A WINNING WEEKEND?
Slow second half yields 17th loss in 18 meetings
Pitt wins basketball and volleyball contests on eve of football showdown with Clemson.
With a little less than two minutes to play, the “little brother” chants from Pitt’s student section began.
Then, as Pitt went up by 20 in its 74-53 City Game victory Friday at PPG Paints Arena, it was “we want Clemson,” referring to the football team’s matchup Saturday in the ACC championship. Ouch.
A game in which Duquesne opened up with an 8-0 lead, trailed by three points at halftime and by just six at the 9minute mark had devolved into a blowout loss to its crosstown rival.
“I’m sure we were a little frustrated,” second-year Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot said.
“When the ball doesn’t go in the basket, guys get frustrated. The thing that disappointed me is you just have to be more competitive when you get smacked. You just have to play to the bitter end. That’s a disappointing thing.”
Duquesne, which entered the game shooting 35.3 percent from 3 and 44.1 percent from the field, couldn’t get much going from the perimeter (5 of 24 from 3) and couldn’t feed the ball inside consistently enough to keep pace once Pitt started to pull ahead in the final 10 minutes. The Dukes scored just 24 points in the second half.
“They’re better shooters than that, but credit Pitt, they made shots difficult,” Dambrot said. “We didn’t do enough inside-out on them to really help ourselves. When we did, [sophomore center] Mike Hughes went 9 for 11.”
The Dukes fell to 4-2 and now have lost 17 of the past 18 games against the Panthers.
“We got away from ourselves tonight,” said Hughes, who had a doubledouble (20 points, 10 rebounds) and was a bright spot for Duquesne. “We played hard, but at times there were just certain plays where we got away from ourselves.”
Some of the loss was Pitt simply being better where it counted, even though it didn’t have a glorious offensive game, either — the Panthers shot 43.9 percent from the field to the Dukes’ 33.3 percent, grabbed 42 rebounds to the Dukes’ 33 and had 15 turnovers to the Dukes’ 22.
Eight of Duquesne’s turnovers came in the final nine minutes.
Some of it was self-inflicted, bad discipline on defense, particularly around the rim — the Dukes had four players with two fouls by halftime. Freshman Austin Rotroff already had picked up his third. With sophomore forward Marcus Weathers out due to illness, Rotroff, usually a center, started in Weathers’ place, finishing with seven points and a single rebound.
“It definitely limited a lot, definitely,” Hughes said of the early foul trouble. “Just with the early fouls, stupid fouls that we got, just like hedging ball screens, easy plays that you can defend, just making the wrong read, making the wrong play on it.”
Freshman forward Amari Kelly also filled in for Weathers. He had four blocks, although he was held to two points and three rebounds, fouling out in 11 minutes.
“He’s one of our toughest guys,” Dambrot said of Weathers. “He’s a tough kid, he’s strong. The bigger issue is we don’t have a lot of guys who have played that 4 spot, so that forces us to play small. We got two fouls on Williams early, so that kept him out in the first half. Did it affect us? Yeah, but that’s why you have 13 scholarship guys.”
Sophomore Eric Williams Jr. entered the game averaging 15.2 points and 8.6 rebounds but was held to 9 points, 3 assists and 4 rebounds. With three turnovers, too, the lesson learned is that the Dukes need to finish games stronger.
The Dukes had a a 3-point lead with 9:27 to play against host Notre Dame Nov. 20 but lost, 67-56.
“I think we’ve got to play better down the stretch of the second half,” Williams said. “Ten minutes, we were down by five. I look at the stat sheet and they only score six more field goals. Just to see that, and we lost by 20, it’s just mental lapses at the end I think.”