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The Pitt News T h e i n de p e n d e n t st ude nt ne w spap e r of t he University of Pittsburgh

Women’s basketball falls at home Page 8 January 29, 2016 | Issue 95 | Volume 106

Information Science dean to change role Lauren Rosenblatt Assistant News Editor

Ron Larsen, dean of Pitt’s School of Information Sciences, will resign in 2017 after he helps lead a department restructure, the University said on Thursday.

Larsen, who has worked at Pitt since 2002, is now working with the chair of the Department of Computer Science, Taieb Znati, to combine the department with SIS. He will leave the position and return to teaching and researching in the summer of 2017, a Pitt press release said.

The Jan. 27 release said the University would form a search committee this summer to find his successor, who will lead the new SIS and CS academic unit in its inaugural year.

Plans for the new academic unit began last April. Larsen said in an email the program will combine computing and information sciences programs to foster more collaboration and “capitalize on existing strengths.”

Larsen, Znati and other faculty members will propose the program to Provost and Senior vice chancellor, who asked Larsen to begin the project,this summer and are hoping to enroll the first students in the fall 2017 semester.

“This is a rather massive undertaking, involv-

Gina Garcia, assistant professor in the Department of Administrative and Policy Studies, spoke at the Diversity and Education Crossroads at Pitt panel discussion held Thursday night in the O’Hara Student Center. Will Miller | Staff Photographer

Students found startup to trade books Casey Schmauder Staff Writer

By the time Carey Wasa graduated Pitt in 2013, he had a stockpile of textbooks sitting on his windowsill that weren’t worth even trying to sell.

“It hit me that there are students who probably need these books for classes, and I have them right here,” Wasa said.

Wasa pitched the idea of starting a textbook exchange company to Olisa Okonkwo, a CarnSee Dean on page 5 egie Mellon University graduate, and Briand

Djoko, a Pitt Ph.D. student, in 2014. Working from their own computers for seven months, the three men launched Tradebooks.co, a website that connects student sellers to student buyers on the same campus, in Sept. 2015.

Okonkwo, the CEO of the company, designed the site while Djoko, the chief technology officer, wrote the code. Wasa, the chief marketing officer, spread the word about the upcoming launch through a Facebook page.

According to a 2014 study from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, 65 percent of

students have chosen not to buy a required text because of its cost, even though 94 percent knew it may have a negative impact on their grade.

Since September, Tradebooks has allowed students to buy and sell books from each other at lower prices than traditional retailers.

When the site launched, it included a price comparison tool so users can compare textbook prices at Amazon, Chegg and Half.

When a student wants to sell a book on Tradebooks, the site uses its price comparison See Tradebooks on page 4

News

Correction: In a story published Thursday, Jan. 28 titled “Pitt staff discusses safety,” The Pitt News stated that 30 people attended a Staff Association Council event Wednesday, Jan. 27.

Around 75 people attended the event. The Pitt News also stated that the event focused mainly on bicycle safety in the city of Pittsburgh. The event centered on bicycle safety, pedestrian safety and motorist safety in Oakland. The Pitt News regrets these errors.

Pitt hears Pittsburgh’s history of lesbian feminism Taylor Mulcahey Staff Writer

Visting scholar Patricia Ulbrich spoke at Pitt Thursday.

Abigail L. Self STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

In the ’70s, two groups of lesbian women wanted a space to eat, talk and listen to music in Pittsburgh — but above all, they wanted to enact social change.

In that decade, the city was home to a vibrant music scene, but female musicians were hard to find. Together, two diverse lesbian organizations in Pittsburgh — the Wild Sisters and the Hard Hatted Women, which formed to support women in unionized work fields — worked to renovate a diner in the South Side to create a safe space.

Pat Ulbrich — a visiting scholar in the Gender and Women’s Studies Department — highlighted the two women’s groups in a presentation to 20 Pitt students, faculty and staff members — most of whom were affiliated with the GSWS — Thursday night. The audience gathered in the humanities center in the Cathedral to travel back to the ’70s and discover more about the history of women’s

rights in Pittsburgh.

Ulbrich, a sociologist and activist, spoke about her work with the Thomas Merton Center in Bloomfield to create an oral history of the Pittsburgh women’s movement. She talked about the two lesbian organizations that were a crucial part of women’s search to create female spaces. Her studies on these groups are a part of her project, titled In Sisterhood, which focuses on different aspects of the women’s movement in Pittsburgh.

“The reason I started this project is that I’ve always been discouraged about the state of women in Pittsburgh,” Ulbrich said.

All the records Ulbrich has acquired as a part of her project will be donated to Pitt’s archive center. She hopes that these records will be online so that people all over the country can learn about Pittsburgh’s history.

As she began investigating, Ulbrich discovered an active community of women that had never before been docuSee Lecture on page 3

provost hosts conference for assessment Zoë Hannah

Assistant News Editor At a conference devoted to improving student engagement outside of the classroom, Pitt faculty acted as students for a morning.

After an 8:30 a.m. breakfast, around 100 Pitt faculty members met in the University Club Ballroom Thursday for Pitt’s Provost’s annual Assessment Conference. The provost, Patricia Beeson, delivered a welcome speech but steered the rest of the conference toward the breakout sessions and educational assessment. The conference, which looks at ways of measuring teaching effectiveness, began with Joan Hawthorne, the director of assessment and regional accreditation at University of North Dakota, as

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the keynote speaker. After a lunch break, the conference continued in smaller, breakaway meetings focused on topics such as engaging students with Outside the Classroom Curriculum and applying research from student affairs to university practices, until 2 p.m.

The conference comes as Pitt prepares for its Periodic Review Report, which is an occasional assessment Pitt publishes regarding how it matches up with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education’s standards.

Hawthorne said faculty need more than one meeting per year to effectively address curriculum and pedagogy.

In the keynote speech, Hawthorne detailed her overhaul of UND’s assessment programs in

order to better analyze general education at the research university.

Her efforts ended in a complete shift in the school’s general education program, including rebranding the program as “Essential Studies” and doubling the number of communication courses.

As Hawthorne discussed where some assessment methods fall short, such as using predeveloped programs that sometimes neglect important Pitt-specific aspects, faculty members, who came to the conference voluntarily, took notes on iPads, laptops and in notebooks.

Janice Vance, director of undergraduate education in communication sciences and disorders at Pitt, said Hawthorne’s presentation

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inspired her to continue putting emphasis on both inside and outside classroom skills. “[The faculty] realized that just the grade in the class isn’t all we want students to develop,” Vance said.

Juan Manfredi, vice provost for undergraduate studies at Pitt, said Pitt works hard to make sure all of its students follow a curriculum that prepares them for life after college, but the nature of so many different types of programs can make it difficult to find a one-size-fits-all method.

“We have 16 schools with very different academic goals. We have to work to find the common things,” Manfredi said. “We have a system See Provost on page 3

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Provost, pg. 2 that I think is working, but we cannot stop. We need to keep refining that.”

After Hawthorne spoke, Vance and the other undergraduate faculty migrated upstairs, where Associate Dean of the College of Business Administration Audrey Murrell spoke about a new OCC app called Suitable, which former Pitt students designed. The business school has successfully used the app, which makes completing the OCC program like winning a game, for the past two years.

Murrell and Derek McDonald, the manager of administrative operations for the college of business, presented a nearly two-year analysis of Suitable.

By creating four levels of proficiency within OCC areas, students who use the app can compete with their classmates to try to reach “mastery” status, which requires completing projects or attending events that test the students’ skills.

Murrell said the app — which all first-year business students have been required to sign up for since 2014 — works to better assess students’ skill sets.

“What we were missing was that huge portion of what students were doing outside of the classroom,” Murrell said.

The app is also designed to motivate students

Lecture, pg. 2 mented. She shared just a small part of this community Thursday night by describing the work of the The Wild Sisters and The Hard Hatted Women.

The Wild Sisters began their movement by hosting musical performances by women in different venues around Pittsburgh in 1976.

The group hosted one event every Saturday night for five years, and decided to open its own venue in the early 1980s. With the help of the Hard Hatted Women, which was founded in 1978, the group created a musical feminist space out of an old South Side diner.

The Hard Hatted Women was designed

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to get involved with extracurricular activities, which Murrell said are integral to a successful career.

“The frustration of having to work hard motivates students,” Murrell said.

Through data collection via the app, Murrell determined a significant portion of students who did well in the OCC program also had high grade point averages.

For Vance, the correlation means those activities are imperative to both educational and career success.

The association between activities and a student’s success, Vance said, would impact her department’s efforts to get students more involved in outside-the-classroom activities that teach skills like communication.

The sentiment echoed throughout the day.

Before she worked on the assessment programs, Hawthorne said UND students seemed to learn most of their intangible skills, such as critical Joan Hawthorne, the Director of Assessment and Regional Accreditation at thinking or problem solving, outside of the the University of North Dakota, spoke about making assessment useful. Will Miller STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER classroom.

Though she extensively outlined policy change, the discussions at the conference and the The Essential Studies program Hawthorne changes in general education, Hawthorne said results of the Periodic Review Report could spark helped create focuses on teaching those skills by these changes were only possible because of ef- new plans. reducing and simplifying goals, outlining goals “Bring in some student voices,” Hawthorne fective assessment methods. explicitly and emphasizing communication at Hawthorne said she hopes new or modified said, offering advice to Pitt as her final words in the University. ways of assessing teaching effectiveness lead to her speech. “Intensive time to consider results [of “It wasn’t a perfect program, but it was better,” positive changes for students’ educations at Pitt. assessments] is essential.”

Hawthorne said.

Although there are not any concrete plans for for women working in nontraditional fields.

Although women began entering male-dominated fields following the passage of the Equal Rights Act, women still experienced sexual harassment and gender bias on the job, Ulbrich said.

Ulbrich interviewed Nancy Reese — the founder of the Hard Hatted Women — as part of the In Sisterhood project. Reese told Ulbrich that women in Pittsburgh were even more likely to join the mostly male workforce since blue-collared jobs were abundant, unionized and generally well-paid.

Ulbrich read from her interview with Reese, saying, “I think Pittsburgh was a place that was unusual because there wasn’t much divi-

sion within the women’s community.”

The Hard Hatted Women began meeting at the YWCA Downtown, to support women in nontraditional jobs through training programs, and to be a pressure group to lobby against the problems women were experiencing.

The Hard Hatted Women received support from the community and unions, and even received funds to hold its training programs, Ulbrich said.

Though she had never picked up a video camera before, Ulbrich was determined to create an exhibit to showcase Pittsburgh women’s history. She succeeded, and has shown two different exhibits, one on black women in the

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movement in 2012 and another on the general women’s movement in 2013 in colleges and art galleries around Pennsylvania.

Marie Skoczylas, an instructor in the GSWS department, introduced Ulbrich on Thursday, listing her various accomplishments, including the foundation of the Women and Girl’s Foundation in Southwest Pennsylvania, and the reception of the Feminist Activism Award in 2002.

“It’s been an honor to work with her,” Skoczylas said.

Ulbrich’s work to de-stigmatize contraception and make it available to women in Pittsburgh broke gender barriers, impressing See Lecture on page 5

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Tradebooks, pg. 1 tool to suggest a competitive price range. The site first lists students selling the book on their campus for face-to-face exchanges. If there aren’t any books available on their campus, the site uses its price comparison tool to suggest other places to purchase the book.

When a user purchases a book through the price comparison tool, TradeBooks receives a five to 10 percent commission from the site selling the book. Although all team members are receiving a part of the commission, Okwonko said it is currently very small.

The site can’t yet charge students for using it to meet up and exchange books — bypassing the site’s payment system — and its founders currently put all the money they make back into the company.

After the initial launch, the company has focused most of its efforts on marketing, using friends and recommendations to reach 70 people, promote 200 books and bring in $3,000 worth of sales.

The site currently covers five campuses including Pitt, Duquesne, Carnegie Mellon, Drexel and Stanford. The founding members hope the

site will grow to include several more campuses and give them each a full-time job.

“We’re really trying to help students. Most students have textbooks sitting at home, and every semester someone is taking the classes that require those books,” Wasa said.

Before they launched the site, the entrepreneurs competed and were finalists in the Randall Family Big Idea Competition, a competition the Innovation Institute holds annually. At the competition, experienced entrepreneurs and investor helped them finalize their business model.

Babs Carryer, director of the Innovation Institute, has seen successful startups come through Pitt’s programs, such as Nymbus, an app to increase audience participation in concert performances.

“Pitt is getting to be known as a place where students can be nurtured and developed into entrepreneurs and get support to turn their ideas into startups,” Carryer said. “I think students have the answers to potentially be able to solve a lot of the world’s worst problems.”

John Delaney, professor of business administration and former dean of the Katz Graduate School of Business, said students can always start websites and web-based businesses, but they

have to put more into it to succeed.

“The idea needs to be good, but in many instances, it’s not just the idea,” Delaney said. “It’s the amount of time and effort to make it work, to market it, to get the money that you need to finance it appropriately and so forth, and that’s the piece that becomes the difficult one.”

When students come to Delaney’s office to pitch startup ideas, he asks them if they would be willing to drop out of school to pursue it. Though dropping out is not always necessary, Delaney said students need to believe in their idea to that extent to make it work.

“I think it’s rare that people can have success by chance,” Delaney said. “It’s more the hard work.”

In the future, the team hopes to partner with publishers, helping them to better market their books and allow the team to sell portions of a book to students in smaller booklets or individual chapters.

Marketing has been an issue for the team, which hired Jake Laskey, a Pitt sophomore majoring in communication and psychology, in December to help manage the advertising of its company.

High textbook prices are unlikely to go away

in the near future, according to John Weidman, a professor of higher and international development education at Pitt. A textbook’s value decreases drastically after a publisher releases it because the book’s information can quickly become out of date.

“That’s why you don’t get much when you turn it in,” Weidman said. “The publisher is only collecting when they sell it for the first time. After that, the author makes the money.”

Although Weidman applauds the idea of less expensive books, he said it is not always feasible.

“I’m all for somebody organizing so that they can provide students with the opportunity to get materials at a reasonable price,” Weidman said.

“The only thing you have to be careful of is if the editions change dramatically, then you’re much more limited in options.”

Wasa hopes the platform will serve as a way to save students money, as well as a social platform for college students.

“Students can connect on the platform with students in their classes and in their majors, and they can have contacts for when they have issues through the semester, like if they need help studying,” Wasa said. “We believe students can help each other.”

The Pitt News SuDoku 1/29/16 courtesy of dailysudoku.com

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January 29, 2016

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Dean, pg. 1 ing not only SIS and CS faculty, but also a very substantial number of faculty throughout the University, as we explore the opportunities and challenges that such a new academic unit could address,” Larsen said.

After the restructure is complete, Larsen plans to teach at Pitt and conduct research on policy and education to expand society’s use of computing services.

Larsen said he had not decided what he would teach in the fall but was interested in digital libraries and data curation.

Patricia E. Beeson, provost and senior vice chancellor at Pitt, praised Larsen in the release for his “visionary leadership” in the Information Sciences Department. According to Beeson, the program grew and external funding tripled in the 15 years that Larsen served as dean.

“Under his leadership, SIS has been transformed from a departmentalized faculty to a unified information school. The reorganized school creates an environment conducive to collaborative research and education among SIS faculty and between SIS faculty and scholars outside the school,” Beeson said.

In addition to his efforts at Pitt, Larsen helped found the iSchools consortium, a group of 65 universities that meet at an annual conference to collaborate about their experiences building their respective computer science departments.

Before coming to Pitt, Larsen worked at NASA as an aerospace technologist and a program manager. Larsen also worked at the University of Maryland in several positions, including assistant vice chancellor for the computing system, and at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as an assistant director.

Larsen received his bachelor’s degree from

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Purdue in 1968, his master’s degree from the Catholic University of America in 1971 and his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland in 1981, according to the release.

Larsen said he has enjoyed his time as dean but feels that the introduction of the new program provides an excellent starting point for new leadership.

“Having had the privilege to serve as dean of SIS for 15 years, this felt like the right moment for me to hand over the reins to the new school, a rare opportunity for a new dean to truly shape a future with many opportunities and few constraints in place,” Larsen said.

Lecture, pg. 2 junior psychology major Matthew Clista.

“I’m here because several classes required it,” Clista said, “but it’s genuinely interesting.”

Ulbrich’s presentation included information she acquired from 12 of the 80 interviews Ulbrich has recorded for her project, but lacked multimedia. Ulbrich described Thursday night’s talk as a teaser for her new exhibit opening in the summer.

This July, Ulbrich will open her third exhibit, which will focus on women in the labor forces and their contribution to the women’s movement. Ulbrich did not announce where her exhibit will show.

With her presentation, Ulbrich aims to bring light to a group of short-lived but impactful organizations. By the mid-’80s, the women’s movement shifted to focus on domestic violence, and these organizations saw their support fade, according to Ulbrich.

“As lesbians, they were wildly promoting new dimensions of sisterhood in Pittsburgh,” Ulbrich said.

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Opinions

column

from the editorial board

Casual Friday Hot potato An Irish photographer famous for taking portraits of celebrities like Yoko Ono and Malala Yousafzai just hit pay dirt. Kevin Abosch reportedly made bank off a picture of a mudcovered potato to a European businessman, who agreed that the spud looked too good to eat. It looked so good, in fact, that the unnamed buyer paid Abosch $1.08 million for the print. The picture itself fits Abosch’s signature style, which generally includes his subjects’ faces sitting in starch contrast to a solid black background. “I see commonalities between humans and potatoes that speak to our relationship as individuals within a collective species,” Abosch told CNN. Abosch has not confirmed whether the high price tag of “Potato #345” will sprout a new series, or lead to “French Fry #346.” Hopefully he doesn’t throw all that money down the tuber.

Another culture’s vulture An Israeli vulture’s flight of fancy came to an abrupt end on Wednesday. Researchers tracking the vulture from Gamla Nature Reserve in the Golan Heights region of Israel lost track of the raptor when Lebanese villagers captured it, suspecting that it was serving as a spy. The vulture was outfitted with identifying tags and a tracker attached to its tail — which locals mistook for spying equipment — when it crossed the Lebanese border into Bint Jbeil. This is actually not the first time that an animal has been suspected of working for the Israeli government. In 2010, Egypt accused Israel of coordinating shark attacks to damage its tourism industry. Since the incident, the vulture has not appeared on the researchers’ radar, which has ruffled some feathers in Israel. When contacted for comment, a California condor assured The Pitt News that it stands in solidarity.

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“High, officer” After being involved in a car accident, a teenager from Spokane, Washington, was asked for his license, registration and insurance information. Spokane Police officer Seth Killian hit the teen’s vehicle after driving through a red light without his emergency lights on, only to discover that his victim smelled like marijuana and had red, glassy eyes. Police, immediately recognizing the true offender, subsequently arrested and charged the 16-year-old with a DUI. Officials have not confirmed whether Officer Killian was slamming into random vehicles as part of a new program to reduce impaired driving.

Straight flushed The family and friends of a recently deceased Puerto Rican man clearly appreciate lively competition. After 31-year-old Henry Martinez died last Tuesday, his body was embalmed and seated at a table, where his corpse participated in a game of poker. The event was in place of a regular wake, and guests happily posed for pictures with their late loved one.

By all reports, Martinez maintained an unrelenting poker face and displayed a stiff upper lip all night.

A crime most foul While trying to siphon gas from a parked tour bus, an Australian gang wound up with a mouthful of trouble. The would-be thieves mistook the bus’ sewage tank for its fuel cap, which immediately served them with righteous retripooption. No fuel was missing from the bus when the tank’s cap was found lying on the ground, indicating that the criminals fled upon realizing their mistake.

Authorities told the press that they have “absolutely zero interest” in returning the stoolen sewage to its rightful owner.

Flint Crisis shows environmental injustice

Bethel Habte

Senior Columnist Some people like their water with crushed ice or a twist of lemon. Nobody I know chooses to add a dash of lead, though.

Residents of Flint, Michigan, didn’t have the luxury of choice when it came to their city’s contaminated water. Instead, they were at the mercy of political leaders who chose m o n e t a r y benefits o v e r t h e i r c onst it uents’ health a n d safety.

This powerp o w erless dynamic shows what is happening in Flint should and will have an impact beyond the lives that it has taken from those living there.

Systemic, environmental injustices must produce a national response.

Following a cost-saving plan to switch the city’s water source from a Detroit water supply to the Flint River in 2014, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration ignored mounting com-

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plaints and concerns about the water’s quality.

After more than a year of Flint River’s polluted water running through the city’s taps, lead found in the blood of residents finally forced city officials to concede that complaints were warranted. What’s more, the city was now in the midst of a public health emergency.

This isn’t an isolated case of “oopsie” policies.

It’s another instance of environmental injustice ravaging poor, minority communities.

Flint embodies how sociodem o graphic l i n e s determine disparities in exposure to pollutants. According to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau, Flint’s population is 56.6 percent black or African-American. Between 2009 and 2013, 41.5 percent of Flint’s population lived below the poverty level.

Flint is your typical case study — but it’s more than that. It’s a city made up

It’s a city made up of people preparing to spend the rest of their lives dealing with the long-term effects of lead contamination.

See Habte on page 7

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Habte, pg. 6 of people preparing to spend the rest of their lives dealing with the long-term effects of lead contamination.

It’s also a city that should inspire us to think about the consequences of ignoring environmental justice and ways we can prioritize it in the future.

Flint isn’t alone. The United States is dotted with primarily poor, minority communities that can’t break through hanging clouds of pollution.

Mary Collins of the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, along with Ian Munoz and Joseph JaJa from the University of Maryland in Annapolis and College Park, respectively, recently published a paper detailing a study of “hyper-polluters” using an analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data. According to the study, about 5 percent of “heavy-polluters” generated 90 percent of studied toxins — but those facilities were more likely to be located close to poor, minority communities.

Environmental injustice isn’t new.

This has been a widely accepted fact since President Bill Clinton issued an executive order in 1994 that pushed federal agencies to integrate environmental justice within their respective core missions.

His executive order spurred a 2003 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to determine how effective the executive order had been at achieving its goal.

The report came to the conclusion that — among other neglects — federal agencies failed to incorporate environmental justice or establish accountability and performance outcomes for initiatives.

Communities remained shut out from environmental decision-making processes. Research on the ties between environmental pollutants and health statuses remained inadequate.

Some things have changed since then. We have a broader picture of the inequalities that arise from a failure to achieve environmental justice.

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A 2014 article published by Lara P. Clark, Dylan B. Millet and Julian D. Marshall from the University of Minnesota detailed patterns of environmental injustice and inequality for exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2).

The NO2 concentration for nonwhite populations was 38 percent higher than that for white ones. This discrepancy had major health implications. Researchers estimated that lowering the NO2 concentration for non-whites to match the level of whites would result in 7,000 fewer deaths due to Ischemic Heart Disease.

Environmental inequality is a powerful aggressor — inequality for NO2 concentration was greater than income inequality.

Right now, presidential candidates are traveling the country touting policies to eradicate income inequality, but only Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have named environmental justice as a priority. Yet, when environmental inequalities outrank those caused by income, shouldn’t we require candidates to propose a substantive solution?

If we fail to hold officials accountable, environmental injustice will continue to destroy neighborhoods without the resources to fight back. We all share this planet — the poorest of us shouldn’t be the only ones answering for how we treat it.

Bethel Habte is a senior columnist at The Pitt News who primarily writes about social issues and current events.

Write to Bethel at beh56@pitt.edu.

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7

Sports

Pitt not going anywhere without improving defense Dan Sostek Sports Editor

Twenty games into Pitt men’s basketball’s 20152016 campaign, and one thing is abundantly clear: the team will have to win games with offense.

The Panthers are a weak defensive team right now, surrendering open shots and points in the paint too frequently, allowing their opponents to consistently shoot in the high 40s and low 50s from the field. It’s something they will have to fix — quickly — if they want any semblance of a chance at a postseason run.

A disappointing road loss in Greenville, South Carolina, to Clemson Wednesday evening was one of many poor defensive performances this season, as Pitt fell to the Tigers 73-60.

Clemson shot 47.1 percent on the evening, compared to just 38.2 percent for Pitt.

“We had leads early in the first half, so it’s not like we weren’t ready to play,” Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon said after the game. “[Clemson] just made runs in the second part of the first half, but simply put, we’re not defending well enough.”

Unlike in past seasons, Pitt can’t seem to pull out wins with defensive struggles; it has to finish on top with its offense. And when that offense isn’t scoring at an efficient clip, Pitt is usually in trouble.

The Panthers are 10-0 on the year when they

shoot 50 percent or better from the field, but just 6-4 when they shoot south of 50 percent. Simply put, in a conference as good as the ACC, the team can’t expect to make half of its shots every contest.

Dixon has tried to improve Pitt’s defense since the start of the season, and he is frustrated with the lack of progress.

“It just comes down to we’re not where we need to be when we’re not making shots,” Dixon said.

“And I’ve been saying that since October.”

With a starting lineup that includes three players who have been in the program for three or more years, one would expect some improvement on defense.

The Panthers have not held a single opponent to under 40 percent shooting since hosting MarylandEastern Shore on Jan. 2. Since then, they’ve allowed opponents to shoot 48.5, 54.2, 41.2, 46.9, 48.3, 53.7 and 47.1 percent.

They pulled a win against Florida State despite being vastly outshot by the Seminoles last week, 53.7 percent to 39.3 percent, but some late unforced turnovers by Florida State were crucial in securing that win.

Dixon said it’s frustrating when his team’s offense isn’t clicking, particularly when it’s paired with the deficiencies in other areas.

See Defense on page 9

Michael Young and the Panthers need to ramp up their defense to complement their impressive offense. Jeff Ahearn ASSISTANT VISUAL EDITOR

Panthers falter at home in blowout loss to Duke Logan Hitchcock Staff Writer

For every Pitt basket, Duke had an answer — and then some.

After breaking a seven-game losing streak on the road in its last game, the Pitt women’s basketball team (9-12, 1-7 ACC) struggled through a tough test with the Duke Blue Devils (16-6, 5-3 ACC) and eventually fell by a score of

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70-48. The Panthers’ loss is their seventh in their last eight games.

The game started slow as both teams ended their first possessions with turnovers.

Dealing with a distinct size disadvantage, Pitt struggled to get good looks offensively in the early minutes of the first quarter against an active and lengthy Duke defense. After Duke opened the scoring, Pitt sophomore Aysia Bugg, who was scoreless in her last game, hit a jump

shot with 7:21 remaining in the first quarter to get Pitt on the board.

The bucket served as a jumpstart for the Pitt offense, as the team connected on its next three baskets, including 3-point jumpers from junior Fred Potvin and freshman Brenna Wise.

Potvin, who recently moved into the starting lineup, said nothing has changed since head coach Suzie McConnell-Serio moved her into the starting five.

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“I have to come out and hit shots — that’s my role on the team,” said Potvin.

Despite Potvin’s early three, Duke remained confident. The Blue Devils continued to get points in the paint against a smaller Pitt frontcourt and took a 12-10 lead when Azurá Stevens found a lane to the basket for an easy layup.

Stevens, the second leading scorer in the See Women’s Hoops on page 9

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Women’s Hoops, pg. 8

“The guys we put out there play well normally, but when they don’t make shots, it’s going to be problematic,” Dixon said. “But then you have to have your defense and your rebounding be the difference maker, and that certainly wasn’t the case tonight.”

This doesn’t mean that Pitt isn’t capable of winning games via dynamic offensive performances. Juniors Michael Young and Jamel Artis rank sixth and 18th in the conference in points per game, averaging 17.3 and 15.7, respectively.

With a deep bench that features offensive weapons like Sheldon Jeter, Chris Jones and Cameron Johnson, the Panthers have plenty of backup firepower.

But it’s games like Wednesday’s against Clemson where none of that will matter. Sometimes, the shots just won’t go through the net.

And that’s when good teams rely on defense to win the game.

“I thought we had some good looks, they just weren’t knocking them down,” Dixon said. “We have to do other things, we have to get it done on the defensive end.”

ACC, was a problem for Pitt all night long, getting easy looks at the basket early and often, finishing with a game-high 26 points. Pitt added another pair of threes from Potvin and Wise, but couldn’t make up any ground as the Blue Devils took a 1918 lead into the second quarter.

In the second quarter, both teams struggled offensively, only managing two field goals a piece in the first five minutes of the quarter. The baskets for Pitt, a pair of 3-point field goals from Bugg and Potvin, would be the only field goals of the quarter as they struggled mightily from the field.

“I thought there were times that we moved the ball really well and got it in the hands of our shooters and there were good shots taken,” McConnell-Serio said. “But I think we got away from attacking the defense.”

Duke kept attacking, and Stevens kept delivering. The Blue Devils’ sophomore connected on a pair of 3-point shots and added another field goal before the end of the half, giving her 16 of their 34 points at the midway break.

“We just had some mental breakdowns defensively,” McConnell-Serio said. “When you get frustrated with your offense, it shouldn’t affect

your defense, but I saw signs of that tonight.”

Despite trailing by only one prior to the start of the quarter, the Panthers’ inability to score — which included a five-minute scoring drought — prevented them from keeping pace with Duke, as the Blue Devils took a 34-26 lead into halftime.

Needing to find baskets any way possible, Pitt came out in the second half again firing from deep. The 3-point field goal was the only thing working for Pitt’s offense on the night, as the Panthers connected on 10 shots from behind the arc.

“It’s our responsibility to have an inside-outside game,” Wise said. “We lacked that a little bit tonight.”

Wise drained her third triple on the Panthers’ opening possession and on the next trip added a pair of free throws to pull Pitt within five.

But Duke wouldn’t surrender the lead, adding a basket at the rim before knocking down threes on consecutive possessions to increase its lead to 13 points. The Duke field goals were the beginning of what would be a 13-0 run for the Blue Devils, stretching their lead once again to 19 points.

Although down by 19 points, the Panthers stopped the bleeding a bit when freshman Cassidy Walsh hit a triple off the bench with Wise

following with one of her own on the next possession. The pair of threes cut the Duke lead back to 13 points, but the Pitt run didn’t provide a meaningful dent.

After a Duke timeout, Blue Devil center Amber Henson hit a three of her own as the Panthers left her alone outside the arc. A Bugg turnover on the ensuing possession gave the ball back to Duke, who nullified the mini run by the Panthers when Rebecca Greenwell hit a triple that served as a final dagger, extending the Duke lead back to 19 points.

The final five minutes of play were no better for the Panthers as sloppy turnovers and poor shot selection led to easy points on the other end for the Blue Devils. The giveaways were an issue for the Panthers all night, as 21 turnovers led to 19 points on the other end for Duke.

The night wasn’t absent of any positives for the Panthers, though. Wise finished with a career-high 17 points to lead the Panthers. Wise also led the team in rebounds, pulling down 11 boards for a double-double.

Wise and the Panthers will aim for their second conference win when they travel to South Carolina on Sunday to face the Clemson Tigers at 2 p.m.

The Pitt news crossword 1/29/16

Defense, pg. 8

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