This is a Cut-n-Paste from Bob Smizik's blog on post-gazette.com this morning:
For the longest time, the Pitt-Duquesne basketball game was No. 1 on my Pittsburgh regular-season sports calendar -- ahead of anything the Steelers, Pirates or Penguins could offer. I cherish the memories of that bitter rivalry. But the game has lost almost everything -- except, most notably, a media buzz it doesn’t deserve. They can dress it up with a title -- The City Game, which was stolen from the New York City hoops culture -- but it’s almost always bad, boring, one-sided basketball. This year’s game had a spark of competitiveness but to suggest there is anything special about this contest -- or that there is anything special about this rivalry -- is pretty much a lie.
Obviously, Smiz has been reading The Grandstander. Page back and see my entries of 12/8/12 and 12/3/13 if you don't believe me.
I take this as a compliment!
Showing posts with label The City Game. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The City Game. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Thoughts on the City Game
As you know from a previous post, I attended the Pitt-Duquesne basketball game this past weekend, aka, The City Game, and I found it to be a bit of a lackluster event in spite of the best efforts of the schools' respective pep bands, cheerleaders, dance teams, and, oh yeah, the basketball teams.
Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that on Thanksgiving Weekend, neither school was in session so the student sections on both sides were virtually empty, and that the Consol Energy Center was only half filled. Mainly, however, I think that this stems from the one sided nature of what this "rivalry" has become. Pitt has now won this game thirteen years in a row, and 31 of the past 35 times it has been played.
This year, Pitt was tired, I believe, from two tough games earlier in the week in Brooklyn, and allowed the Dukes to make a game of it for awhile...
...but in the end, overall talent prevailed, and a 17 point Pitt victory was the result.
I have opined on this subject in the past ( http://www.grandstander.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-city-game-steel-bowl-and-special.html ), but this game just does not have the significance that it once held in this town. Pitt upped its ante as a basketball school decades ago when it joined the Big East, and now the ACC, and somewhere along the way, Duquesne made the choice that they were not going to make the "All In" commitment needed to compete in the elite circles of college basketball, or even in the top echelon of the Atlantic 10. Duquesne shouldn't be criticized if this is the direction they wish to take, and, in fact, perhaps they are placing athletics in the priority that people often SAY that they should be (except, of course, when your school loses all the time), so perhaps they should also consider stepping down, perhaps to the Northeast Conference, and compete with schools, such as Robert Morris and St. Francis, to name two local institutions, who seem to place athletics in a similar perspective.
Jamie Dixon and Jim Ferry can say all they want about how much this "rivalry game" means, but if they were REALLY honest, I am guessing the neither school would be too upset of this game was no longer scheduled.
As far as the Event went this past Saturday, my vote for most outstanding performance goes to this guy:
Yep. The kid who played the bass drum in the Pitt Pep Band was more enthusiastic than any player on the court. He would actually leave his feet and jump into the air as he beat hell out of that drum when the band played, and his spiked Mohawk hair style only added to his panache. Loved him!
Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that on Thanksgiving Weekend, neither school was in session so the student sections on both sides were virtually empty, and that the Consol Energy Center was only half filled. Mainly, however, I think that this stems from the one sided nature of what this "rivalry" has become. Pitt has now won this game thirteen years in a row, and 31 of the past 35 times it has been played.
This year, Pitt was tired, I believe, from two tough games earlier in the week in Brooklyn, and allowed the Dukes to make a game of it for awhile...
...but in the end, overall talent prevailed, and a 17 point Pitt victory was the result.
I have opined on this subject in the past ( http://www.grandstander.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-city-game-steel-bowl-and-special.html ), but this game just does not have the significance that it once held in this town. Pitt upped its ante as a basketball school decades ago when it joined the Big East, and now the ACC, and somewhere along the way, Duquesne made the choice that they were not going to make the "All In" commitment needed to compete in the elite circles of college basketball, or even in the top echelon of the Atlantic 10. Duquesne shouldn't be criticized if this is the direction they wish to take, and, in fact, perhaps they are placing athletics in the priority that people often SAY that they should be (except, of course, when your school loses all the time), so perhaps they should also consider stepping down, perhaps to the Northeast Conference, and compete with schools, such as Robert Morris and St. Francis, to name two local institutions, who seem to place athletics in a similar perspective.
Jamie Dixon and Jim Ferry can say all they want about how much this "rivalry game" means, but if they were REALLY honest, I am guessing the neither school would be too upset of this game was no longer scheduled.
As far as the Event went this past Saturday, my vote for most outstanding performance goes to this guy:
Yep. The kid who played the bass drum in the Pitt Pep Band was more enthusiastic than any player on the court. He would actually leave his feet and jump into the air as he beat hell out of that drum when the band played, and his spiked Mohawk hair style only added to his panache. Loved him!
Friday, November 29, 2013
Pitt, Football and Basketball
The Pitt Panthers closed their football season today the same way that they began it last Labor Day evening - by giving up 41 points to a school from Florida, and losing convincingly. Tonight it was the Miami Hurricanes who laid the wood to the Panthers and coming away with a 41-31 win, and trust me, the game wasn't as close as the score indicated. The Panthers finish their season with a 6-6 record and will be making a trip to some meaningless bowl game in late December.
After Florida State beat Pitt 41-13 to open the season I wrote, among other things, the following:
You just have to hope for game by game improvement as the season progresses and maybe for an unexpected upset somewhere along the line.
Well, Pitt did get that big upset when they beat Notre Dame earlier in the month. It was easily the high point of the season. As to whether the game by game improvement occurred, not so much. Every step forward seemed to be accompanied by a step-and-a-half backward, tonight's drubbing by Miami being a prime example.
On the other hand, as I was driving home from the game, the radio announcers said that 19 freshman had significant playing time for Pitt this season. Here is hoping that that is a sign that a youth movement under Paul Chryst is taking place and that it will bear fruit in the seasons ahead.
On to basketball. The Panther Hoopsters are 6-0 and coming off a most impressive two game performance at one of those pre-season tournaments, this one in Brooklyn, earlier in the week. I will get to see them tomorrow afternoon when they take on Duquesne in the "City Game" at the Consol Energy Center. I will have more on that match-up later in the weekend, but I am especially excited that this will be my first visit to the Consol Energy Center. The building is now into its fourth year of hosting events, and I cannot believe that it has taken me this long to get down there. Of course, I will be giving all of you my impressions of the Building.
After Florida State beat Pitt 41-13 to open the season I wrote, among other things, the following:
You just have to hope for game by game improvement as the season progresses and maybe for an unexpected upset somewhere along the line.
Well, Pitt did get that big upset when they beat Notre Dame earlier in the month. It was easily the high point of the season. As to whether the game by game improvement occurred, not so much. Every step forward seemed to be accompanied by a step-and-a-half backward, tonight's drubbing by Miami being a prime example.
On the other hand, as I was driving home from the game, the radio announcers said that 19 freshman had significant playing time for Pitt this season. Here is hoping that that is a sign that a youth movement under Paul Chryst is taking place and that it will bear fruit in the seasons ahead.
On to basketball. The Panther Hoopsters are 6-0 and coming off a most impressive two game performance at one of those pre-season tournaments, this one in Brooklyn, earlier in the week. I will get to see them tomorrow afternoon when they take on Duquesne in the "City Game" at the Consol Energy Center. I will have more on that match-up later in the weekend, but I am especially excited that this will be my first visit to the Consol Energy Center. The building is now into its fourth year of hosting events, and I cannot believe that it has taken me this long to get down there. Of course, I will be giving all of you my impressions of the Building.
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