Pitt senior Lamar Patterson spent the greater portion of the Panthers first two games playing facilitator, setting a career-high with seven assists in the each of the Panthers two opening wins.
But Sunday night against the Howard Bison, Patterson reminded the nation that he can fill it up when needed as well.
The senior connected on all four of his three-point attempts in the first half, scoring 16 of his team-high 20 points as Pitt improved to 3-0 on the season, cruising to a 84-52 victory over Howard in the first round of the Progressive Legends Classic.
“That’s something I work on every day,” said Patterson.” Last game, we just couldn’t find the touch; today we found it. That’s how it is. Some games you have it, some games you don’t. I just saw it was going in, so I wanted to keep shooting. I kept getting open shots.”
For the Panthers it wasn’t just Patterson, as everyone was in a groove early on.
Eight different Pitt players found their way into the scoring column during the first 20 minutes as the Panthers set a school record by shooting 81 percent from the floor in the half, knocking down 17 of their first 21 shots.
Pitt started the evening with a 9-0 run and never looked back as they upped their lead to 24 in the first half, taking a 48-24 edge into the locker room.
“I don’t know that it was shooting, but execution more, and decision making and passing,” said Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon. “I don’t know how many assists we had at that time. Sometimes you can shoot it well but this was off of offensive decision-making. We ended up with 20 assists, which is a good number, but I think we had 13 at the half. To me, that’s the biggest indicator if you were to look at a number. We got a lot of inside-out penetration on the kick out with the threes.”
While the Pitt offense was clicking early, so was the Panthers defense, holding the Bison to only 26.1 (6-for-23) shooting in the first half. The Panthers held Howard without a field goal for the first seven and a half minutes of the game and in the second half, forced 18 Bison turnovers.
Pitt didn’t shoot the ball particularly well in their last game against Fresno State, going 0-for-11 from behind the arc, but the floodgates opened early for the Panthers as they knocked down six of their first eight long-range attempts.
The Panthers extended their lead to as many as 33 in the second half as Dixon continued to get his young bench some valuable game experience.
In addition to Patterson, freshman Michael Young also finished in double figures scoring with 11, marking the first time in his young career that Young has scored in double digits.
Pitt outrebounded the Bison 33-24 with Derrick Randall grabbing a game-high seven boards. The Panthers also led in assists, 20-10, with Patterson and sophomore point guard James Robinson tied for the team lead with four apiece.
“It was a good win for us,” said Dixon. “We got off to a good start. I think we were up 19-1 so obviously our starting group looked real good, put some subs in there. We sustained at a pretty good level and did things that we wanted to do. I thought our turnovers were low, we wanted to keep them below 10, but we had some at the end that got away from us. But it was a really good performance from us, the starting guards especially. James (Robinson), Cameron (Wright) and Lamar (Patterson) were really good.
Freshman guard James Daniel led the Bison with 22 points on 6-of-20 shooting.
The Panthers are off until Wednesday when they will play host to Lehigh in the regional round of the Legends Classic.
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