Lead safe this time as Pitt holds on

Despite holding a 17-point halftime lead against West Virginia Wednesday night, no one in the… Despite holding a 17-point halftime lead against West Virginia Wednesday night, no one in the Petersen Events Center could consider Pitt’s contest against the Mountaineers to be over.

After watching double-digit leads slip away in their last four games, the Panthers realized that that trend needed to stop.

“We talked about it in the huddle [before the second half],” point guard Brandin Knight said after Pitt’s 82-46 drubbing of West Virginia. “Right after the half, the last four games, we’ve lost substantial leads and we’ve let teams come back.”

“I think the key was that we got a lead at halftime,” Donatas Zavackas, who lead all scorers with 15 points, said. “In the second half, we came out and said we’re not going to let this go until the last minute. We’ve got to put two halves together.”

While they had built their lead by driving the ball inside and using their physical advantage to get baskets, the Panthers relied on their perimeter shooting to put the finishing touches on the victory.

Pitt outscored West Virginia 20-10 in the paint during the first half, while attempting only six jumps shots, including four from behind the three-point line.

“The way they play, they give up a lot inside because they tend to switch a lot so you get a lot of mismatches inside,” Knight said. “That’s why we were able to get it down low.”

However, in the second half, the Panthers attempted 13 threes, connecting on seven of them as six different players scored from behind the arc. For the game, Pitt shot 53 percent from three-point land and 51 percent from the field.

The last time the Panthers shot that well was during the first game against West Virginia. Since then, Pitt had failed to shoot better than 50 percent from the field and shot less than 30 percent from behind the line in each contest.

That game also marked the last time that Zavackas, who seemed to have lost his touch during the past few games, sat down in the barber’s chair.

“The last time he got a haircut was the last time we played West Virginia,” head coach Ben Howland said about Zavackas, who led the Panthers with 16 points in the previous meeting. “It’s grown a lot since the last time we played West Virginia.”

Showing the touch that he had earlier in the season, Zavackas connected on almost 60 percent of his field goals after shooting just 26 percent in the previous four games.

Howland attributed Zavackas’ return to form to some changes in his shooting mechanics.

“What I noticed in the last couple of games, his feet were sliding a little bit out from under him when he was leaning back,” Howland said. “There’s little alterations that you make. The margins are so small.”

“We watched some tapes from previous games when I was actually hitting shots,” Zavackas said. “[Howland] said to just concentrate on going up and down in the same spot and you’ll make good shots.”

While he found one way to help Zavackas recapture his scoring touch, Howland had another suggestion that they might try for Saturday’s game against Seton Hall.

“He played well,” Howland said with a smile, “so he’s going to keep getting those haircuts.”