Feb. 3, 2030: #7 ranked Boston College Eagles (17-5, 8-3) vs Pittsburgh Panthers (10-10, 3-8) at Petersen Events Center in Pittsburgh, PA
3rd Assistant Coach Jeremy Anderson
I was scouting teams earlier this week but was able to catch up with our team here in Pittsburgh for the game against the Panthers.
C Tim Cotton has been given a clean bill of health and will be playing tonight. SF/SG Glen Robinson is still experiencing a bit of pain in his foot, so we again hope to not have to play him. Our athletic trainers feel it’s just another day or two before he’s 100%, though. C Courtland Reese is likely to be out at least another week. Wayne Minahan’s outstanding play in our last game has earned him another start at C tonight, but Tim Cotton should also get extensive minutes so we’ll have more interior depth than we had in our last game. And that means that we can return to our regular defensive intensity for this game.
Pitt’s strength is inside. PF Marquest Mohr is averaging 15.0 ppg and 8.6 rpg and C John Mahorn’s averages 10.9 ppg and 5.0 rpg. Mohr is a freshman but is very talented. The Panthers like to run their offense through him so he can put up a lot more shots. So the more we can keep his hands off the ball, the better. Mahorn puts a high percentage of his shots in the hoop, so we need to try to keep him from getting clear shots. Their PG’s also shoot well, but don’t take a lot of shots. They employ a lot of offensive freedom, but when they use sets its mainly shuffle with a little flex. They don’t put a lot of points on the board, though. Defensively they primarily use m-2-m with a little 1-3-1 zone thrown in. They don’t press much except in the latter stages of a close game. If our perimeter players have good games and we attach the boards, I think we have a good chance.
With the refs putting us into early foul trouble, Pittsburgh gets off to a hot start taking a 18-7 lead 6-1/2 minutes into the game. By the time the 2nd media timeout comes around, the Panthers had torched the nets, hitting 9 of 11 shots and led 24-15. Midway through the half, the refs had saddled 3 of our starters with 2 fouls apiece and they were riding the bench. We finally got Pittsburgh to miss some shots and we crept up on them, trailing 32-30 with 8 minutes to go in the half. The refs were atrocious, calling fouls on nearly every possession. With 3 of our big men on the bench with foul trouble, we were getting dominated on the boards. With a minute left in the half, Corey Graham sunk a 3 to put us ahead by a point. Then he repeated it on our next possession. And we leave the court at the half on top 52-48. We hit 55% of our shots, Pitt hit 56% of theirs. The way the refs are calling fouls is making it impossible to play tight defense.
We score the first 5 points of the 2nd half, but Pittsburgh fights back to retake the lead with 14 minutes to go. The lead then shifted back and forth until our play got sloppy allowing the Panthers to go on an 13-0 run and we fell behind 83-69 with 5-1/2 minutes remaining. We were unable to make a run to catch up and took a 92-79 beating.
Pittsburgh’s C John Mahorn topped all scorers with 25 points. Five of our players scored in double figures (SG Corey Graham-18; C Winston Minahan-17; PF Danny Toliver-11, SF/SG Glen Robinson-11; and PG Bobby Grannum-10), but it wasn’t enough. We just got outplayed late in the game. We slid into a tie for 3rd place in the ACC.