PITTSBURGH — Jamie Dixon believes Pittsburgh can be a good 3-point shooting team. He’d just prefer the Panthers become a good rebounding team first.

It appears Dixon will have to wait.

While Pitt surged to a relatively easy 70-46 win over Howard on Tuesday night, it was another number in the box score — the slight 37-36 rebounding advantage by the undersized and undermanned Bison — that piqued Dixon’s interest.

“We’ve been outrebounded three games in a row,” Dixon said. “It’s something we need to address. We spent two days addressing it but it’s just not getting done. It’s something we’ve got to get better at. There are too many that are hitting our hands that we’re not getting.”

Still, the Panthers (6-1) managed to track down enough to prevent Howard (1-6) from making things uncomfortable. Pitt led by just eight at the break but broke things open with an 11-3 surge to start the second half as the Panthers finally figured out the myriad of zone defenses the Bison threw at them.

“We wanted to control the paint and in the zone, make them think a little bit,” Howard coach Kevin Nickelberry said.

Nickelberry’s team succeeded on that front but simply couldn’t keep up when Pitt got serious in the second half. Howard shot just 31 percent (8 of 26) over the final 20 minutes as the Panthers started a soft spot in their schedule with relative ease.

Lamar Patterson and Tray Woodall scored 15 points each for Pitt while Talib Zanna added 12 points and eight rebounds and freshman point guard James Robinson scored 11 points and eight assists.

The Panthers outscored Howard 10-1 at the free-throw line and 14-8 on fast breaks while making 8 of 19 3-pointers. The Bison went just 1 of 10 behind the arc.

“I feel like they were tiring in the second half,” Zanna said. “We just started running and got the lead.”

Simuel Frazier led Howard with 12 points and Mike Phillips and Alphonse Leary scored 10 points each for the Bison but Howard’s injury-depleted line-up had no answer when Pitt finally got aggressive.

“They made more shots, we couldn’t make a shots,” Nickelberry said. “It’s a good experience for us. This has always been a tough place to play.”