Men’s Basketball: N.C. State’s Warren torches Pitt in road win

T.J. Warren draws attention any time he steps onto a basketball court. He’s not flashy in his style of play, but Warren is simply a defense’s nightmare. 

And when Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon prepared a game plan against N.C. State, he wasn’t focusing on anyone other than the sophomore forward, who leads the Atlantic Coast Conference in scoring.

“In this game, we were more concerned about him [than anyone else],” Dixon said. “We felt like he was the guy that could get them going. Other games you might look at not letting the other guys getting their average, but this guy’s going to get shots up and you can’t let him get going and that’s what he did.”

Warren torched the Panthers for 41 points on a remarkably efficient 16-of-22 shooting from the field — both record-setting totals at the Petersen Events Center — and 6-of-7 from the line and he added three 3-pointers and five rebounds as the Wolfpack topped Pitt, 74-67, Monday night.

“T.J. Warren gets 41 points tonight, but its an unselfish 41,” Wolfpack coach Mark Gottfried said. “He was special, especially against team that prides itself on defending the way Pitt does.”

Although Dixon wanted Pitt to delay Warren from ever getting into his rhythm, he made it clear early that he couldn’t be stopped — even as N.C. State’s only scoring option. 

“We couldn’t have talked about him more and him being the guy, but yet early on it seemed like we didn’t know he was a 24-point-a-game guy,” Dixon said. “I was just surprised that we could not understand that this was the guy who was going to score.”

Through the first 14:40, Warren had 15 of his team’s 31 points. 

“I came out pretty aggressive and my teammates did a pretty good job of finding me throughout the floor, executing the offense,” he said.

Moreover, he was just minutes removed from executing the play that set him off.

With more than nine minutes left in the first half and Pitt ahead 22-17, Jamel Artis found himself falling out of bounds with the ball in his hands near the right corner and the shot clock about to expire. Artis pushed hard off his legs and sank a 3-pointer to beat the buzzer and build Pitt’s momentum.

Unfortunately, Warren’s scoring storm began to brew shortly after when he hit an even more difficult fadeaway jumper. Warren even had a hand in his face.

Asked if he knew it was going to be his night after that shot, Warren, who kept a stoic face despite just setting multiple records, finally laughed. “Yeah,” he said, “it felt pretty good.”

Falling shots, contested shots, layups, dunks, putbacks. It was all falling for Warren, and Lamar Patterson, who was pegged with the task of trying to halt him, said he felt that way.

“Every shot was going in,” Patterson said. ”He shot over us and got easy looks, but once you make so many layups, its easy to put the ball in the net.”

Warren used his wiry and muscular frame to carve through the defense on his way to layups, but he also took advantage of his combination of size and quickness to knife between screens and past Pitt’s defenders, who had no choice but to try grabbing him to keep tabs.

“Generally you would like him to take some shots that he took,” Dixon said. “But the biggest thing was the fouls he got on guys. Fouls away from the ball to start the game took away from the aggressiveness we could have had. And that’s part of being a great offensive player, too.”

That agility put the Panthers in a tough spot, as perimeter defenders guarding Warren picked up cheap fouls off the ball.

“The foul trouble was limiting us,” Dixon said. “We didn’t have many options to put on Warren at that time. When we were man, we double-teamed him. We haven’t used that a lot, often, but we did practice it in both games prior to playing them.”

But even before Warren drew fouls that stymied Pitt’s defensive options, even before he hit the fadeaway jumper, even before he swiped the ball on defense and finished the play with a two-handed flush, Warren was feeling it.

At the end of the teams’ first pregame shoot-arounds, which usually happen with an hour before the game and last about 15 minutes, players take final shots until they make one, then walk back to the locker room.

James Robinson and Mike Young were the last two on the court, misfiring from 3-point range. It took Robinson about six tries before finally finding his stroke. But after every Panther had headed for the locker room, N.C. State trailed them.

In game speed, Warren crossed half court, took two long dribbles to the top of the 3-point arc, and sank the jumper in one try.