Jamel Artis isn’t shy when it comes to sharing his feelings on the kind of 2-3 zone his Pitt team will be facing Saturday against Syracuse — he hates it. Really hates it.
To the athletic 6-foot-7 point guard, it’s a scheme that fosters a certain offensive complacency, making otherwise active players stationary and slotting them in spots where they feel compelled to shoot from deep instead of drive to the basket. He can’t do all he wants offensively, which is part of the point of a zone defense and what makes it so frustrating for its foes.
While explaining his distaste for the zone, Artis has to stop himself. There is, after all, a caveat to the venom.
“But, hey, it works for us in the long run,” he said Friday.
In a series that dates back decades and entered its formative stages when the two battled for Big East Conference supremacy, the Panthers have had their way against Syracuse the past two years in a way that few have during Jim Boeheim’s lengthy tenure.
Pitt has won the past five matchups between the programs, including a clean sweep of their three meetings a season ago. It’s a record that might not contain the same relevance with a first-year coach who spent the past 17 seasons in the Southeastern Conference, but it’s a recent run of success that the Panthers players have in mind as they head to the palatial confines of Carrier Dome.
“We have a really good way of attacking their zone,” sophomore guard Cam Johnson said. “Under coach [Jamie] Dixon, we would figure out ways to beat it and we executed them pretty well last year and the year before. We crash the offensive glass pretty hard and make sure we have a lot of opportunities that way. We just really got excited for that game. We really wanted to take advantage of the opportunities that we could create.”
Pitt has won the five games by an average of 7.2 points, capturing two of 2015-16’s three wins by double digits.
The series’ recent lopsided nature has little to do with the Panthers’ shooting numbers in those five games — with pedestrian marks of 46.6 percent from the field and 34.3 percent from 3-point range — but rather their ability to collect rebounds. Against a spread-out defense based more on guarding an area rather than a particular man, the Orange has been vulnerable down low on missed shots, something Pitt, and a rebound-obsessed coach such as Dixon, seized upon. In those five matchups, the Panthers outrebounded Syracuse, 173-147, which included a 68-52 advantage on the offensive glass. From those offensive rebounds, Pitt was able to outscore the Orange on second-chance points, 47-18, the past three games.
In the past two years, it also has slowed the pace and used Syracuse’s more passive defense as an ally to create a game more to Dixon’s liking. The three games last year featured an average of 60.3 possessions, well below the Orange’s average of 65.8, while they averaged 61.5 possessions the previous season, again below Syracuse’s mark of 66.1 that season.
That success feasibly could continue. A skilled and versatile big man such as Mike Young gives the Panthers an advantageous piece who can work into the soft spots of the Orange’s zone and either distribute the ball to open teammates or take clean shots himself.
“The key is getting it in the middle,” Artis said. “If you can’t get it in the middle, you set some screens, try to cut and crash the boards. We don’t want to keep shooting 3s. We want to get inside and then play outside.”
Though Pitt has a new coach this season in Stallings, its players have worked to educate Stallings on what has worked for them the past several years against Syracuse, hoping to get those pieces of advice integrated with their coach’s overall game plan.
“He talks to us and asks us what we want to do with the zone,” Artis said. “He knows we’ve had success over the past several years. He put in some plays and he knows to get it in the middle and play out of that. That’s basically what we’re going to do.”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG.
First Published: January 7, 2017, 5:00 a.m.