Ouch...

It was one of those games. 

Frustrating to say the least, Blair tore us up for a 78-60 Panther victory last night in Pittsburgh. I would say that it is easily the sloppiest play we've seen from the boys all year, and it indeed was annoying:

1) Like I just said, 13 turnovers against a team like Pitt, or any team in the Big East for that matter, is not going to win you many games. Sloppy, Sloppy, Sloppy.

2) Having said that, the officiating was less than stellar as well. Paul Harris' technical was complete BS. It's division 1 college athletics guys- come on. If you are going to T Harris up for that, there should have been a technical called against Lavance Fields when he was throwing F-Bombs around after his missed free throws. 

3) Did I mention the officiating was less than stellar? 'Cuse shot 15 FT as opposed to Pitt's 17. But don't be fooled. Syracuse had zero FTA in the first half. zero. Paul Harris, Rick Jackson, and Big Daddy Arinze all had to change up their style of play because of foul trouble. Pitt picked up a ton of fouls in the last five minutes of the game when it was already out of reach.

4) Now, don't get me wrong. The officiating did not decide this game. They sucks, but thats typical Tim Higgins basketball. The real issue here was rebounding. 37 rebounds, 10 of them offensive. That's terrible. DeJuan Blair destroyed us. We could not guard him. Big Daddy lost position every time down the floor. Blair is a smart player. I am throughly convinced that he was saying something that fired Rick Jackson up to draw that technical. 

5) Syracuse, outside of Andy Rautins, shot the ball horribly last night. There had to have been at least 4-5 air balls, most of them wide open looks.

6) Devendorf was too quiet for this team to win. Maybe it was the "you hit girls" chant every time he touched the ball. 

7) Don't be fooled by Jonny Flynn's stats. He had a rough night. He had like 4 points with three minutes left in the game, and when Higgins when on his foul equating brigade, Jonny hit about 6 free throws out of the nine he got to attempt in the last 3-5 minutes of the game. He was trying to hard driving in the lane at times last night. 

All in all, we have to rebound and protect the ball. If we contain Blair at all, or get him in foul trouble (look at Pitt-L'Ville stats), and we do not turn the balls over thirteen times, we are in a much better position to win this game. We have to remember that Pitt is pretty darn good. We came off of a Saturday win against ND, while Pitt was hungry at HOME fresh off a loss to L'Ville. Speaking of, next up is Louisville. All I can say is, thank the good lord we are playing at home.

-KShaw