Pitt played its 100th game at the Petersen Events Center last night and suffered one of the most humiliating defeats of the Jamie Dixon era. Rutgers, a team that had one Big East Conference victory entering the game, stunned the No. 13 Panthers, 77-64, before a sellout crowd.

The loss tied for worst in the history of the Petersen Events Center. Pitt lost to Louisville by 13 at home last season. This loss was as unexplainable as the one to Bucknell Jan. 2, 2005.

Rutgers, an 18¹/_2-point underdog, was the lowest-scoring and poorest-shooting team in the Big East before the game. Yet the Scarlet Knights looked like world-beaters against Pitt's usually stingy defense.

Rutgers shot 53.7 percent from the field (29 for 54) and outscored the Panthers, 45-25, in the second half. The Scarlet Knights, second-to-last in rebounding margin in the conference, dominated the Panthers on the boards, too, outrebounding the Panthers by 16 in the second half.

"They just played harder than us tonight," Pitt senior Keith Benjamin said. "That usually doesn't happen, especially in this gym."

Playing the first of four home games in a five-game stretch, the Panthers fell to 16-4 overall and 4-3 in the Big East.

Dixon could not get over the fact that Rutgers won the rebounding battle by 16 after halftime. Pitt had a decided 22-9 edge against the Scarlet Knights in the first half.

A combination of being outworked and an inordinate number of missed shots contributed to the second-half collapse.

"Getting outrebounded by 16 is unheard of," Dixon said. "That's the biggest thing we can point to. We got that seven-point [halftime] lead. We outrebounded them in the first half. Then, we get soundly beat on the boards in the second half.

"We're not going to win any games getting outrebounded by 16. It's a number that's staggering. We got exactly what we deserved. That's what I told the players. If you get outrebounded by 16, that's what's going to happen."

Pitt had a hard time figuring out Rutgers' constantly changing defenses. Coach Fred Hill masterfully mixed in zone with a man-to-man throughout the second half and got the Panthers out of rhythm.

Pitt was 10 for 34 from the field in the second half and scored 12 points in the first 17 minutes of the second half.

Rutgers seized control of the game with a 20-2 run midway through the second half. Pitt led, 47-38, with 13:33 remaining, but the Scarlet Knights scored at will and held Pitt to one field goal in an 11-minute stretch.

"Our shot selection was not as bad as the numbers indicate," Dixon said. "I thought we had good looks. There was a stretch there in the second half where we had five shots that were wide-open shots that we didn't hit.

"Our execution in the first half was about as good as you can get. And we still didn't hit as many shots as I thought we were going to. This is a team that had shot the ball very well of late.

"We did not shoot it well today. It was one of those games where you were going to have to win it with rebounding and defense, and we didn't do that today."

Sam Young, who had been on a hot streak, was the coldest of Pitt's shooters. Young made 4 of 17 shots from the field and scored 11 points. He had been averaging 20.8 points per game in the first seven conference games and had scored 24 or more in three of the past four.

Without Young to carry the team, the Panthers had no answers. Perhaps more shocking than the way Pitt defended and rebounded was the fact that the Panthers never mounted a comeback in the final minutes.

Gilbert Brown led the team with 16 points and DeJuan Blair had 14 points, but only two of Blair's points came after halftime. He picked up his third foul early in the second half and had to spend 11 minutes on the bench.

It was the third time this season that Blair has been in foul trouble and Pitt has lost.

But Blair's absence didn't explain this loss. Dixon and Benjamin kept coming back to the lack of defense and rebounding as the reasons for this setback.

"We just played bad defense," Benjamin said. "They just steamrollered over us. We were saying in the locker room you usually don't see Ronald [Ramon] miss that many shots or Sam and [Tyrell] Biggs miss that many foul-line jump shots or DeJuan missing easy ones.

"It was definitely one of those nights. But, usually, the defense is there, and we can keep it close and give ourselves a chance to win. But we didn't do that tonight at all."