Pitt vs. Stanford: Open Gamethread

Well, after the Panthers rout of Texas Tech last night, Pitt goes for the Legends Classic championship tonight against Stanford. A win doesn't make the Panthers world beaters, but with two wins over major-conference opponents at a neutral site, you've got to feel a little encouraged.

Stanford is 5-1 on the season and unlike Pitt, had already stepped out of their conference to play some major-conference foes. They lost to BYU, but beat Northwestern prior to this week. Last night, they defeated Houston after a slow start.

It's hard to decide what to make out of the Cardinal. We don't yet know if the BYU loss will be a bad one, but the fact that their games against Bucknell (won by four) and Denver (won by nine) were fairly close, doesn't say a whole lot. For what it's worth, though, they've got three guys that can score - Chasson Randle (19.5 points per game), Anthony Brown (16.2), and Dwight Powell (15.3). The flipside is that, on the surface, they don't appear to be quite as deep as Pitt.

The Panthers have ten guys that have played at least ten minutes a game - Stanford has six such players. Part of that is attributed, obviously, to the Panthers facing some weaker teams and getting bench players a lot of time, but (and someone made this point in another thread), Stanford has four guys averaging more than 30 minutes per contest. They've used far less of a rotation there.

Tune in tonight at 9:30 on ESPNU or WatchESPN and comment live during the game here.

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