No.15 Pittsburgh hands No.5 Georgetown first loss in Big East play
The first game on Big Monday was just that for No.15 Pittsburgh - big. The backcourt tag team of Ronald Ramon and Keith Benjamin scored 18 points apiece to help the Panthers defeat No.5 Georgetown 69-60 on Monday night.
Pittsburgh (15-2, 3-1) extended their home winning streak to 13 games, and handed Georgetown (13-2, 3-1) their first conference loss. Despite the losses to Levance Fields and Mike Cook, the Panthers are 4-1 without Fields in the lineup. Freshman DeJuan Blair didn’t cower or shy away from 7-foot-2 center Roy Hibbert, getting 15 points and nine rebounds against the Georgetown big man. In their two wins over top 10 teams this season, Duke and now Georgetown, Blair hasn’t shone the look of just a freshman, rather a dominant upperclassman, going for 30 points and 29 boards in the two contests.
Jonathan Wallace led Georgetown with 14 points. Hibbert had the game’s only double-double, scoring 12 points and grabbing 10 boards. The Hoyas bench outscored the Panthers 21-7, but it was the trio of DaJuan Summers, Jessie Sapp and Austin Freeman that didn’t get things done for the fifth-ranked Hoyas. The trio combined for just 13 points on 6-of-22 shooting. Summers was held scoreless in the game and miss all seven shots he took.
After a see-saw, physical first half with Pittsburgh leading by just one, 27-26, Georgetown came out flat and slow, as the Panthers went on a 15-4 spurt to lead 42-30, with Ramon and Benjamin leading the charge on back-to-back 3-pointers. The Hoyas responded with an 8-0 run, getting to within three at 47-44, but Pittsburgh answered back, going up by eight with eight and a half minutes to play, 52-44.
Georgetown never led against Pittsburgh in the game, and the rebounding factor once again hindered Georgetown. Against a much smaller Pittsburgh team, the Panthers were able to outrebound the Hoyas 37-33. Georgetown’s inability to make a late push in the game was due largely to their severe ineffectiveness from 3-point range, shooting just 3-of-20 from downtown. The Hoyas had entered the night as the best shooting team from the field in the country at 51.6 percent, but a lot of credit goes the Pittsburgh on the defense end, holding Georgetown to just over 44 percent in the game.
You can’t say enough good things about the way head coach Jamie Dixon has this Pittsburgh team playing, down to just nine players due to the injuries to Fields and Cook. No excuses coming from Pitt, they’re just doing the work and doing whatever it takes to pull out wins. They wanted, and maybe even needed, this one more than the Hoyas, as Pittsburgh extracted some revenge from the blowout loss they suffered nearly a year ago to Georgetown in the Big East Championship Game 65-42. Both teams are now in a five-way tie atop the Big East standings at 3-1, with Marquette, Cincinnati and DePaul all at 3-1 as well.
No.15 Pittsburgh will be off until this coming Saturday when they travel to Cincinnati to face off against the Bearcats at 4 p.m. No.5 Georgetown will also have off until Saturday when they return home to face Notre Dame at noon.
Tags: Big East Basketball, Georgetown Hoyas, NCAA Men's basketball, Pittsburgh Panthers