DeJuan Blair Straight Up Dominates Thabeet in Win Over UConn

DeJuan Blair paid little attention to the 8 inches that he was giving up to Hasheem Thabeet. He simply did not care that Thabeet was a shot blocking threat. Instead, Blair went up strong against Thabeet and made shot after shot, providing the Panthers with the effort they needed to defeat UConn 76-68. But it wasn't just his offense that was impressive. The big man seemed to grab every rebound and refused to give way to Thabeet in the post. Blair lit up the Huskies for 22 points and 23 boards while holding Thabeet to 5 points, 4 boards, and 2 blocks. With the exception of a couple of long jumpers that went for airballs, Blair played a near perfect game as he muscled his way through his best game of the season.

While Blair dominated the post, it was the Panther's Sam Young who led the team in scoring with 25 points (8-13, 4-6), despite foul trouble for the entire game. Young's scoring production was crucial for Pitt as Levance Fields struggled for the first 37 minutes and the Panther's bench was only good for 3 points. Fields was pressured for the entire game by UConn's guards, and Kemba Walker in particular played very well against him. Walker prevented Fields from driving the lane and did not allow Fields an open look until 3 minutes remained in the game. Fields was held to just 5 assists and 4 turnovers, one of his poorer performances, but did finish with 10 points (all of which coming in the final 3 minutes). Despite his stat line, Fields did show great court vision, especially in the opening minutes, as he quickly pushed the ball up court in transition resulting in easy fast break points for the Panthers. His two 3's in the final 3 minutes were clutch bus and ended UConn's chance of a comeback.

UConn put together a solid team effort and looked very good in the 2nd half. They showed that they can be a legit contender even without Jerome Dyson. A.J. Price had 18 pts and 8 assists and Jeff Adrien contributed 13 pts and 9 boards, but UConn's player of the game in my opinion was Kemba Walker. Walker put up 13 pts in 24 minutes and played lock down D on Fields. With under 2 minutes to play, Walker stole the ball from Fields and drove home a layup to cut UConn's deficit to 4. Unfortunately for the Huskies, Walker's effort was not enough to overcome Pitt's frontcourt duo of Blair and Young. However, UConn should be pleased with Walker's play, as they will need him to continue at this level of play if they want to win the Big East regular season title.

I was pretty disappointed with Thabeet's peformance in this game. Yea, DeJuan Blair is a great player, but it looked as if Thabeet was content to let Blair out work him. Thabeet needs to understand that he can't just rely on his length. Blair had no trouble getting position on Thabeet, and Thabeet made no effort to front him. I guess Thabeet thought he would be able to swat away all of Blair's shots. He was wrong, he got embarassed.

Diaco Leaving UVa

So Bob Diaco, UVa's D.C., is now leaving to coach at Cincinnati. Now we don't have a D.C. There's only speculation at this point as to who will be the new D.C., but some say that Ron Prince will be back on staff as Assistant Head Coach, which I'm assuming will allow Groh to oversee the defense entirely. This is real sweet cause I did a lot of work getting stats on Diaco's special teams and defenses. Now he's gone. Overall though, not a big loss, I was never really sold on him. Best of luck in Cincy.