In a season of surprising highlights, one of the most surprising highlights was an inspired reference in a recent edition of Chris Peak’s 3-2-1 column to the classic actor John Cazale in the classic movie, The Conversation. The 3-2-1 column is one of my two must-read columns of the week, along with the weekly column by Bret Stephens and Gail Collins entitled, fittingly, The Conversation.
John Cazale acted in only five feature films, playing a central role in each:
The Godfather (1972)
The Conversation (1974)
The Godfather, Part II (1974)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Every single one of these films was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and three of them won, the two Godfather movies and The Deer Hunter. Despite lacking leading-man good looks, John Cazale also got the girl, America’s most acclaimed actress, Meryl Streep, even as he was dying of lung cancer.
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Post-game conversations can be illuminating. After the Virginia Tech game, Jaland Lowe, floor general on the court and off, told Zach Austin in a gracious but clear way that he needs to play like that every night, which Austin has started to do. From Virginia Tech coach Mike Young the same night, give or take: “7 is a good defender.”
After Tuesday night’s game, Leonard Hamilton allowed that “this team is capable of beating anybody in our league because of how well they play together and in synch, in terms of creating a system where they take the highest percentage shot. And sometimes it’s amazing that the highest percentage shot can be a 25 footer.”
(As an aside, I have always had a soft spot for Leonard Hamilton since the night in the early 1990s when his Miami team, leading by two with only seconds to play, failed to come back on the court after a timeout, leading to a disastrous series of events in which Pitt inbounded and scored, with no Miami defense on the court, and, in the ensuing chaos, Pitt stole the ball and Antoine Jones scored at the buzzer for the win. In stark contrast to, say, the recriminations after the end of the Pitt-Vanderbilt game of 1988, Leonard Hamilton took full responsibility for this fiasco, which likely was an error of an assistant. It was gratifying that his weak Miami team, which finished that season 10-17, rose up and upset ranked UConn three days later and that Hamilton has gone on to a long and successful career.)
Of course, the most entertaining post-game conversations involve the most entertaining Pitt player in recent memory. After unleashing nine three-pointers in the Louisville game:
Q. Blake, was there a point tonight when you kinda knew that you were on the cusp of history or the cusp of doing something special?
A. No, I actually did not realize that I tied the three point record, which was cool, which was my own, so that’s cool.
On Tuesday night:
Q. [Blake], what’s your last game here going to be like?
A. A win.
Tuesday night, Coach Capel also slipped in this gem with a quick laugh:
“I want to shout out Blake; congrats to him on setting the single-season record for three’s, and just his overall game. He was unbelievable. Made big play after big play, whether it was a shot, an assist - well, not an assist - a rebound, a defensive play.”
With about 3 minutes to play, I pointed to the scoreboard with the unreadable font and told my friends that this was a classic Blake Hinson stat line, standing then at 26 points, 1 rebound and no assists. Three of these points came on a possession that was a microcosm of The Blake Hinson Experience: a contested 25 footer drained seconds after he missed two free throws.
Make no mistake, though, Blake Hinson means everything to this team. Once Florida State found its game and started backing Pitt down with its array of muscular athletes, that game could have gone sideways if Blake Hinson had not made four three pointers, a couple of them from the airport, and a “traditional” three-point play, after Florida State cut the lead to seven with 13 minutes to play.
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Through the brilliance and leadership of Blake Hinson, the surprising if not shocking staying power of the precocious but skinny freshman guards, Bub Carrington and Jaland Lowe, or some nights, including Tuesday night, Jaland Lowe and Bub Carrington, who are getting stronger when they should be hitting the wall, the steady determination and grown-man two-way game of Ish Leggett, the surprising if not shocking staying power of the willowy Euro-big men, Federiko Federiko and Guillermo Diaz-Graham who are getting stronger when they should be breaking in half, and who look intriguing playing together, to the improved confidence of the explosive Zach Austin, and the constant team spirit and periodic meaningful moments of Will Jeffress, they are, as Chris Peak said, in the Conversation.
I told myself in December and January not to lose any emotional energy over this team. Life’s too short. And, being totally honest here, I told myself that any team that was relying on Blake Hinson as its leader was in for a volatile and probably unsatisfying ride.
To quote one of the classic John Cazale movies, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” Back in as a late-coming and unabashed fair-weather poster, even if I know deep down that I have more emotional and spiritual equity than that in this team and this program. Back in, to the point where my annoyance at the now-annual casual dismissal of the ACC, which has sent three different schools to the Final Four the past two years, as a 2-seed, a 5-seed and an 8-seed, while the other 30 conferences have sent five, and which has had four different schools win national championships in the last ten tournaments, while the other 30 conferences have won six, is building to a full-blown rage, even as there are so many far more important issues in the world.
This team, with Blake Hinson as its leader, has won my heart. They have done it the way that Pitt teams always have done it, by beating good teams in tough road gyms. The kind of wins that the people who decide these things claim to care about. The kind of wins that earn a team a bid, whether they get one or not.
****
John Cazale was not the only great actor in The Conversation. Like John Cazale, Gene Hackman had several other immortal roles. Years later, he would star as Coach Norman Dale in the greatest sports movie ever made. His words applied to most Pitt teams of the first decade and a half of the century, to the Pitt team of 2023, and, now, to the Pitt team of 2024:
“I would hope you would support who we are. Not, who we are not. These six individuals have made a choice to work, a choice to sacrifice, to put themselves on the line 23 nights for the next 4 months, to represent you, this high school. That kind of commitment and effort deserves and demands your respect. This is your team.”
There are so many lines in Hoosiers that give me chills all these years later.
“I've seen you guys can shoot but there's more to the game than shooting. There's fundamentals and defense.”
“Five players on the floor functioning as one single unit: team, team, team. No one more important that the other.”
“Don't get caught up thinking about winning or losing this game. If you put your effort and concentration into playing to your potential, to be the best that you can be, I don't care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game, in my book, we're gonna be winners.”
“I’ll make it.”
But the one that gets me the most is the one that I ALWAYS think of whenever I think of our own children and now our grandchildren, the one that I think of for any Pitt team that has won my heart, and, now, the one I will think of for the Pitt basketball team of 2024, no matter how it turns out for them:
“My team is on the floor.”
17-15
John Cazale acted in only five feature films, playing a central role in each:
The Godfather (1972)
The Conversation (1974)
The Godfather, Part II (1974)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Every single one of these films was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and three of them won, the two Godfather movies and The Deer Hunter. Despite lacking leading-man good looks, John Cazale also got the girl, America’s most acclaimed actress, Meryl Streep, even as he was dying of lung cancer.
****
Post-game conversations can be illuminating. After the Virginia Tech game, Jaland Lowe, floor general on the court and off, told Zach Austin in a gracious but clear way that he needs to play like that every night, which Austin has started to do. From Virginia Tech coach Mike Young the same night, give or take: “7 is a good defender.”
After Tuesday night’s game, Leonard Hamilton allowed that “this team is capable of beating anybody in our league because of how well they play together and in synch, in terms of creating a system where they take the highest percentage shot. And sometimes it’s amazing that the highest percentage shot can be a 25 footer.”
(As an aside, I have always had a soft spot for Leonard Hamilton since the night in the early 1990s when his Miami team, leading by two with only seconds to play, failed to come back on the court after a timeout, leading to a disastrous series of events in which Pitt inbounded and scored, with no Miami defense on the court, and, in the ensuing chaos, Pitt stole the ball and Antoine Jones scored at the buzzer for the win. In stark contrast to, say, the recriminations after the end of the Pitt-Vanderbilt game of 1988, Leonard Hamilton took full responsibility for this fiasco, which likely was an error of an assistant. It was gratifying that his weak Miami team, which finished that season 10-17, rose up and upset ranked UConn three days later and that Hamilton has gone on to a long and successful career.)
Of course, the most entertaining post-game conversations involve the most entertaining Pitt player in recent memory. After unleashing nine three-pointers in the Louisville game:
Q. Blake, was there a point tonight when you kinda knew that you were on the cusp of history or the cusp of doing something special?
A. No, I actually did not realize that I tied the three point record, which was cool, which was my own, so that’s cool.
On Tuesday night:
Q. [Blake], what’s your last game here going to be like?
A. A win.
Tuesday night, Coach Capel also slipped in this gem with a quick laugh:
“I want to shout out Blake; congrats to him on setting the single-season record for three’s, and just his overall game. He was unbelievable. Made big play after big play, whether it was a shot, an assist - well, not an assist - a rebound, a defensive play.”
With about 3 minutes to play, I pointed to the scoreboard with the unreadable font and told my friends that this was a classic Blake Hinson stat line, standing then at 26 points, 1 rebound and no assists. Three of these points came on a possession that was a microcosm of The Blake Hinson Experience: a contested 25 footer drained seconds after he missed two free throws.
Make no mistake, though, Blake Hinson means everything to this team. Once Florida State found its game and started backing Pitt down with its array of muscular athletes, that game could have gone sideways if Blake Hinson had not made four three pointers, a couple of them from the airport, and a “traditional” three-point play, after Florida State cut the lead to seven with 13 minutes to play.
****
Through the brilliance and leadership of Blake Hinson, the surprising if not shocking staying power of the precocious but skinny freshman guards, Bub Carrington and Jaland Lowe, or some nights, including Tuesday night, Jaland Lowe and Bub Carrington, who are getting stronger when they should be hitting the wall, the steady determination and grown-man two-way game of Ish Leggett, the surprising if not shocking staying power of the willowy Euro-big men, Federiko Federiko and Guillermo Diaz-Graham who are getting stronger when they should be breaking in half, and who look intriguing playing together, to the improved confidence of the explosive Zach Austin, and the constant team spirit and periodic meaningful moments of Will Jeffress, they are, as Chris Peak said, in the Conversation.
I told myself in December and January not to lose any emotional energy over this team. Life’s too short. And, being totally honest here, I told myself that any team that was relying on Blake Hinson as its leader was in for a volatile and probably unsatisfying ride.
To quote one of the classic John Cazale movies, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” Back in as a late-coming and unabashed fair-weather poster, even if I know deep down that I have more emotional and spiritual equity than that in this team and this program. Back in, to the point where my annoyance at the now-annual casual dismissal of the ACC, which has sent three different schools to the Final Four the past two years, as a 2-seed, a 5-seed and an 8-seed, while the other 30 conferences have sent five, and which has had four different schools win national championships in the last ten tournaments, while the other 30 conferences have won six, is building to a full-blown rage, even as there are so many far more important issues in the world.
This team, with Blake Hinson as its leader, has won my heart. They have done it the way that Pitt teams always have done it, by beating good teams in tough road gyms. The kind of wins that the people who decide these things claim to care about. The kind of wins that earn a team a bid, whether they get one or not.
****
John Cazale was not the only great actor in The Conversation. Like John Cazale, Gene Hackman had several other immortal roles. Years later, he would star as Coach Norman Dale in the greatest sports movie ever made. His words applied to most Pitt teams of the first decade and a half of the century, to the Pitt team of 2023, and, now, to the Pitt team of 2024:
“I would hope you would support who we are. Not, who we are not. These six individuals have made a choice to work, a choice to sacrifice, to put themselves on the line 23 nights for the next 4 months, to represent you, this high school. That kind of commitment and effort deserves and demands your respect. This is your team.”
There are so many lines in Hoosiers that give me chills all these years later.
“I've seen you guys can shoot but there's more to the game than shooting. There's fundamentals and defense.”
“Five players on the floor functioning as one single unit: team, team, team. No one more important that the other.”
“Don't get caught up thinking about winning or losing this game. If you put your effort and concentration into playing to your potential, to be the best that you can be, I don't care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game, in my book, we're gonna be winners.”
“I’ll make it.”
But the one that gets me the most is the one that I ALWAYS think of whenever I think of our own children and now our grandchildren, the one that I think of for any Pitt team that has won my heart, and, now, the one I will think of for the Pitt basketball team of 2024, no matter how it turns out for them:
“My team is on the floor.”
17-15
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