Pittsburgh News, Providence News, Ray Mernagh

MERNAGH: CHARACTER WIN FOR PITT

McGhee and Woodall key 11-3 game-closing run in road win for Panthers

Everything went wrong in tonight’s game for No. 5 Pittsburgh at Providence.

A high number of turnovers.

Foul trouble that tested their much talked about depth.

Fouling three-point shooters.

Seeing a double digit lead turn into a deficit in the final minutes.

All that happened…and Pitt still won the game.

I spent two days last week in Ohio visiting family. My time with my Godchild ‘Lyse, her little sister Sydney and their parents was incredibly enjoyable but far too brief. While there I got to listen to a college basketball coach talk about how important it is for good teams to find a way to win, especially when they play bad. He talked about toughness wins, about how his program had kids that understood winning was most important and came before everything else — especially individual performance.

Having a bad shooting night?

Find another way to help your team get a win, maybe get to the free throw line or look to make a play for somebody else.

Turning the ball over?

Don’t put your head down, instead bust your ass down the other end of the court and take a charge.

This might all seem obvious but his point wasn’t lost on me. There’s a lot of teams where a bad shooting night leads a player into a bad defensive night. Where a bad turnover leads a guy to commit an even worse foul right after.

And these things happen throughout the season to some teams. Teams that know in their hearts if one aspect of the game goes bad for them — a call, a non-call, bad shooting, turnovers, fouls etc — they’ll lose.

Travon Woodall had a really bad stretch in this game. He committed some really bad turnovers and missed one shot by a foot. At one point he hit Gary McGhee with a gorgeous pass that McGhee dropped out of bounds. Both Woodall and McGhee have been, at different times, scapegoats to some Pitt basketball fans. Both have had their names mentioned on message boards as players who might be better of transferring to a different situation.

But you know what?

When the game was on the line tonight both Woodall and McGhee came up huge, scoring the last 13 points for the Panthers. With 1:31 left the talented Marshon Brooks hit a three-pointer to put PC up 76-72. Woodall responded by immediately attacking the defense, getting into the lane off the dribble, and trusting McGhee with another pass. McGhee caught the ball, took a bounce and attacked the basket with confidence to pull Pitt within two 76-74. PC then committed a silly turnover of their own and Pitt had the ball back with 51 seconds left in the game.

Woodall, once again brought the ball up but this time the defense backed off him. He calmly drilled a three-pointer from the top of the key to put Pitt up 77-76. The two would take turns going 6-6 from the line down the stretch (Woodall hit four while McGhee hit two). I asked Woodall about his propensity to make clutch plays in big games earlier this year and his response was delivered in a classic deadpan tone: “Scared money don’t make money,” he told me.

Indeed…and scared kids don’t play for Jamie Dixon.

Winners do.

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