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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — His teammates told him to keep shooting. So did his coaches. Even his buddies sitting behind the Pitt bench implored him to keep firing away.

On his homecoming, Jermaine Dixon didn't want to let anyone down.

Dixon, mired in a season-long shooting slump, hit his biggest buckets since arriving at Pitt in a critical second-half stretch, and the No. 3 Panthers rallied to escape Florida State with a 56-48 victory Sunday at Tucker Center.

"(They) told me 'keep shooting,' " Dixon said. "It felt good."

Playing in an arena that has claimed at least one top-25 ranked team in each of the past seven seasons, Pitt (12-0) fought back from an eight-point second-half deficit to head into Big East play Dec. 31 against Rutgers with a perfect record.

Sam Young scored a game-high 21 points, and Pitt held Florida State scoreless for a 7:19 span of the second half during a 17-0 run, but Dixon's long overdue 3-pointers were the difference.

Dixon, who starred at nearby Tallahassee Junior College the past two seasons, hit two 3 pointers in a 61-second span to key the second-half run and Pitt never trailed the rest of the way.

"If he wouldn't have hit those 3s," said Young, who also hit a couple of huge second-half buckets, "I don't think we would have won the game."

Dixon, the team's starting shooting guard, had made only five of 30 3-point attempts (16.7 percent) entering Sunday's game. He missed two more long-range shots in the first half to drop to 3 for 25 from behind the arc in the past month. So, when Florida State opened the second half with a 10-0 run to take a 34-26 lead with 15:31 to play, Dixon figured to be a little gun-shy.

But the younger brother of former Maryland star Juan Dixon figured if you don't shoot, you can't even miss.

"We have a lot of confidence in him," Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. "He's a big-game player."

The first Dixon 3-pointer ended Pitt's second-half drought and cut FSU's lead to 34-29 with 15:16 to play. After a DeJuan Blair put-back dunk, Dixon hit another 3-pointer to tie the score, 34-34. By the time the run was over, Pitt led 43-34.

"After that first one, I knew I was going to hit the second one," said Dixon, who finished with 11 points. "I knew it was going down."

Florida State (11-2) clawed back to tie the score, 48-48, on Uche Echefu's jumper with 2:23 to play. Sam Young's soaring tip-in off a Levance Fields miss with 1:51 to play - barely getting the ball with a stretched-out right arm - gave the Panthers the lead for good, 50-48.

"I actually hit it with my middle finger and ring finger," Young said. "I just got up. They've got a big team. There were a couple of them up there with me. I just got it over them."

After Toney Douglas (20 points) missed an open 3-pointer from the corner, Blair grabbed the rebound and Young scored on a driving layup to make it 52-48 with a minute to play.

"I got the bucket, and they put their head down a little bit," Young said. "They got out of it after that."

Florida State missed its final seven field-goal attempts and shot 29.8 percent for the game (14 of 47).

"They did a very good job of keeping us off-balance," FSU coach Leonard Hamilton said. "For the most part, we had good looks. We just didn't make our baskets."

Pitt led 26-24 at halftime despite shooting 10 for 36 from the field and having five players with two fouls, including Young and Blair.

"We know how to grind it out," Jermaine Dixon said. "I knew it was going to be a fight."

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