The once confident strokes have turned shaky. The shots that used to swish are now clanking off the rim -- sometimes.

Twice in Wednesday night's victory against Cincinnati, Pitt players air-balled 3-point attempts, demonstrating how far Pitt's once lethal stable of 3-point shooters have fallen off.

Pitt returned four of its five guards from last season's team that finished second in the Big East in 3-point shooting percentage. The Panthers finished last season at 38.2 percent and ranked as one of the top long-range shooting teams in Division I.

Now Pitt is careening toward one of its worst 3-point shooting seasons in recent history with most of the same players from that team back in the fold.

Injuries and inconsistencies have turned the Panthers into a group lacking confidence as the postseason approaches.

Pitt is 12th in the Big East in 3-point shooting at 33.5 percent. That paltry number actually looks good when compared to the way the Panthers have shot the ball in recent weeks.

Pitt is shooting 45 for 161 (27.9 percent) from 3-point range the past nine games. The confounding thing is the Panthers were an above-average 3-point shooting team through the first 19 games. The Panthers shot 36.1 percent (126 for 349) from 3-point range in that span and shot 50 percent or more in three of the first six conference games.

Junior point guard Levance Fields has a rather simple solution.

"We just have to keep shooting," he said. "We work hard in practice. Right now I don't know the answer as to why we're missing so much. We just have to keep taking the open shots and don't think about it."

The only guard Pitt graduated from last year's team was Antonio Graves, a streaky 3-point shooter who finished last season third, making 40.2 percent.

Pitt returned its other top 3-point threats. Mike Cook led the team in 3-point shooting last season at 47.8 percent and had been making 3-point shots at a 35 percent clip before he had a season-ending knee injury in late December.

Cook's replacement, freshman Gilbert Brown, is not an accomplished 3-point shooter. Brown is shooting 23.8 percent from 3-point range and has not made one from behind the arc since a Jan. 30 home game against Villanova. He has missed his past 17 3-point attempts in the past seven games.

Brown is one of several Pitt players who are playing through injuries. Brown and senior Ronald Ramon are playing with partially torn labrum muscles. Neither player has missed a game because of the injury, but there is some discomfort.

Ramon has missed 21 of his past 27 3-pointers. Ramon shot 45.1 percent last season and entered this season shooting 40.5 percent for his career. He is shooting 35.3 percent this season.

Keith Benjamin had been shooting the lights out until he lacerated a finger in a Jan. 19 game at Cincinnati. He made 11 of his first 21 3-point shots in Big East play before the injury. Since then, he has made just 16 of 47.

"We have two guys with torn labrums," coach Jamie Dixon said. "We have Keith with the infected finger, so we're dealing with that. And we have a guy in Levance who hasn't played in [seven] weeks. We just have to fight through it. I don't know if those are excuses or what, but I know we're a better shooting team than we're shooting now."

Pitt's top 3-point shooter this season is a forward. Sam Young is shooting 41 percent for the season, but, like the guards, he has struggled with his stroke recently.

Pitt managed to beat Cincinnati despite making 8 of 26 3-point attempts. The Panthers must do better than that if they hope to challenge Syracuse in the Carrier Dome tomorrow afternoon.

Syracuse plays a 2-3 zone and forces opponents to shoot 3-pointers. For the most part, Dixon is convinced his players are taking good shots. They just have to start making more of them.