Pitt basketball defeats McNeese 72-51; Ryan Luther injures foot - SCACCHoops.com

Pitt basketball defeats McNeese 72-51; Ryan Luther injures foot

by CardiacHill

Posted: 12/16/2017 4:57:17 PM


Game Central

Game Recap

Pitt’s basketball team was without its most important player in senior big man Ryan Luther on Saturday. It ended up not mattering, though, as the Panthers (6-5) cruised to an easy 72-51 victory over McNeese (2-7) on Saturday.

Luther apparently has another foot injury (stress reaction) and will be out for at least a couple of weeks, according to head coach Kevin Stallings after the game. He missed a decent amount of time last season with a foot injury and that ended up hurting the team. It will hurt even more this year because he’s the team’s top scorer and rebounder. Pitt has a couple of more non-conference games but begins ACC play exactly two weeks from now with a game against Miami on December 30.

The thing that jumps out is how much Pitt shot from long distance today. The Panthers took 19 three-pointers in the first half and they didn’t stop there, finishing with 33 on the day. I don’t know where that stands in terms of team records or anything but the 19 in the first half certainly has to be up there.

The good news? After a slow start, Pitt actually made quite a few of them, connecting 14 times to shoot 42 percent from beyond the arc. They nearly shot as well from that range as they did from the field in general, in fact. For the game, the Panthers shot 44% from the field.

Despite missing Luther, the Panthers still pulled down 47 rebounds and were tied with McNeese in that category. Shamiel Stevenson, the team’s second-best rebounder, had eight to lead the team. That wasn’t unexpected but the guy who tied him with eight, reserve guard Parker Stewart, definitely was.

Pitt got its usual strong game offensively from Marcus Carr, who had 17 points and six assists. His biggest issue this year has been turnovers and after having a total of ten in the past two games, he had none today. The Panthers also got a great game out of Jared Wilson-Frame, who’s kind of struggled a little. He’s been up and down quite a bit and after a bad game against West Virginia (3-10 for nine points), he had 19 points on 7-11 shooting to go along with five rebounds. It was great to see him pick up the slack with Luther out.

McNeese is, in a word, bad. But I still expected the game to be much closer when it was learned that Luther was out. A 21-point win without arguably your best player was a nice surprise.

Ryan Luther injures foot

Last season, Pitt forward/center Ryan Luther missed several games due to a foot injury. The big man is now on the shelf yet again with a similar problem. Luther missed Pitt’s win Saturday over McNeese and we learned afterwards why:

As Meyer later posted in a follow up, the two weeks is an ‘at least’ scenario right now. Luther could be out longer.

That’s important because, as you might remember from last season, Luther’s injury lingered on longer than expected. The two weeks is more of a best case scenario and it could be longer (possibly even significantly).

The news, of course, isn’t real good for Pitt. It was bad last season when he went down because it seriously hurt the team’s depth. But it’s an even bigger blow this year because of Luther’s standing with the team. He entered Saturday as the Panthers’ top scorer and has nearly twice as many rebounds per game (10.1) than the team’s next player, Shamiel Stevenson (5.1).

As we saw Saturday, Pitt can rebound without Luther. But the Panthers will be hard-pressed to keep up that trend as the competition gets better. McNeese is a very bad team and it’s hard to imagine Pitt holding its own on the boards against better squads.

A silver lining here could be that there are still two weeks until ACC play begins. Theoretically, Luther might be back before any conference games start. Pitt will face Delaware State on Tuesday and then finish up the non-conference schedule with a game against Towson on Friday before getting a week off. That’s not to brush past Towson (which is 10-1) but the competition will really pick up with the ACC opener against top ten Miami on December 30 after Christmas break. Three days later they’re traveling to Louisville and eight days after that is the home game against Duke with Virginia Tech in between.

In a weird, twisted sort of way, playing without Luther for at least the next two games will be a little intriguing in that we’ll get more of a glimpse of how this team will look next year when he’s gone. And to the timing, it’s better to endure now than if it had happened right in the middle of the ACC season, I suppose. Any real concern about Luther missing ACC games, though, also seems kind of pointless.

The reality is that with or without him Pitt is still going to be overmatched in most of the conference games. After all, this isn’t a team that’s going to be in the mix for the NCAA Tournament. While it would be best to be at full strength for the ACC games, ultimately I’m just not sure how much it matters in a year like this, anyway. You always want Pitt to win games and do well but we’re not talking about the difference between making the NCAAs and not making it. We’re probably talking about the difference between winning perhaps a few more games for a team expected to finish under .500.

Frankly, I’m hoping he’s able to get back on the court more for just him being able to play in his senior year than I am about any prospects for what it means for the team in terms of wins and losses. After coming back to a shell of a program following all of the departures after last season, he certainly deserves to play as much as he can.

Be sure to join Cardiac Hill's Facebook page and follow us on Twitter @PittPantherBlog for our regular updates on Pitt athletics. Follow the author and founder/editor @AnsonWhaley.

 

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