Saturday, March 15th, 2008 by Adam Wagner
Panthers shoot Golden Eagles down
The Pittsburgh Panthers continued their improbable run in the Big East tournament on Friday night, defeating the #24 Marquette Golden Eagles 68-61 to advance to the semifinals against #9 Georgetown. The victory was Pitt’s second against a ranked team in as many nights and means that the Panthers are going to their seventh Big East Championship Game in eight seasons, a feat unmatched in the history of the conference.
While Pitt looked dominant at times, the victory was just s much a result of Marquette’s inability to put the ball in the basket for the entire first half and part of the second. Once Marquette’s shooters began to heat up, however, the game became closer than Pitt fans should have been comfortable with, but the Panthers eventually prevailed.
Oddly enough, the fatigue that was expected to be a factor had no effect for the Panthers until the final 10 minutes when passes began to fly a little slower and players began to take a little more time to chase the ball down.
Other observations from this game include:
- Gilbert Brown really does look like a player. Brown has been using his 38 inch vertical leap much more effectively than he had in the beginning of his career, putting himself into position to make spectacular defensive plays and very impressive offensive plays. His shooting and passing don’t look half-bad either. I would argue that his maturation has been the development of the Tournament for the future of the Panther program.
- Marquette message boards have been arguing that Pitt gets away with fouling too hard and is favored by refs. They have kind of a point. Pitt bends the rules just to the point where they will not break, fouling hard and almost traveling enough that refs label it as “Big East basketball” and do not blow their whistles, instead allowing play to carry on. Pitt needs to play that style for another game, but then needs to revert to the style played by the rest of the teams in the NCAA for the tournament.
- Win or lose tomorrow, Pitt should be ranked on Monday. They have beaten two very good ranked teams on two consecutive nights.
- Sam Young will be the MVP of the tournament if Pitt wins. He has gone for 20+ points in every game and has been a game-changer both offensively and defensively as he seems to constantly be around the ball or altering the course of play in some manner.
- Ronald Ramon was able to drive on the Marquette defense. If Ronald Ramon is driving on you, you know that you have defensive issues.
- Marquette has some of the classiest uniforms in all of the NCAA.
- Pitt was actually better when DeJuan Blair was not on the floor for some reason, possibly because the team was better able to keep pace with Marquette without the big man. At one point, the tallest player on the floor for Pitt was Young, but Marquette was completely incapable of matching up with Pitt’s athleticism offensively or defensively.
So Pitt lives on for one more night at least, heading into a matchup against an intimidatingly good Georgetown team that the Panthers manhandled earlier this season. The game should be a very interesting contest between two strong teams, but Pitt should be able to run with the Hoyas as long as they are able to force their own style of play and not have a style forced on them.
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