Matt Freed, Post-Gazette Carl Krauser shakes hands with Aaron Gray near the end of their 79-64 win against Kent State yesterday in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Click photo for larger image. Related article Pitt Notebook: Short bench no problem for Panthers Smizik: Panthers show another side with rare shooting display

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- NCAA tournament upsets happen because heavily favored teams allow inferior opponents to hang around. The longer the game stays competitive, lower seeded teams gain more and more confidence and sniff the upset.

Pitt never allowed Kent State to think -- not for one moment -- that it was capable of winning last night. The Panthers got on top of the Golden Flashes early and coasted to an easy 79-64 victory in an NCAA first-round game at The Palace of Auburn Hills.

Pitt (25-7) will face the winner of the Kansas-Bradley game that was played late last night. The Panthers advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament for the fourth time in the past five years and avenged a third-round loss to Kent State in 2002.

Pitt jumped to an early, 20-point lead and led, 40-27, at halftime. The Panthers scored 13 of the first 15 points at the beginning of the second half to end the competitive phase of the game before the fans could get back from the refreshment stands.

It was a complete dismantling, the type of beating usually reserved for one of Pitt's non-descript early season foes.

"We wanted to start off fast," Pitt junior Levon Kendall said. "We wanted to stress the first five minutes of both halves. We've had some slow starts throughout the year. We didn't want that to happen again. We didn't want to give them reason to believe."

Kent State had absolutely no reason to believe thanks to Pitt's marksman-like shooting performance. The Panthers shot a school-record 67.4 percent from the field. They made 31 of 46 shots. The Panthers also broke their NCAA tournament best of 62.3, set vs. Eastern Michigan in 1988.

Aaron Gray and Ronald Ramon were a perfect 6 for 6 from the floor. Kendall was an almost-perfect 5 for 6.

The seamless offensive display could not have been predicted before the game. Pitt was coming off one of its worst offensive games of the season against Syracuse in the Big East Conference tournament championship game last Saturday night in New York, and many players spent the past week getting sick or injured.

Kendall was a bit nervous in pregame warm-ups because his teammates were unusually erratic and off the mark.

"I didn't know what to think before the game," Kendall said. "In warm-ups, everyone was bricking them. I was hoping it was one of those games where we shot terrible in warm-ups and shot well in the game."

Much to the dismay of Kent State, Kendall's hopes came to fruition.

"Everything they were throwing up was falling," Kent State senior Jay Youngblood said.

After shooting a season-low 33 percent against Syracuse, the Panthers had six days to resurrect their offense and rediscover their shots.

"We went back into the gym," Ramon said. "We stayed humble. We made sure we were ready for this team."

Pitt had six players score in double figures. Gray led the way with 17 points and added 13 rebounds. Ramon had 16 points, Sam Young (12 points), Carl Krauser (11) and Kendall (10) and Levance Fields (10) all made notable contributions. Krauser also had nine of Pitt's 18 assists.

"Carl set the tone with his nine assists," Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. "That makes us hard to guard when he's playing like that. It was a great team effort. We had a lot of guys step up."

Kendall credited the coaching staff for picking up on a Kent State tendency. Kendall said the Panthers knew the Flashes were going to double-team Gray in the post every time he touched the ball no matter what.

Gray found the open man almost every time, and Pitt's guards didn't miss many of their outside shots.

"We'd been preparing for that the last couple of days," Kendall said. "We knew Aaron was going to make the right choices."

Ramon was the catalyst in the first half. He was 4 for 4 from the field and had 10 of his 16 in the first 20 minutes.

Kent State hung in there with Pitt in the first few minutes, but the Panthers heated up midway through the half and started to run away from the Golden Flashes. The Panthers went on a 17-3 run and led, 28-12, with 8:02 remaining. The Panthers went up by 20, 34-14, a few minutes later when Ramon made a jumper. From there, Kent State trailed by double digits for all but 26 seconds the rest of the game.

The Panthers played like they had something to prove. They were upset at being deemed a No. 5 seed in the tournament and proved to one person at least that they are better than that.

"With them being a No. 5 seed. If there are 18 or 19 teams better than them I'd like to see them," Kent State coach Jim Christian said.

"You have to take your hat off to Pitt. For us to have a chance in this game, they were going to have to shoot poorly, and they shot it very well."