No. 4 Pittsburgh beats No. 1 Connecticut 76-68
HARTFORD, Conn. — It wasn’t just a game between No. 1 and No. 4. It was a game between two of the Big East’s most physical teams. And it was played just the way it was expected to be.
“That was the most physical game I ever played in my entire life,” DeJuan Blair after getting 22 points and 23 rebounds in No. 4 Pittsburgh’s 76-68 victory over No. 1 Connecticut on Monday night, the Panthers’ first win over a top-ranked team. “There were elbows flying, bodies flying. We just went after each other the whole game.”
Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun referred to the games played in the conference over a decade ago.
“The Big East games in the 90s were like this,” he said after having his team’s 13-game winning streak stopped. “They came in here and played a style of basketball we haven’t seen this year and it was effective against us. … They made big plays and we didn’t. It was a hell of a basketball game.”
The biggest of those plays were 3-pointers from Levance Fields, who scored all 10 of his points in the final 3:09. His first 3 gave the Panthers (24-2, 11-2) the lead for good at 64-61 with 3:09 left. His second 3 with 2:21 left made it 67-61, and he added four free throws in the final minute.
Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon kidded around that if he knew Fields had missed his first eight shots, he might not have called plays for him.
Those misses didn’t faze Fields, a senior point guard who leads the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio.
“I think every shot I take is going in so it didn’t matter how many I had missed,” he said. “It didn’t matter that I missed the first eight, I got the biggest two.”
A.J. Price had 18 points for the Huskies (24-2, 12-2), who started their third week at No. 1 earlier Monday.
Sam Young had 25 points for Pittsburgh, which lost all 13 games it had played against No. 1 teams, the last three against Connecticut over the last 11 years.
The game was expected to be physical down low and it was with the 6-foot-7 Blair flipping 7-3 Hasheem Thabeet over his back in the first half, sending him to the bench for about 4 minutes. Blair got a dose back in the second half when he had to leave the game for almost 3 minutes after taking an elbow to the face.
“It seemed like a typical game to us, big bodies, good players, playing hard on a national stage,” Dixon said. “It didn’t seem too much of a change for us.”
Calhoun felt it was quite a change for his team.
“We haven’t played in that sort of game since the early 2000s, the 1990s,” he said. “That was what was going to be allowed tonight and Pittsburgh played that way. They outrebounded us and we left a man open on two big plays. We were in a foreign land a bit. I’m very proud of the 13-game wining streak and hopefully we’ll get back to boxing out.”
Thabeet, coming off a 25-point, 20-rebound, nine-block effort against Seton Hall, finished with five points on 1-for-5 shooting and had four rebounds and two blocks.
“We played Pittsburgh before and it’s always a battle,” Thabeet said. “I’m glad we get to play them again. We just couldn’t hang in there.”
The teams meet again on March 7 in Pittsburgh and there could be another matchup in the Big East tournament.
Pitt took a 36-33 halftime lead behind Blair’s 15 points and 13 rebounds and Young’s 12 points.
Connecticut, which leads the Big East in scoring defense (60.5) and field goal percentage defense (37.3) held Pittsburgh to 7-of-25 shooting and led 56-51.
The minutes leading up to Fields’ big shots were as intense as college basketball gets. The lead changed hands four times and there was a tie in the 2 1/2 minutes leading up to those shots.
Both his 3-pointers were wide-open shots when Connecticut couldn’t switch fast enough on screens, and they seemed to take the wind out of the Huskies, who came up empty on both possessions around the 3s.
“I thought we were taking good shots and I said we would hit some shots down the stretch and Levance did,” Dixon said. “He’s hit big shots his whole career at Pitt and those were among the biggest.”
Pittsburgh finished with a 48-31 rebound advantage, the first time the Huskies were outrebounded this season.
Connecticut fell to 40-8 as a No. 1 team and the loss kept them from the best start in school history. The Huskies remain tied with the 1995-96 team at 24-1.
February 16, 2009
February 06, 2009
Versatile actor James Whitmore dies at 87
LOS ANGELES – James Whitmore, the many-faceted character actor who delivered strong performances in movies, television and especially the theater with his popular one-man shows about Harry Truman, Will Rogers and Theodore Roosevelt, died Friday, his son said. He was 87.
The Emmy- and Tony-winning actor was diagnosed with lung cancer the week before Thanksgiving and died Friday afternoon at his Malibu home, Steve Whitmore said.
"My father believed that family came before everything, that work was just a vehicle in which to provide for your family," said Whitmore, who works as spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. "At the end, and in the last two and a half months of his life, he was surrounded by his family."
His long-running "Give 'em Hell, Harry," tracing the life of the 33rd president, was released as a theatrical movie in 1975. Whitmore was nominated for an Academy Award as best actor, marking the only time in Oscar history that an actor has been nominated for a film in which he was the only cast member. His Teddy Roosevelt portrait, "Bully," was also converted into a movie.
He later became the TV pitchman for Miracle-Gro plant food, and used the product in his large vegetable garden at his Malibu home.
While not known for his politics, Whitmore was an early supporter of President Barack Obama. He stumped for Obama during a 2007 rally at the Gibson Theatre at Universal Studios, telling the crowd that Obama had the wisdom "to deal with a very, very confused and complex country, and the world." Whitmore also appeared in TV commercials in 2008 for the "First Freedom First" campaign, which advocates religious liberty and preserving the separation of church and state.
Whitmore had regularly attended an Oscar night bash, Night of 100 Stars, and had sent in his RSVP for this year, said Edward Lozzi, a spokesman for agent Norby Walters' gala.
Whitmore started both his Broadway and Hollywood careers with acclaimed performances, both as tough-talking sergeants. In 1947, discharged a year from Marine duty, he made his Broadway debut in a taut Air Force drama, "Command Decision." He was awarded a Tony for outstanding performance by a newcomer.
Two years later, Whitmore was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe as supporting actor in the war movie "Battleground."
He followed with memorable performances in scores of films, refusing to be typed. Besides war movies, he appeared in Westerns ("The Last Frontier," "Chato's Land"), musicals ("Kiss Me Kate," "Oklahoma!"), science fiction ("Planet of the Apes," "Them"), dramas ("The Asphalt Jungle," "The Shawshank Redemption") and comedies ("Mr. O'Malley and Mrs. Malone," "The Great Diamond Robbery.")
Shirley Jones, a teenager when she starred in "Oklahoma," said she came to know Whitmore during months of filming in Nogales, Ariz., and recalled being impressed by her good-humored and highly disciplined colleague.
"He told me, `If you're going to be in this business, you better learn your craft,'" Jones recalled. "And he never stopped learning."
His favorite film was "Black Like Me" (1964), a true story about a white reporter who used medication to blacken his skin to experience life as an African-American in the South.
Another of his rare starring roles was "The Next Voice You Hear" (1950), in which a family hears the voice of God via the radio. He played opposite Nancy Davis, the future Mrs. Ronald Reagan.
Whitmore often appeared on television, starring in the series "The Law and Mr. Jones" (1960-1962), "My Friend Tony" (1969) and "Temperatures Rising" (1972-1973). He received an Emmy in 1999 as guest actor in a series for "The Practice."
Jones recalled seeing him in a 2007 episode of the TV drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and marveling at his still-sharp talent. "I was absolutely blown away by that. He had a huge role, playing a lawyer, and it was phenomenal," she said.
A student of history, Whitmore delighted in portraying famous American personages. He toured in the play "The Magnificent Yankee," about Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. He played Ulysses S. Grant in a 1960 TV movie, Adm. William F. "Bull" Halsey in the Pearl Harbor attack spectacle "Tora! Tora! Tora!", and Walt Whitman in a dramatic reading, "A Whitman Portrait."
The monologues of Harry Truman, Will Rogers and Teddy Roosevelt brought Whitmore his greatest success. In 2000, he appeared in "Will Rogers, U.S.A." at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., his eighth engagement in the show at Ford's over a 30-year period.
President Ford attended a performance of "Give 'em Hell, Harry" at Ford's Theater after Richard Nixon resigned. Whitmore worried about Ford's reaction to Truman's crusty words about Nixon.
The actor recalled: "I was three feet from Gerry Ford when I said to the press as Truman: `Nixon is a no-good lying (expletive); if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd tell a lie just to keep his hand in.' After the show, (Ford) came up on stage and put his arm around me and said, `That was a pretty good blocking back.'" Ford had been line coach when Whitmore played football at Yale.
His movie and television careers continued into the 21st century, but he admitted that he preferred the stage.
"I find the process of making movies absolutely boring," he told a reporter in 1994. "It's so fragmented. You wait and wait and wait and then, look, as Jack Lemmon says, `It's magic time.' In the theater, once the curtain goes up, the actor is in charge."
Born in 1921 in White Plains, N.Y., Whitmore was active in school sports and acted in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, though his strict Methodist family disapproved of the profession. After a year at an Ivy League prep school, Whitmore in 1939 enrolled in prelaw at Yale University, where he had won a football scholarship. Two knee injuries ended his football career, and he devoted himself to dramatics.
After graduating from Yale, he enlisted in the Marines and served in the South Pacific. "I had a lot of time to think in the Marine Corps," he recalled, "and so I decided it wasn't the law I wanted but the theater."
In New York he studied at the American Theater Wing under the G.I. Bill, living on $20 a week and rooming with another hopeful actor, Jack Warden. After a season in summer stock in New Hampshire, he returned to New York and won the role of Sergeant Harold Evans in "Command Decision." Rave reviews started his career in motion.
He married Nancy Mygatt in 1947, and the couple had three sons, James, Steven and Daniel. They later divorced, and in 1971 he married an actress, Audra Lindley. They often appeared in plays together, even after their 1979 divorce. He remarried his first wife in the 1980s, but another divorce ensued. Nearing 80 in 2001, Whitmore married actress-writer Noreen Nash.
Whitmore is also survived by eight grandchildren.
LOS ANGELES – James Whitmore, the many-faceted character actor who delivered strong performances in movies, television and especially the theater with his popular one-man shows about Harry Truman, Will Rogers and Theodore Roosevelt, died Friday, his son said. He was 87.
The Emmy- and Tony-winning actor was diagnosed with lung cancer the week before Thanksgiving and died Friday afternoon at his Malibu home, Steve Whitmore said.
"My father believed that family came before everything, that work was just a vehicle in which to provide for your family," said Whitmore, who works as spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. "At the end, and in the last two and a half months of his life, he was surrounded by his family."
His long-running "Give 'em Hell, Harry," tracing the life of the 33rd president, was released as a theatrical movie in 1975. Whitmore was nominated for an Academy Award as best actor, marking the only time in Oscar history that an actor has been nominated for a film in which he was the only cast member. His Teddy Roosevelt portrait, "Bully," was also converted into a movie.
He later became the TV pitchman for Miracle-Gro plant food, and used the product in his large vegetable garden at his Malibu home.
While not known for his politics, Whitmore was an early supporter of President Barack Obama. He stumped for Obama during a 2007 rally at the Gibson Theatre at Universal Studios, telling the crowd that Obama had the wisdom "to deal with a very, very confused and complex country, and the world." Whitmore also appeared in TV commercials in 2008 for the "First Freedom First" campaign, which advocates religious liberty and preserving the separation of church and state.
Whitmore had regularly attended an Oscar night bash, Night of 100 Stars, and had sent in his RSVP for this year, said Edward Lozzi, a spokesman for agent Norby Walters' gala.
Whitmore started both his Broadway and Hollywood careers with acclaimed performances, both as tough-talking sergeants. In 1947, discharged a year from Marine duty, he made his Broadway debut in a taut Air Force drama, "Command Decision." He was awarded a Tony for outstanding performance by a newcomer.
Two years later, Whitmore was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe as supporting actor in the war movie "Battleground."
He followed with memorable performances in scores of films, refusing to be typed. Besides war movies, he appeared in Westerns ("The Last Frontier," "Chato's Land"), musicals ("Kiss Me Kate," "Oklahoma!"), science fiction ("Planet of the Apes," "Them"), dramas ("The Asphalt Jungle," "The Shawshank Redemption") and comedies ("Mr. O'Malley and Mrs. Malone," "The Great Diamond Robbery.")
Shirley Jones, a teenager when she starred in "Oklahoma," said she came to know Whitmore during months of filming in Nogales, Ariz., and recalled being impressed by her good-humored and highly disciplined colleague.
"He told me, `If you're going to be in this business, you better learn your craft,'" Jones recalled. "And he never stopped learning."
His favorite film was "Black Like Me" (1964), a true story about a white reporter who used medication to blacken his skin to experience life as an African-American in the South.
Another of his rare starring roles was "The Next Voice You Hear" (1950), in which a family hears the voice of God via the radio. He played opposite Nancy Davis, the future Mrs. Ronald Reagan.
Whitmore often appeared on television, starring in the series "The Law and Mr. Jones" (1960-1962), "My Friend Tony" (1969) and "Temperatures Rising" (1972-1973). He received an Emmy in 1999 as guest actor in a series for "The Practice."
Jones recalled seeing him in a 2007 episode of the TV drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and marveling at his still-sharp talent. "I was absolutely blown away by that. He had a huge role, playing a lawyer, and it was phenomenal," she said.
A student of history, Whitmore delighted in portraying famous American personages. He toured in the play "The Magnificent Yankee," about Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. He played Ulysses S. Grant in a 1960 TV movie, Adm. William F. "Bull" Halsey in the Pearl Harbor attack spectacle "Tora! Tora! Tora!", and Walt Whitman in a dramatic reading, "A Whitman Portrait."
The monologues of Harry Truman, Will Rogers and Teddy Roosevelt brought Whitmore his greatest success. In 2000, he appeared in "Will Rogers, U.S.A." at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., his eighth engagement in the show at Ford's over a 30-year period.
President Ford attended a performance of "Give 'em Hell, Harry" at Ford's Theater after Richard Nixon resigned. Whitmore worried about Ford's reaction to Truman's crusty words about Nixon.
The actor recalled: "I was three feet from Gerry Ford when I said to the press as Truman: `Nixon is a no-good lying (expletive); if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd tell a lie just to keep his hand in.' After the show, (Ford) came up on stage and put his arm around me and said, `That was a pretty good blocking back.'" Ford had been line coach when Whitmore played football at Yale.
His movie and television careers continued into the 21st century, but he admitted that he preferred the stage.
"I find the process of making movies absolutely boring," he told a reporter in 1994. "It's so fragmented. You wait and wait and wait and then, look, as Jack Lemmon says, `It's magic time.' In the theater, once the curtain goes up, the actor is in charge."
Born in 1921 in White Plains, N.Y., Whitmore was active in school sports and acted in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, though his strict Methodist family disapproved of the profession. After a year at an Ivy League prep school, Whitmore in 1939 enrolled in prelaw at Yale University, where he had won a football scholarship. Two knee injuries ended his football career, and he devoted himself to dramatics.
After graduating from Yale, he enlisted in the Marines and served in the South Pacific. "I had a lot of time to think in the Marine Corps," he recalled, "and so I decided it wasn't the law I wanted but the theater."
In New York he studied at the American Theater Wing under the G.I. Bill, living on $20 a week and rooming with another hopeful actor, Jack Warden. After a season in summer stock in New Hampshire, he returned to New York and won the role of Sergeant Harold Evans in "Command Decision." Rave reviews started his career in motion.
He married Nancy Mygatt in 1947, and the couple had three sons, James, Steven and Daniel. They later divorced, and in 1971 he married an actress, Audra Lindley. They often appeared in plays together, even after their 1979 divorce. He remarried his first wife in the 1980s, but another divorce ensued. Nearing 80 in 2001, Whitmore married actress-writer Noreen Nash.
Whitmore is also survived by eight grandchildren.
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