Pitt needed some late game heroics to storm back and defeat Northern Illinois by a score of 59-50 on Monday night at the Petersen Events Center. The Panthers found themselves trailing the Huskies 46-39 with 8:56 remaining in the game. Pitt then went on a subsequent 20-4 run to close out the game with a dominant defensive performance down the stretch.

Trey McGowens led the Panthers with 18 points. His feed to Justin Champagnie for a dunk gave Pitt a 52-50 lead with 2:40 remaining in the game. That slam gave Pitt its first lead in the second half. The Huskies had been leading the game since midway in the first half. McGowens then hit a dagger 3-pointer with :57 seconds left to stretch the Pitt lead to seven points.

The sophomore from South Carolina came off the bench for only the second time in his career and took the game over in the closing minutes. He ran the offense as Pitt point guard Xavier Johnson was relegated to the bench after some poor decision making.

The turning point in the game was when Pitt switched from a man-to-man look on defense and went to a matchup zone. That slowed down the Huskies leading scorer Eugene German. He came in averaging 20 points a game and had 13 at halftime and looked well on his way to scoring more than that, but ultimately finished with 18. His last basket came at the 12:53 mark of the game.

Johnson finished with 11 and Eric Hamilton supplied 10 as the two other Panthers to score in double figures. Justin Champagnie added 8 points, including two emphatic dunks down the stretch, the latter being an alley-oop from Ryan Murphy that brought the crowd to its feet.

Pitt needed the furious late-game comeback due to a sloppy first half. Northern Illinois out-hustled and out-rebounded Pitt to build a lead and kept the Panthers at bay before the strong play in the closing minutes.

Pitt improves to 8-3 on the year. The Panthers have won six of their last seven games with the lone loss coming to No. 1 Louisville. Pitt returns to action on Friday as it plays host to Binghamton at the Petersen Events Center. Pitt has two more non-conference games before closing out the regular season with 18 straight ACC games.