Pitt’s Knight ends season against team that didn’t want him
PITTSBURGH – Brandin Knight, the point guard who has shepherded Pitt’s rapid ascent from longtime loser to Top 10 fixture, almost couldn’t believe it when he first saw the Panthers’ 2002-03 schedule. Almost immediately, March 5 jumped out – the date of his final home game and his last in the new Petersen Events Center, with Seton Hall as the opponent.
“It’s going to be special,” he said of Pitt’s home finale Wednesday. “It would be special no matter who we were playing, but it’s going to be more special because it’s Seton Hall.”
Not long ago, it seemed certain Knight would play for Seton Hall. His father, Mel, was a Pirates star in the 1970s and is in the school’s athletic hall of fame, and his mother has worked at the school for 30 years. Knight even played scholastically at Seton Hall Prep.
But when his senior season came around and the Pirates were handing out scholarships, he didn’t get one. Former Pirates coach Tommy Amaker was wrapping up his second consecutive excellent recruiting year, and didn’t have room for a smallish point guard who wasn’t an exceptional shooter.
Four years later, Pitt must be wondering where it would be if Seton Hall hadn’t passed up on the player largely responsible for one of college basketball’s most dramatic turnarounds in recent years.
“I get sick to my gut when I think Brandin Knight has only one more game to play in this building,” Pitt coach Ben Howland said.
He should.
Ever since Knight led them on an unexpected late-season run in 2001 that landed them in the Big East title game and the NIT, the Panthers’ ascension into college basketball’s upper tier has been rapid and dramatic.
The No. 7 Panthers (21-4) are 50-10 over the last two seasons, a record topped only by Duke, Kansas and Oklahoma. Last year, Knight made third-team All-America and Howland was the national coach of the year as the Panthers went 29-6, only two years after they were 13-15 during their sixth losing season in seven years.
Now, the Panthers haul a 15-0 home record into their final game of the season at the 12,508-seat Petersen Events Center, where a ticket hasn’t been available since September.
“To get here 90 minutes before a game and see 1,500 students getting on the other team … that’s what makes college basketball special,” Knight said.
Especially when Pitt didn’t even attract crowds that size for some games when he initially arrived at a school that was a Big East power in the late 1980s but had plodded along in mediocrity for a decade.
That’s why Howland finds its difficult to explain how important Knight has been to Pitt, despite his star’s admittedly down senior season.
A preseason knee injury that sidelined him for most of four months affected Knight’s conditioning, and may have led to a downturn in his statistics: a 10.7 scoring average, compared to 15.6 a year ago; a 35 percent shooting average, compared to 42.7 percent; and a 6.2 assists per game, compared to 7.2.
Knight has had only three games of 20 points or more after getting seven last season, but two have been during Pitt’s current four-game winning streak.
“I think it’s going to start working in our advantage,” Howland said, adding that Knight will be more rested going into the Big East tournament. “He’s starting to get back his normal rhythm.”
Knight also likes how Pitt is playing as it closes out its season Wednesday against Seton Hall, which has a nine-game winning streak, and Sunday at Villanova. Winning both games would all but assure a first-round bye in the Big East tournament.
“I think we’re peaking,” Knight said. “This is the time to come together. This is the time to peak.”