Pitt-Cincy Game Recap

- The stretch is here, the play is tighter, the margin of error is lower and teams are rounding into their best form of the year. Understandably, Pitt is a little behind the curve, but last night's result was encouraging. Ignore the record, Cincy has developed into a good team; out of the two teams that played last night, Cincy was the one that came into the game with a winning conference record. Pitt didn't give their best effort, but the effort they gave was enough to win a tight and highly competitive ballgame.

- Pitt did some sloppy things last night, but give credit to Cincy, because their style of play caused a lot of those things. Cincy is a very bad match up for the Panthers. Out of the teams in the conference, I believe Cincy is on the list of bad match ups for Pitt, which also includes: Louisville, Marquette, Villanova and Seton Hall. All tough teams that put a lot of pressure on the ball.

- I thought Dixon's rotation was much better last night . . . he really got down to the bare essentials. Each game now has high importance and he needs his best players out there at the right times. I though the could have played Gil Brown and Tyrell Biggs more, but other than that, I think he played things almost perfectly.

- I am still of the opinion that to erase all doubt, Pitt needs to win out . . . the next three are highly important. Pitt could still potentially get in with a 9-9 conference record, but I wouldn't want to leave anything to chance. 11-7 definitely gets them in no matter what they do in the Big East Tourney, and 10-8 probably does the same, even though I would feel more comfortable with a tournament win with that record.

- Player of the Game = DeJuan Blair. Big on both sides of the ball and he just looked stronger out there than the past few games. More explosion and more jams. He is this team's energy . . . when he is up, the team is up, when he is down, the team is down. I thought he handled the double team better too, which is an improvement over earlier this season.

- Young is really playing great offensively . . . and he just keeps building on things. I am not going to get on him for the rebounding stat, because at least he had the steals to offset it. And the guy he was guarding is a very tough player to go up against . . .Young needs to play the hedges better though . He possibly plays them the worst, because his recognition of where to go afterwards is bad . . . very bad.

- Fields makes so much of a difference with ball movement and just getting guys open shots . . .everyone equally benefits from his presence. People may have forgot, but when he went down, he looked a lot like a consistent 18 PPG player . . . for Pitt to reach a higher level, he has to get back toward those numbers in terms of point production. What he is giving now is good enough to win against the teams that they play coming up, but he needs to keep improving. On a side note, I thought he moved much better laterally and was much better on D as a result.

- Benjamin had a huge run of points last night . . . I love the fact that he gets them near 10 every game . ... in terms of points, he has replaced the hole they had when Cook went out . . . Pitt still misses how Cook created, but Benjamin has shown himself able to get the points, which is huge.

- It was nice to see a non-hesitant Ramon out there firing 3s, even if he wasn't hitting at a great rate.

- I thought Brown and Biggs gave them great minutes off of the bench . . . I thought Wanamaker was good during his little run . . . I think McGhee is getting pushed around a little too much in there. I think Gary needs strength work in the legs, because guys move him a little too easy in my view.