Jamie Dixon and the Pitt Panthers will have nearly a week to prepare for a Top 10 team visiting the Petersen Events Center on Saturday.
After easily defeating Virginia Tech on Sunday, the Panthers improved to 17-4 on the season and 6-3 in ACC play. Given the way last season went, many should be thrilled with the way the season has gone for the Panthers.
But Dixon isn’t necessarily one of those that are pleased as he tries to get his team ready for No. 9 Virginia, a team Pitt has often struggled with since joining the ACC.
“Simply put, we need to get better defensively,” Dixon said. “We’ve got to get better defensively. We understand that, we’re working on that. We’ve got to change the ways of some guys and what they do.”
To date, Pitt is allowing 66.4 points per game (sixth in ACC) while scoring 80.5 (third in ACC). However take a closer look at just Pitt’s nine ACC games and the numbers are drastically different.
Pitt is allowing more points at 71.2 points per game (seventh) while the scoring is down to 73.0 points per game (eighth).
The offense is talented enough to realistically help Pitt beat anyone, but the defense hasn’t really been there all season and it is a problem that Dixon needs to get fixed fast. As we have seen so far in ACC play, the offense isn’t going to be there every night and eventually the defense can’t allow the opposition to score at will.
“We’ve got to get better,” Dixon said. “Our numbers in conference are not good enough. It’s amazing that we’re 6-3. We’ve had a couple bad performances that have put us in that situation. But at the end of the day we’re 6-3 and we’ve got to go forward and get better. We’ve got the ability to do it; we just have to find the way. Yes, we are a little bit small inside, but we can make up for it in other ways.”
It’s not going to be easy for the Panthers as they are in the meat of their schedule, facing ranked teams in five of the next seven contests.
After Virginia visits, the Panthers visit No. 15 Miami and No. 1 North Carolina before coming back home to take on Wake Forest. Pitt then travels to Syracuse, always a tough game, before coming home to face No. 18 Louisville and Duke.
This week the Blue Devils fell out of the polls for the first time since February 2007, but it is still Duke and it won’t be an easy game.
After that Pitt ends the season with road games at Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech.
One thing the Panthers will have to do during that stretch is limit the production that other teams guards have as they have been getting killed by guards all season.
One way to stop that is by forcing turnovers and taking charges, something we saw a little of against Virginia Tech.
“The first big thing was the charges,” Dixon said. “It was an emphasis, it has been a big emphasis, but we really put it out there this week. It has hurt us this year by not [taking charges]. We’re getting driven on too much, and we’ve got to do some things to contain that. We wanted to be more aggressive. We tried to pick up a little more in the full-court in after free-throw situations. I think that may have given us a little more aggressiveness.”
The next couple weeks are going to be big for the Panthers in terms of their NCAA Tournament hopes.
Pitt is currently projected as a No. 8 seed by ESPN’s Bracketologist Joe Lunardi and have fallen three lines in a three-week span after being projected as a No. 5 seed just three weeks ago.
For the Panthers to stay in the mix for the Big Dance and not have to sweat things out on the bubble the next few weeks, they are going to have to survive this next two week stretch and win some big games along the way.
To do that, Dixon has to find a way to get the Panthers man-to-man defense fixed and do so quickly.
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