Matt Freed, Post-Gazette Aaron Gray shoots over Oakland's Shawn Hopes yesterday. Gray was unstoppable in the second half, lifting the Panthers to their fifth win. Click photo for larger image.

For the first half of yesterday's game against Oakland University, Pitt did a lot of uncharacteristic things. The Panthers were lackadaisical on defense, were getting beat to loose balls, turned the ball over too much and demonstrated poor shot selection.

But perhaps Pitt's biggest indiscretion of the half was ignoring Aaron Gray.

The result was a four-point deficit to a team that plays in the Mid-Continent Conference. One that won just 11 games a season ago, to boot.

The Panthers avoided the upset by force feeding the ball to Gray in the second half. Pitt's 7-foot, 270-pound senior center scored 15 of his 23 points after halftime and the Panthers came back to beat the pesky Grizzlies, 66-55, at the Petersen Events Center.

"Coach Dixon told us to get the ball down low," Gray said. "He has confidence in me to make good decisions. I got a couple of easy buckets. I had a few good post moves. I started to really get confident."

Gray wasn't completely invisible in the first half. He did score eight points and had five rebounds. In the first few minutes of the second half, however, Gray was the only option on almost every Pitt possession. He scored 11 points in the first 5 minutes, 3 seconds of the second half. He was 5 for 5 from the floor in that span and when he converted a 3-point point play with 14:57 remaining, he gave Pitt its first lead since the opening minute. Gray didn't miss from the floor in the second half until less than six minutes remained.

"I kind of felt like I had to take over the game," Gray said. "I think you could see early that the offense was kind of struggling a little bit. I wanted to give the team a lift. They did a great job of feeding off that energy."

For the game, Gray was 10 for 14 from the floor and pulled down 13 rebounds in 34 minutes for his third double-double of the season. Gray's inspired play sparked the No. 4 Panthers (5-0) in the areas where they struggled in the first half. After playing passive and allowing Oakland (3-2) to shoot 48 percent in the first half, they turned up the defensive pressure and forced the Grizzlies to shoot 24 percent in the second half.

After taking ill-advised shots and shooting 33 percent in the first 20 minutes, Pitt shot 65 percent in the second half with most of the damage being done from the inside.

"He's dominant," said senior forward Levon Kendall, the only other Pitt player to score in double figures with 11 points and nine rebounds. "You just throw it in there and play off that. He got me going in the first half. He got our guards open on the wing. That's all part of the plan. Teams can only take away so many things when you have someone inside who takes up that much space and draws so much attention."

Oakland coach Greg Kampe said his team lost the game in the opening five minutes of the second half when Gray led the Panthers on a 13-6 run and seized control of the contest.

"We knew they were going to do that," Kampe said of Pitt feeding the ball to Gray. "In the first 20 minutes we played. Then we went in at halftime and we said, 'Oh, we're beating the No. [4] team in the country.' We were in a fog the first couple of minutes. They didn't do anything different than they did in the first half. We just weren't there.

Matt Freed, Post-Gazette Levon Kendall shoots over Oakland's Patrick McCloskey yesterday. Kendall scored 11 points to help the Panthers rally in the second half. Click photo for larger image.

"We're disappointed. We had a chance to beat the No. [4] team in the country. We're kind of upset with ourselves. We knew they were going to come out and be as intense as they could be. I thought we kind of folded and watched. They got four straight easy baskets. I don't know if they had an easy one in the first half. To me, that was the game."

Oakland took the game to Pitt in the first half. The Grizzlies forced eight turnovers and scored 13 points off those turnovers as the Panthers struggled to keep pace. With 8:18 remaining in the first half, the Grizzlies led, 25-15, after a 10-0 run that included back-to-back 3-pointers from Erik Kangas.

"We were a little fatigued and maybe weren't expecting them to come out quite as hard or be quite as good as they were," Kendall said. "It took some time to adjust to that. I think we were a little tired. We came out flat. They were beating us to loose balls. They were just playing harder than us. Luckily, we countered that in the second half and came out on top."

Pitt battled back in the final few minutes of the first half to make it 33-29 at the intermission. Pitt finished the half on a 9-4 run over the final 6:02. Gray scored the final six points of the half. Combining the final three minutes of the first half and first five minutes of the second half, Gray accounted for 17 of Pitt's 19 points.

"Kansas was in the same situation a week ago and they weren't able to find a way to win," Kampe said. "Instead of saying you should have never been in that situation against an Oakland, I think you ought to look at Pittsburgh and say, 'That's a good team. That's a team that played three games in three days and was in trouble and was able to get their star to step forward.' "

NOTES -- Pitt does not play again until Friday when it plays host to Florida State. ... Although Florida State is the final game of the Colonial Athletic Association Classic, tournament organizers named the all-tournament team and MVP yesterday. Gray was named MVP. Antonio Graves was named to the all-tournament team. ... Pitt is 5-0 for the seventh consecutive season.