Posts tagged ‘pittsburgh’

NEW YORK — On the last rebound of the game in which the contest’s result was still in doubt, two bench players determined the outcome.

With 1:30 left in overtime of Pittsburgh’s 76-69 win over Louisville in the Big East Tournament on Thursday, the Cardinals trailed by four. Louisville’s Andre McGee attempted a wide-open 3-pointer that went long. Two of the game’s most important players — both reserves — were in on the rebound. Louisville’s Earl Clark got it, but the Panthers’ Gilbert Brown stripped him and recovered the ball.

Seconds later, Levance Fields got the roll on a tear-dropper that gave Pitt a six-point lead with 1:08 to play, and the Panthers were on their way to eliminating Louisville from its third straight Big East Tournament. And while stars like Fields and Sam Young will grab most of the headlines, reserves like Clark and Brown would form the character of the event.

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NEW YORK — Last October, at Big East preseason media day in Madison Square Garden, Pittsburgh’s players wanted to tell anyone who would listen that a Pittsburgh-metro prospect named DeJuan Blair was — all due respect to Syracuse’s Jonny Flynn and Donte’ Greene — as good as, or better, than any freshman in the conference.

The confidence Blair’s teammates showed in the 6-foot-8 big man was well-founded. Blair and Flynn shared conference Freshman of the Year honors this week. But to see the young man play in Pittsburgh’s 70-64 win over Cincinnati on Wednesday was to wonder whether this long season has taken a toll on him.

Blair’s game is built on both an unyielding energy and an uncommon on-court intelligence that allowed him to be among the conference’s leaders in both steals and blocked shots. But that energy appears to be on the wane. In recent games at Syracuse and West Virginia, he was in and out of the lineup and combined to grab just nine total rebounds — this for a player who’s averaged 9.5 per game this season.

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You can’t go anywhere around the sporting world without hearing about the bubble. Who’s on it? Who’s safe? Who’s in trouble? It’s a bit mind-numbing, but it’s also great fodder for talk-show chatter because it can be so subjective. I try to avoid most of this talk, because I don’t want popular opinion to affect my perspective, but when the bubble lists scroll across the bottom of my television screen, they’re kind of hard to miss.

Full bracket projection >

Here’s a look at the action in the Big East this weekend. Every team is playing, with seven conference games and one big non-conference rivalry matchup.

Connecticut at Notre Dame (Saturday, 9 p.m. ET, ESPN): The Big East’s marquee game on Saturday features a pair of teams fresh off impressive openers. Like Notre Dame, Connecticut has a short turnover and the Huskies play a second road game in three days. The big question will be whether UConn’s frontcourt will be able to defend Luke Harangody and Rob Kurz. A couple of other involve Notre Dame’s ability to take care of the ball, and UConn’s guards’ ability to hit shots.These are a couple of evenly-matched teams, but with the Irish at home and so solid offensively, Mike Brey’s team should be the pick. If Connecticut does win, then my preseason third-place prediction won’t look as farfetched as it did a couple of weeks ago. Irish by 8.

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I’ve been hard on Norm Roberts in this space, though many St. John’s fans don’t think I’ve been hard enough on the fourth-year coach. While the Red Storm’s offense under Roberts has always been something out of the Neolithic Era, I’d found the defense solid and the effort unquestioned.

That was the case again in St. John’s Big East opener at the Carrier Dome against Syracuse. The Orange have one of the best offenses in the Big East, but managed just more than a point per possession. Meanwhile, the Red Storm — not exactly known for their size and girth — outrebounded Syracuse and hustled all over the floor. But the Johnnies just couldn’t make enough shots to win, which ended in a 76-70 decision for the Orange.

Read more on Wednesday’s games and previews of Thursday’s action >

A brief look at the three Big East games tonight.

St. John’s at Syracuse (7 p.m. ET, SNY): The Red Storm heads to Syracuse fresh off one of the worst shooting performances in memory. A 28 percent shooting night against Virginia Tech was perhaps less startling than that St. John’s only lost by six. The days of Larry Wright and Eugene Lawrence knocking down jumpshots seems as long gone as Thanksgiving. The defense hasn’t waned despite a couple of nights at the Holiday Festival when SJU couldn’t get shots to fall. Norm Roberts will need that defense and the re-emergence of Anthony Mason — who played well over the weekend — to keep his team in the game. Syracuse probably has too much offensive firepower to lose this game, but the 2-3 zone will allow St. John’s some open looks, so a great shooting night could mean a nailbiter. On the other hand, when’s the last time St. John’s had a great shooting night? I think Bootsy Thornton was involved.

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And in the blink of an eye, it can all change.

Pittsburgh and Louisville were very confident at various times in the last couple of weeks. Even after the Panthers lost Mike Cook in the win over Duke, Pittsburgh surely felt good about its chances in the Big East entering Saturday’s matchup at Dayton. The 25-point loss to the Flyers was stunning in and of itself, but the loss of junior point guard and floor leader Levance Fields to a broken foot is the lasting implication of a miserable night. He’s expected to miss eight to 12 weeks, putting his return somewhere between Feb. 23 and March 22 (the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament).

Louisville has battled through its share of injuries this season, with senior Juan Palacios missing the season’s first nine games and without senior David Padgett since the season’s second weekend with a broken kneecap. Despite Rick Pitino’s claims of doom for his fifth-year center, Padgett was back in red and white on New Year’s Day for Louisville’s Big East opener against Cincinnati. Padgett is clearly still not 100 percent, but his return looked like a bonus for a team that appeared to have finally begun to put things together. Cincinnati’s 58-57 win on New Year’s Day proved that wasn’t the case.

Cincinnati had perhaps the worst start of any Big East team, losing five games in a row, and that stretch didn’t include the earlier losses to Belmont and Bowling Green. A heralded recruiting class wasn’t making much of an impact for Mick Cronin, and fans had started to lose interest. But folks who followed the Bearcats closely saw significant improvement over the last four games, despite three of them being losses. UC was in the game at Xavier until the final minute and outrebounded Memphis in a closer-than-expected loss. Cincy then had N.C. State on the run on the road but couldn’t hit enough shots or stop fouling. Then Cronin finally tasted victory again with an impressive win over Miami (Ohio), but even with the obvious improvement, it didn’t seem like a opening Big East game at Louisville would end positively. But the one-point win over a man Cronin once assisted proved that this Bearcats program has quite a bit of life left.

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