TOP 25 MEN Krauser's 21 lead Pittsburgh to win

No. 10 Gonzaga lost to No. 17 Saint Joseph's, 73-66.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- Carl Krauser, replacing four-year starter Brandin Knight at point guard, scored a career-high 21 points and No. 22 Pittsburgh beat Alabama 71-62 Friday night in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic.
Jamie Dixon got the win in his first game as head coach of the Panthers. He replaced former boss Ben Howland, who went to UCLA after four seasons at Pittsburgh.
The Panthers struggled from 3-point range, missing their first 13 tries before Krauser finally hit one from beyond the arc to give the Panthers a 39-35 lead with 11:08 to play. They didn't quite catch on fire from long range, but they did make three in a 2:40 span to go up 59-53 with 2:10 left.
The last of the 3-pointers was by Jaron Brown and that was Pittsburgh's last field goal of the game. The Panthers made the lead stand up by going 12-for-16 from the free throw line the rest of the way.
The win was Pittsburgh's fourth straight at Madison Square Garden, where it won the Big East tournament for the first time last March.
Chuck Davis, one of Alabama's young players looking to claim one of the four starting spots left open from last season, had a career-high 20 points. He averaged 1.5 points last season as a freshman with a high of five points against North Carolina Greensboro.
Chevon Troutman had 13 points for Pittsburgh, while Brown added 11 and freshman Chris Taft, like Krauser a native of New York, had eight points and 12 rebounds.
Krauser averaged 6 points last season as a freshman with a high of 14 against Georgia.
Antoine Pettway had 17 points for Alabama, which played in this event last season and upset then-No. 3 Oklahoma on the way to the school's first No. 1 ranking.
No. 17 Saint Joseph's 73, No. 10 Gonzaga 66
Jameer Nelson lived up to the billing.
The second-leading vote-getter on the AP's preseason All-America team had 20 points, eight rebounds, 10 assists and a ton of oohs and aahs in leading Saint Joseph's to victory over Gonzaga in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic.
The senior guard struggled with his shot in the first half but more than made up for it in the second as he seemed to come up with every big play the Hawks needed in the teams' season opener.
His best sequence came when he drew a charge at midcourt, then took the inbounds pass and made a drive through traffic that left the crowd at Madison Square Garden standing and cheering.
More than 4,000 Saint Joseph's fans bought tickets and they turned the building in New York into Philadelphia's Hawk Hill for a night. The university with the enrollment of 3,800 was the big school for the night.