NOTRE DAME, Ind. -- For the two days leading up to Wednesday's Pitt-Notre Dame game, Jamie Dixon made this point clear to his players -- the Panthers had to play great defense against the Fighting Irish's 3-point assault in order to win the game.

So, of course, on Notre Dame's first possession, Tory Jackson hit a wide-open 3-pointer to give the Irish a lead they would never relinquish.

That shot by Jackson was the first of 10 3-pointers by the Irish, who cruised to an easy, 68-53 blowout against the 12th-ranked Panthers before a crowd of 8,581 at the Joyce Center.

The Panthers' lack of ability to defend the 3-point shot was only part of the story, though, as they were dominated in just about every category, including rebounding, where the Irish enjoyed a 34-25 edge.

Dixon clearly was irritated by the Panthers' lack of effort against the Irish's long-range shooting, given how much emphasis he had put on stopping the expected Notre Dame 3-point blitz.

Instead, Notre Dame finished 10 for 18 (56 percent) on 3-pointers."I didn't think our defense was good enough but, at the same time, to their credit they made shots," Dixon said. "We talked at the start of the game and really for the last three days we talked about stopping the 3s, that shooting the 3-pointer was what they would need to do to win the game and, sure enough, they came out and hit a 3-pointer on the first play of the game and was 6 for 8 on 3-pointers for the first half.

"That really set the tone, and then [with the lead in the second half] they obviously ran clock and held the ball and the times we did get a stop, it didn't seem like we finished it off with the rebound. We need to play much better than we did."

Hitting 6 of 8 3-pointers, Notre Dame built a big early lead and a 35-27 halftime advantage.

The Irish's largest first-half lead was 11 points -- 27-16 -- but the Panthers responded with a 7-0 run to pull to within 27-23 with three minutes left in the half.

That, however, was as close as they would get as Jackson ended the Panthers' run with a 3-pointer and finished the half with a driving layup to push the Irish lead back to eight points.

Notre Dame scored the first five points of the second half for the knockout punch as the Panthers never got back to within less than 10 points.

A big reason for that was the Irish ability to run the clock and get good shots on nearly every offensive possession. More important, Notre Dame extended many possessions with offensive rebounds.

The Irish (18-10, 7-8 Big East) led by as many as 24 points in the second half, had 11 offensive rebounds and outrebounded the Panthers, 34-25, overall for the game. They outscored Pitt in second-chance points, 14-8.

"We didn't play good defense, we didn't play average defense, we played bad defense tonight," said Pitt senior Jermaine Dixon. "We let them get open looks at the 3-pointer and then when they did miss it, they got the offensive rebound, so it is disappointing. They outworked us, and that definitely hurt us.

"They run it down to the end of the clock, and coach Dixon told us to make sure they don't rebound their misses, and that is something they did. That's big because you don't have a lot of time on the other end to play offense and then, when they make the shot after they get an [offensive rebound], that is demoralizing."

Pitt center Gary McGhee added, "[their offensive rebounding] makes it very tough to come back because it gives them extra possessions and they can run the clock down because they had the lead the entire game."

Jermaine Dixon led the Panthers (21-7, 10-5) with 13 points and Ashton Gibbs added 11 while the Irish had a balanced attack with four players in double figures, led by Tim Abromaitis (17) and guard Ben Hansbrough, who had 15 points and nine rebounds.

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