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| Council was at his best Wednesday |
What a difference a point guard makes. Pittsburgh had basically played without Travon Woodall since he suffered groin and stomach injuries in early December and the result was a team that started the season 11-1 losing eight straight prior to defeating Providence tonight.
Not surprisingly, Woodall showed signs of rust in an 0-5 return against Louisville on Saturday, but the junior was terrific versus the Friars, coming up just shy of a double double with 17 points and nine assists, while knocking down all four of his three point field goals.
This is a different game without him on the floor.
This is a kid who reached the 10 assist mark in four of the Panthers' first seven games, and he certainly came to life Wednesday with the Friars in town.
Of course, Providence has a terrific point guard of their own, and Vincent Council was playing at his best on a night in which he fell an assist shy of a monster triple double (26 points, 10 rebounds, nine assists). The Providence junior exploited a shaky Pittsburgh defense, getting to the rim repeatedly in the game's first 25 minutes and then picking them apart further over the final 15.
An impressive stat line could have been even better had his teammates finished a handful of slick looks in the interior. He passed well both on the inside and in finding breaking teammates down court, as perhaps his best look of the night came when he sailed a 50 foot pass over two defenders on the money to Gerard Coleman for a lay-in.
What we saw tonight was Council showing nearly every aspect of his offensive arsenal. He started early by knocking down step-back jumpers, carried the scoring load in the first half when his teammates could not get anything to drop, and he got a struggling Bryce Cotton off in the second half by finding him on the break for a couple of easy dunks. The result was Cotton scoring 20 points in the second half after being shutout in the first.
For as good as Council was, the defense was poor.
The running Panthers. Providence was able to withstand a number of Pitt runs in the first half. Even after a pair of 8-0 runs and another 7-0 spurt, PC managed to hang around behind Council and trailed only 32-26 with just under three minutes to play.
That's when Ashton Gibbs went for the early knockout blow. The Big East's Preseason Player of the Year, who happens to be struggling through a sub-standard shooting season, torched a Friar defense dedicated to stopping him.
Gibbs connected from three point range on four consecutive possessions, the last a "there's no doubt this is going in" pull-up from 28 feet, and in a matter of two minutes the six point gap expanded to 15. While Providence gamely fought back for the duration, it was simply too deep of a hill to climb, especially when their defense continued to give up open jump shots and looks at the rim.
Teams can't come back from so far down without getting stops consistently, and right now Providence is not getting them.
Providence's defense is springing leaks of late. After Marquette managed to shoot 9-11 from three point range, the Panthers connected on 11-20 and were a +24 from beyond the arc on the night. There's no way Providence is digging out of a hole like that, no matter how easily they might have been able to score versus Pitt.
As was the case throughout the game against Marquette, Pittsburgh hurt PC early in transition, but that carried over into the halfcourt set as the game wore on, as Woodall routinely picked apart the Friars' defense that let up 86 points a game after seeing Marquette hang 79 on them at home.
A week ago Providence was a top six defensive field goal percentage team in the Big East, but the past two games have been setbacks defensively.
Cooley went big, bigs went small. For the first time all season Ed Cooley played Bilal Dixon, Kadeem Batts and LaDontae Henton together against Marquette, and he apparently saw something he liked as he started the trio together tonight.
While Henton was effective in the first half (7 points, 7 rebounds in the game's first 20 minutes), Batts suffered through a shaky offensive evening (1-6 shooting, 2 points, 1 rebound in 22 minutes), while Dixon was up and down throughout, seemingly a step slow on the glass and defensively.
Notably, Ron Giplaye logged eight minutes - two more than Brice Kofane who played only six after seeing double digit minutes in each game dating back to the December 1 win over South Carolina.
On the bright side, Providence held their own on the glass, getting out-rebounded 36-34, but they gave up critical second chance points at inopportune times in the second half. Most notably was a Talib Zanna tip over Dixon with just over 10 minutes to play that pushed the Pitt lead back to double digits and snapped an 8-0 PC run that got that them back into the game.
Pitt then got a stop and canned a three pointer on the next possession to seize momentum once again.
It was a killer sequence for a team battling to get back into the game.
Cotton's crazy night. Suddenly, Cotton has turned himself into a viable Big East scorer. There were questions about whether his out of conference numbers would translate to conference play, and those fears looked justified as he struggled early in January, but the 6'0 shooting guard continues to look like one of the best shooters in the Big East.
After hanging 27 points on Louisville and 26 on Marquette, Cotton looked as if he was going to be a non-factor as he went scoreless at the half. A few open court opportunities got his confidence up and suddenly he was pouring in jumpers, finishing on the break, hitting shots along the baseline and finishing pretty alley oops.
He closed with 20 points in the second stanza, as he continues to surprise with his ability to put up huge numbers against conference opponents. He's averaging 20 points per game over his last four and is starting to play with the confidence that Cooley has tried to bring out of him all year.
Cotton has been a very pleasant surprise for the Friars all season and has certainly carved out a niche with this team in the future, when many, myself included, saw this as a year in which he was playing for his life as a Friar.
He's certainly answered that question.
