University of Connecticut Athletics
University of Connecticut
Pittsburgh
UConn Drops Regular Season Finale at Pitt, 70-60
3/9/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 7, 2009
PITTSBURGH, Pa.- Senior Sam Young scored 31 points and grabbed 10 rebounds to lead the No. 3-ranked University of Pittsburgh to a 70-60 win Saturday afternoon over the No. 1 University of Connecticut in front of a crowd of 12,908 at the Petersen Events Center.
With the loss, UConn falls to 27-3 to finish the regular season, 15-3 in the BIG EAST. The Panthers improve to 28-3 overall, 15-3 in the league. Pitt and UConn will now await the conclusion of the Louisville-West Virginia game late Saturday night. If Louisville wins, the Cardinals win the BIG EAST Regular Season title. If WVU wins, UConn, Pitt and Louisville will share the title.
UConn was led in the contest by senior A.J. Price (Amityville, N.Y.) with 19 points and junior Hasheem Thabeet (Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania), who scored 14 points, grabbed 13 rebounds and blocked five shots. Senior Jeff Adrien (Brookline, Mass.) added 11 points and eight rebounds. Young led the Panthers on the day and Levance Fields added 10 points and 12 assists.
UConn had cut a 14-point Pitt lead to two with less than eight minutes to play, but Young scored back-to-back buckets to put the deficit back at six. Price made a three in front of the UConn bench to get UConn back within three, but a Jermaine Dixon bucket followed by a Young slam and free throw put Pitt back ahead by eight, 61-53, with just under five minutes left in the game. Fields followed with a layup off another scramble and the Husky deficit was ten, 63-53, at the final media timeout with 3:30 left in the contest.
Pitt led by as many as 14 points in the early moments of the second half, but the Huskies scored 10 straight points, eight by Price, to get back to within four, 52-48, with under nine minutes to play in the contest. After the teams traded stops, Stanley Robinson (Birmingham, Ala.) dunked off a feed from senior Craig Austrie (Stamford, Conn.) to force another Pitt timeout with 8:24 to play and the Husky deficit at two points, 52-50. Young snapped the 12-0 run with a runner in the lane with seven minutes left. The Panthers then got a stop and Young finished with an emphatic alley-oop at the other end to get the Pitt lead back to six points and force a UConn timeout with 6:34 to play in the game.
The Huskies faced their biggest halftime deficit of the season, as Pitt held a 38-28 advantage at the break. UConn shot only 34.4-percent from the field and made only 6-of-11 shots from the free-throw line. The Panthers hit on 48.6-percent in the stanza, led by 16 points from Young, who led all scorers. Thabeet had 14 points at halftime. UConn led by a score of 12-11, but the Panthers responded with a 12-1 run to take a 23-13 advantage with 11:27 to go in the first half. UConn never got closer than six points over the remainder of the half and the biggest Pitt lead was 11 points.
UConn returns to action on Thursday, March 12 when they head into the quarterfinals of the BIG EAST Championship at Madison Square Garden. The Huskies have a bye over the first two rounds and will be the No. 3 seed in the tourney and play Thursday at 9:30 p.m. against the winner of the No. 6/11/14 part of the bracket.
