More On The Pitt Victory Over Louisville

I will now piggy-back a little off of Phil's running diary in an attempt to gloat more about the victorious Pittsburgh Panthers. This team loves playing at Madison Square Garden. Pitt is now 4-0 at MSG this season, including a quality win over Duke, and 21-8 dating back to the 2001-2001 season. Head coach Jamie Dixon may have put forth his bet season yet by leading this team as far and as well as he has. With the departure of Aaron Gray and Levon Kendall after last season, and the injuries to Mike Cook and Levance Fields this season, nothing much was expected of this Panthers squad. But Dixon has kept this team focused all season long and they appear to be playing their best basketball here in the Big East Tournament. I had the privilege of watching the game last night, and while I didn't keep a running diary like Phil, I have the following thoughts on Pitt's play so far in the tournament.

• Sam Young is outstanding. He has scored 21 points in each of the Panther's two tournament games. Young led Pitt with 12 rebounds last night against Louisville, 5 on the offensive glass. More importantly, he is becoming the leader of this team by (finally) playing some sound defense and hustling like I've never seen him before. His performance in this tournament, and over the entire season, has Panther fans hoping and praying that he'll come back for his senior year.
• Levance Fields is back running the point like we all hoped he would. Now granted, his shooting is still pretty bad (a combined 5-21 in the first two games of the tournament for a dismal 24%). But I'm not worried about him scoring, that is the job of Sam Young, Ronald Ramon, and DeJuan Blair. What jumps out at me about Fields is this - he has 12 assists and only 2 turnovers over the past two games! On his Conference's biggest stage, Levance has stepped up his game by distributing and protecting the basketball soundly. As Phil noted, his ability to continually break Louisville's press last night was textbook.
• Can enough be said about Gilbert Brown's performance last night? He came off the bench when Keith Benjamin got into some foul trouble and contributed 36 solid minutes and grabbed 8 rebounds. He was all over the place. Gotta love it when you get a surprise performance like that off the bench.
• Senior guard Ronald Ramon was not going to let this be the last game he ever played in the Garden. Back in his hometown of NYC, he played a team-high 42 minutes last night. 42 minutes! Ramon could always sink three-pointers as if they were free throws and he has shown that in the first two games of the Big East Tournament, going 7 of 13 beyond the arc.
• I need to mention that the vaunted Pitt defense is finally back! After playing suspect defense for the second half of the regular season, the Panthers have bounced back in a big way in the Big East Tournament. Pitt held Cincinatti to 64 points and a 39% shooting percentage on Wednesday, then followed that up with another strong performance Thursday night, holding Louisville to 69 points (in a game that went to overtime) and 38% from the field. Hopefully they can keep this up against a high scoring Marquette team.
• Again, much credit needs to be given to Jamie Dixon. Pitt has now won 16 of it's last 22 games in the Big East Tournament. He never let this team give up on the season. Who knows how Pitt will do against Marquette today, let alone in the NCAA Tournament. It almost doesn't matter because this Pitt team is one of the most likable Panther squads I've witnessed in years. They hustle and they seem to really enjoy playing together (something I didn't see all that much during the Carl Krauser or Aaron Gray years). I wouldn't put anything past Coach Dixon and this group of players. As the win against Louisville last night showed me, anything is possible with team. Go Pitt!