No. 1 Pitt rolls past No. 16 UNC-Asheville

Associated Press

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Matt Dickey chased down a loose ball and fed J.P. Primm for a fast break, cutting UNC Asheville’s deficit to six with 15:22 to play and prompting Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon to call one of those need-to-stop-the-momentum timeouts.

When it’s No. 16 vs. No. 1, that’s about as good as it usually gets.

The rest was familiar. The top seed went on a run, outscoring the bottom seed by 16 points to the finish the game. The Panthers kept the perfect 1-vs.-16 mark in the NCAA tournament firmly intact Thursday, pulling away to beat the Bulldogs 74-51.

“In the first half we played really poorly, careless with the ball,” said Pitt’s Gary McGhee, who had seven points and 11 rebounds. “We didn’t move the ball around. We didn’t get the loose balls. But then in the second half, we turned it up.”

The Panthers (28-5) advanced to play another set of Bulldogs — No. 8 seed and last year’s tournament runner-up Butler — on Saturday. It beat Old Dominion in the day’s opening game at the Verizon Center.

UNC Asheville (20-14) had earned a little bit more pub than the usual No. 16 seed. Dickey became a YouTube favorite with a steal-and-shoot buzzer-beater late in the regular season, and he hit the 3-pointer that forced overtime in the win over Arkansas-Little Rock on Tuesday in a Dayton play-in game.

Now the whirlwind journey has finally come to an end for coach Eddie Biedenbach and his players, but at least they can say they made a game of it.

“We went in at halftime down five, and that’s where we wanted to be,” Dickey said. “Make sure that it was still a game. In the second half we missed a couple shots and they hit a couple of 3s.”