The Pittsburgh Panthers have been to the championship game of the Big East Tournament seven times in the last eight years. This statistic would be phenomenal, but for one thing: Pittsburgh had only won once in that stretch. More like the Buffalo Bills than the New England Patriots in their tainted dynasty, the Panthers entered Saturday night’s final as the underdogs against Georgetown. The Hoyas were the most recent team to wrench the title from Pittsburgh, running away with the championship 65-42 a year ago. Unfortunately for Georgetown and the rest of the Big East contenders, Pitt finally took offense.
The inspired Panthers became only the second team in tournament history to win four straight games, capping off a stretch of three consecutive wins against ranked opponents with a 74-65 win over the Hoyas.
“This is obviously a great win,” Pittsburgh Head Coach Jamie Dixon said. “It was a great performance and great effort by our guys. We beat a very good team, and we understand that and we knew we had to play well—I can’t say enough about our effort.”
After a dominating performance in the semifinals against West Virginia that garnered him All-Tournament honors, the stage was set for senior center Roy Hibbert to lead his team to its second consecutive title. Add the fact that the man responsible for keeping tabs on the seven-footer would be freshman center DeJuan Blair—who is more than a half-foot shorter than the Hoya big man—and it looked like it would be another night of feasting for the Hibbert monster. But it wasn’t to be, as Blair and the Panthers out-muscled and out-hustled the Hoyas all over the court—especially, of all places, under the glass.
“They hurt us on the boards,” coach John Thompson III said after the game. “It was evident right from the beginning. I thought our guys fought and scrapped, but the rebounding was key.”
“We had to do that,” Dixon said of the rebounding performance. “It just carried over throughout this whole tournament. The rebounding was obviously the key factor again tonight.”
Pittsburgh out-rebounded Georgetown 41-29 on the night and 19-7 on offense. And this just a night after the Hoyas put in a dominating rebounding performance against the Mountaineers.
The two most back-breaking sequences of the night for the Hoyas came just minutes apart and were indicative of the flow of the entire game. With just over nine minutes left and the Hoyas down 46-40, Hibbert fouled junior Levance Fields (10 points), putting the guard on the line shooting 1 and 1. It was Hibbert’s third foul. Fields missed the front end, something the Panthers did a lot, shooting just 52 percent from the line. But the quick-footed Blair fronted Hibbert and pulled down the rebound, putting it back for the score and drawing Hibbert’s fourth foul in the process.
Two minutes later, senior forward Patrick Ewing Jr. fouled junior forward Sam Young. Young, who was later named the tournament’s most outstanding player, missed the free-throw, but Pitt managed two offensive rebounds, the second of which once again came from Blair. Georgetown’s DaJuan Summers (9 pts) picked up his fifth foul on the play, putting the sophomore forward on the bench for good and giving the Panthers a commanding 53-42 lead.
“They just played like they wanted to win,” Georgetown junior guard Jessie Sapp said. “You wouldn’t have known that they played four [consecutive] days.”
“I think to be tired is a mental mindset,” Young said. “When you’re out here and you have a guy trying to take the ball from you, that’s a challenge. I don’t think tiredness or fatigue come into play when you’ve got so much on the line.”
The Hoyas didn’t give up, as Hibbert, Ewing and fellow senior Jonathan Wallace tried to will their team back into the game. But every time Georgetown started to crawl back, senior guard Ronald Ramon would fire up a run-stopping three-pointer, or Young would rise up for a momentum-killing block.
With just under two minutes to play, Ewing drove to the basket on Young, converting the lay-up plus the foul. The ensuing free throw cut the Pitt lead to five, 62-57. But that was as close as the Hoyas would get. The Panthers’ free throw shooting woes continued, keeping the door open for Georgetown, and Hibbert’s patented two step hook continued to fall. But with 50 seconds left, Hibbert rebounded a Wallace miss and went right into his move. This time, the Tournament MVP was ready for him.
“He likes the one-two jump hook,” Young said. “He’d get to two and I’d jump as high as I can. I pretty much got it at the right time tonight.”
The emphatic block dashed all hopes of a comeback for the Hoyas and punctuated the victory—the 100th for the Panthers’ senior class, their fourth of the tournament, the 6th of the year at the Garden and the second of the season against the Hoyas.
“I think today they caught us playing our best basketball,” Dixon said of sweeping the Hoyas. “But if you’re looking for a weakness in Georgetown’s game, there isn’t one.”
The Hoyas were 25-54 (46.3 percent) from the floor and 8-24 (33.3 percent) from behind the arc. Hibbert led the Hoyas with 17 points and six rebounds, followed by Wallace with 12. Sapp joined Hibbert as the only Hoyas on the All-Tournament team. The Panthers shot 23-51 (45.1 percent) from the field and 6-15 (40 percent) from three. Ramon led the team with 17 points, followed by Young with 16. Fields represented Pitt on the All-Tournament team with Young.
“The second part of the year has just ended, and the third part of the year is getting ready to start,” Thompson said. “You don’t want to ruin the third part of the year because you’re feeling sorry for yourself. We have to move on.”
