PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Barry Dunning, Junior came to Pitt with an opportunity to show he could make an impact at a Power Four school. Thursday, he played two minutes in the loss to West Virginia, Monday he led Pitt (4-1) to an 84-50 win over Bucknell at the Petersen Events Center.
Dunning finished with a Pitt career-high of 23 points on 7 of 11 from three and 8-13 from the field, plus seven rebounds.
“It’s great to see him make shots, more importantly, I just thought he played really well,” said Pitt head coach Jeff Capel. “He played with a force that we need to see all the time. Obviously, he could shoot the basketball, but I thought he shot it well because he played with such great force.”
Dunning said he was keyed by the little things he did during the game, especially on defense and being connected with his team helped him do things on the offensive end.
“I most definitely came out with an aggressive mindset,” Dunning, Junior said. “I just told myself ‘hey, just go play hard. Go get a rebound, go snatch it out of the air’. I guess you could see I played with a little anger.”
“I feel like we fed off his energy and it allowed us to get on a run,” said freshman Omari Witherspoon who finished with 11 points, five assists and three steals.
“We need him,” Capel said. “That’s the bottom line, we need him. We brought him here to be a really good player for us. He had not played as well as we know he’s capable of. Whether that (ticked) him off, whether that got him angry, the two minutes (at WVU), it should have. He should have been (ticked) at me that he didn’t play more.”
Capel said Dunning came out and played hard at the first practice after the loss to West Virginia and then he had a talk with Capel, who said he hopes this is a big step for his game.
“We anticipated him doing things like this,” Capel said.
Putting WVU behind them
“I think it was important to have this performance coming off of a loss (71-49 at WVU),” Capel said Monday. “As a coach, you don’t know how you are going to respond especially coming off a loss like that. It’s a rivalry, we did not play well.
We didn’t play anywhere close, like we are capable of playing, give them all the credit for that.”
“I love how we responded. The teams that I’ve coached, it’s always been interesting to see how we respond when you get your butts kicked. To me, that’s how you find out who you really, really are.”
“I hate that it happened, but one of the things that I told them when we got back together on Saturday was maybe this was the best thing. I didn’t think we had played well leading up to that point. I didn’t think we had played well since Providence, for whatever reason, West Virginia just exposed it. I thought we responded in great fashion tonight.”
Notes
· Pitt outscored Bucknell 46-25 in the second half
· Pitt shot 50.8% FG to 27.7% for Bucknell, from 3 it was 52% to 29%
· Pitt was +13 rebounding
· 4 Panthers had 11 points-Cam Corhen, Witherspoon, Brandin Cummings, Nojus Indrusaitis
· Papa Adadou Kante tied Witherspoon for the assist lead with 5, Kante also had 11 rebounds
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Panthers play Central Florida in Daytona Beach, Florida Thursday at 7p, Panthers pregame begins at 6:30p on 93.7 The Fan.