Women's team - schedule...

[MajorMajors]

Tough schedule for our very young women's team this season. That starting five is going to have to develop quickly, or Pitt is going to have a lot of lopsided games. Here are some current Sagarin rankings for Pitt opponents:

#3 Maryland (Pitt lost by 21 points in Paradise Jam)
#4 Notre Dame (at home)
#6 Florida State (at home)
#11 Princeton (away game)
#13 Michigan (away game - Pitt's next opponent)
#15 Duke (at home)

Pitt is currently at #76 on Sagarin; Duquesne is at #99, but is going to be a tough game too - they have a height advantage with 2 players at 6'3", plus they have some experienced guards...

With the inexperience of this Pitt team and lack of a taller post player, I think it's going to be a struggle to finish over .500. Doable, but a struggle.

Go Pitt.

 

[PittIsIt17]

I'm predicting about 17 wins for the team this season.

The Paradise Jam was the first major test for us and we responded well. Much better in fact than I predicted.

SDSU is a very quality team and had a significant height advantage on us, and we had many opportunities to win this game. We lost to them by 1 and they only lost to Maryland by 7.

ODU was also much larger than our lineup, but really only had 2 key players to stop and we did okay at doing so.

Maryland's entire lineup is a physical force. The final score does not indicate how close the game truly was, most times it was within 10-14 points. With Maryland being such a dominant team, I just wanted us to keep it relatively close and not be blown out. We played above and beyond with the limited experience on this team.

Suzie is definitely looking to recruit bigger post players and guards/wings in general. We've got a 6' wing coming in next year and they are recruiting numerous 6'2"+ players in future years.

 

[Joe the Panther Fan]

I don't know. Old Dominion is a bad basketball team. I mean real bad. They are 1-6. They lost to Maryland by 46, SD State by 32 and Miami by 26. They were tied with Pitt with less than four minutes left in the game. A win is a win, but that was not a good result. Merely doing OK against a team like that is not enough.

I didn't watch the whole Maryland game, but Maryland was in complete control for just about the whole time I was watching. Pitt made the last shot of the first quarter to cut Maryland's lead to 8. Maryland made the first basket of the second half and Pitt was never within 10 points again. Pitt had a nice run the the fourth where they hit threes on three straight possession to cut a 22 point lead to 13, but after that Maryland just methodically built it back up to 20 again. The game wasn't truly all that close at all.

 

[PittIsIt17]

ODU just shot better against us than SDSU or Maryland. Their offense was have 25 drive to the basket because we couldn't really stop her, where she would go for a layup or kick it out to a shooter who would have an open look at a 3 since we had to double and triple team 25 inside. 25 dropped 17 points on us and was easily the most athletic player on the floor. She didn't come out of the game until she fouled out with 13 seconds left.

Maryland was up big in the first half, but we did end on a 9-0 run to cut that lead down. We had a lot of unforced turnovers which contributed to the point gap, but we really didn't play that badly considering the talent and athleticism of Maryland compared to us.

We just need time to develop our youth. Not many teams are rolling out all freshmen/sophomore starters. In a few years of development and better recruiting by Suzie, this team will be very good in 2 years.

 

[Joe the Panther Fan]

ODU just shot better against us than SDSU or Maryland.

Yes, they did. And there's a reason for that. Although apparently not the one you think.

 

[PittIsIt17]

Well SDSU and MD have the size/athleticism to account for 25 which we don't have, so ODU would have more trouble kicking it out against them but not us.