara was not playing at 100 percent.

It doesn’t matter. Sure, it would have helped Syracuse if it had its starting point guard healthy, but he’s not hitting 30 points on the Panthers’ defense, which amounts to 22 points more that he would have needed to tack on to his game total in order to have beaten the Panthers.

Pitt lost point guard Carl Krauser for four games and still remained undefeated. Fine – the Panthers did not play any teams that were very good. I know that’s the argument that some college basketball fans will make.

But if Syracuse is supposed to have been so much better than Pitt then it should have been able to get by or at least give the Panthers a challenge with or without McNamara. That’s just the point. Pitt does not depend on one player to win games. The Orangemen lost back-to-back games since McNamara was injured.

With the Panthers, it is somebody different every game that steps up and delivers a big game to help them win. One game it’s Krauser, then it’s guard Jaron Brown and even forward Mark McCarroll got in on the act against Syracuse along with forward Chevon Troutman.

Krauser, Brown and Julius Page were held under 10 points in the game. That probably would indicate that the Panthers would not fare too well against the Orangemen, but that’s the great thing about Pitt – it shares the ball and responsibility. McCarroll dropped 15 points and was tied for the Panthers’ leading scorer along with center Chris Taft. Taft also contributed 15 points, and Troutman scored 12 and grabbed 11 boards.

This is the same argument that I made a few weeks back about why the Philadelphia Eagles weren’t that good of a team. Philadelphia was a one-man show and I rest my case after what happened in the NFC Championship game. A team like the Super Bowl-bound New England Patriots don’t have a team full of superstars, but they come together as a unit and win despite injuries.

I guess that’s how the Patriots and Panthers are similar. They don’t have a lot of flare on offense, but play great defense. The Panthers are able to play to their strength, which is that they are a physical team. Syracuse was not able to keep up with Pitt’s physicality; therefore, it was dominated in the paint.

Even though nobody else looks at Pitt as having superstars in their line up, I’m sure Pitt fans see things differently. The Panthers in fact do have superstars – their names are Brown, Page, Krauser, Troutman and Taft.

Kevin Nash is the assistant sports editor for The Pitt News.