PITTSBURGH Pitt's disappointing defeat follows surprising success

After overachieving all season, the Panthers underachieved in the tournament.
PITTSBURGH -- Point guard Carl Krauser made a promise to himself after unexpectedly leading Pittsburgh to the Big East Conference tournament championship game for the fifth time in six seasons.
Namely, don't be satisfied unless he played six more games at Pitt -- a run that would take the Panthers to the NCAA championship game in Indianapolis.
"It's going to be a lot of fun," Krauser said last week. "I'm trying to make it the most memorable, best last six games played at Pitt."
Instead, six games was far too many games to ask of the Panthers when the competition got tougher and every game became an elimination game. Two games was more like it after the fifth-seeded Panthers were bounced from the second round of the Oakland Regional by 13th-seeded Bradley 72-66, yet more March sadness for a team that mostly overachieved all season only to underachieve again in the NCAA tournament.
"I definitely thought we were going to win this game," Krauser said.
Little experience
The Panthers began the season with the least experienced of coach Jamie Dixon's three teams at the school. No one predicted they would win their first 15 games; rank in the Top 10 during the next-to-last week of the season; win three consecutive Big East tournament games or finish 25-8.
So why then did the Panthers feel disappointed, not satisfied, after advancing deeper into the NCAA tournament, accomplishing more and winning five more games than last season's far-more-experienced team did?
Mostly because the Panthers again couldn't beat a team they were supposed to beat in March. Add Bradley, one of the last teams chosen for the NCAA field, to Kent State (2002), Marquette (2003) and Pacific (2005) on an ever-growing list of supposed-to-win games the Panthers couldn't win.
But the Panthers gave plenty of reasons to suggest 2006-07 will be even better.
Krauser (15.0 points) will be gone after four mostly solid seasons in which he made the All-Big East second team three times. But freshman Levance Fields appears to be more than an adequate replacement -- he averaged 6.8 points and led Pitt against Bradley with 18 points.
Freshman forward Sam Young also looks like a star in the making, a potentially dominating inside player as early as next season, especially if 7-foot center Aaron Gray returns. Gray, mostly a backup to the underachieving Chris Taft a season ago, had a breakout junior season by averaging 13.9 points and 10.5 rebounds in his first season as a starter.
Stepping up
Gray, who lost weight but gained strength and confidence during the off-season, was Pitt's steadiest player all season, even more so than Krauser, until getting shoved around by Bradley 7-footer Patrick O'Bryant. Gray, Pitt's only first-team All-Big East player, figures to go to the NBA pre-draft camp -- like Krauser did a season ago -- but may decide he would benefit more from another season of college.
Pitt also got season-long contributions from 6-10 junior Levon Kendall (7.0 points, 5.4 rebounds), who would benefit if Gray returns next season, and guard Ronald Ramon (8.0 points).
What Dixon must decide before next season is whether he needs to tinker with his long-standing preference to build a physical team that relies on defense, strong rebounding and a steady offense to win. Such an approach works well inside the Big East, where physical play is a way of life, but hasn't taken Pitt far in the NCAA tournament.
Despite making the NCAAs each of the last five years, Pitt has never found a scorer to lean on for big points in big games or developed any consistency in its 3-point shooting, a quality that has taken Big East rival West Virginia the round of 16 the last two seasons.