ST. LOUIS — Pitt played one of its best defensive games of the year Friday night against Wisconsin, and yet, it wasn’t enough to beat the Badgers.
And that’s mostly because the Panthers, once again, failed to score for long stretches.
In the aftermath, Pitt coach Jamie Dixon had some explaining to do about his personnel decisions. He said the decisions were all driven by defense, even though the team needed points.
Hindsight is 20/20, but the one decision that will be questioned for a long time is that graduate transfer post players Alonzo Nelson-Ododa and Rafael Maia played for a combined 27 minutes while sophomore Ryan Luther played for only four.
Luther has been one of the Panthers’ most reliable and improved players down the stretch and is a much better offensive option than either Maia or Nelson-Ododa.
Maia and Nelson-Ododa combined to score zero points in the loss.
Although Maia, who was the team’s most physical player Friday, played 10 to 15 minutes most nights, the choice of Nelson-Ododa for 13 minutes seemed odd. He played a combined total of only 11 minutes in the Panthers’ past seven games.
“We were concerned about holding [Wisconsin forward Nigel] Hayes in check, and that's really what we wanted to look at,” Dixon said. “And I thought we did a pretty good job at that. Ethan Happ got going a little bit. So we went with guys that were playing good defense, and we really felt we had to hold them down and hold those two guys down specifically.
“They shot 32 percent from the field, so we did a good job of that. But we certainly could have done some other things better.”
Dixon was left to answer for yet another early NCAA tournament exit. This one, however, was more expected than in years past as the Panthers scrambled down the stretch just to make the tournament. Outside of a big upset of Duke in the last week of the regular season, Pitt hadn’t played particularly well of late.
Still, getting to the second weekend of the tournament has eluded the Panthers since the 2008-09 season, when Scottie Reynolds and Villanova knocked them out in the Elite Eight.
Since then, the Panthers are only 3-5 in the NCAA tournament, with all five losses coming in the first weekend. Their three wins are against Oakland, UNC-Asheville and a short-handed Colorado team.
Dixon said it isn’t always fair to judge a program by its NCAA tournament performances because it’s often a matter of a bounce of a ball or a couple of missed shots. It’s also difficult to just make the field.
“A lot of teams lost today,” Dixon said. “A lot of good teams had great seasons and they won't be in Sweet 16. You can be as good as you want but you've got to win two in the first weekend and you've got to make some plays. We were good enough to win this but we didn't.
“I talked to our guys about the things we can learn with all the returning guys that we have. We've got to look at this as an opportunity to improve on some things going forward.”
Pitt will return seven of its top nine scorers, including its two leading scorers — Jamel Artis and Mike Young — and the emergence of Luther and redshirt freshman Cam Johnson gives Dixon two more scoring options for next season.
The Panthers will have to replace point guard James Robinson, who started 135 games in his career, but they can do that if freshman Damon Wilson has a strong offseason and continues to improve.
Paul Zeise: pzeise@post-gazette.com and Twitter @paulzeise.
First Published: March 20, 2016, 4:00 a.m.