PITTSBURGH — Jamie Dixon believes Pittsburgh is playing its best basketball of an admittedly difficult season.

For a night at least, it sure looked like it.

Ashton Gibbs shook off a recent slump to score 19 points in his final home game as the Panthers snapped a five-game losing streak with an 89-69 victory over St. John’s on Wednesday night.

“We’re confident,” Gibbs said. “It starts in practice. Everybody is in the gym every day trying to get better. Even though we had some losses this year, we’ve just got to carry this momentum and carry it forward.”

Dante Taylor had a career-high 17 points while making all eight of his shots and JJ Moore added 14 for the Panthers (16-14, 5-12 Big East), who shot a season-best 63.3 percent (31 of 49) from the floor.

The victory assures the Panthers of finishing with at least a .500 record and an almost certain invitation to the NIT. The defending Big East champions, however, aren’t ready to give up on making the NCAAs for an 11th straight season.

Though Pitt will need to win the conference tournament to get there, the Panthers believe there’s reason for hope next week at Madison Square Garden.

“This is a real good start,” Pitt forward Nasir Robinson said. “I think we did a real good job sharing the ball.”

Pitt finished with 20 assists, heady territory for a team that averaged 49.6 points in its previous three games.

“We just moved the ball better I thought,” Dixon said. “I think we did that for 40 minutes.”

D’Angelo Harrison led St. John’s with 21 points to break Erick Barkley’s school freshman scoring record and Phil Greene had 18 but the Red Storm (13-17, 6-11) couldn’t pull off a fourth straight win with its freshmen-laden lineup. St. John’s upset Notre Dame last Saturday by shutting down the Irish, yet failed to play with the same intensity on the road.

Pitt opened the second half with a 14-4 run to break it open and cruised from there.

“I think Pitt did a great job on the glass,” St. John’s assistant coach Mike Dunlap said. “We know who can shoot the ball but for us to give up that many paint points made it very difficult for us.”

The Panthers outscored St. John’s 36-28 in the lane, many of them coming courtesy of Taylor. The 6-foot-9 junior has been an enigma this season, mixing steady play with long stretches of inactivity.

Yet he was plenty busy against the young, undersized Red Storm, who start five freshman and play just six guys, none bigger than 6-8.

“We’re more light in the pockets and he drove us underneath and got second shots,” Dunlap said of Taylor.

It was the kind of game the Panthers expected more of this season but have been hard to find over the last two months. The Panthers have struggled mightily to score points in conference play, coming in ranked in the bottom three in the 16-team league in field goal percentage, 3-point percentage and points per game.

Pitt hit six of its first eight shots behind a quick start from the struggling Gibbs. The preseason Big East player of the year has looked lost at times recently, scoring a total of 14 points in Pitt’s last three games.

“We’ve been working on him on just catching and shooting,” Dixon said. “He’ll get good shots if we can recognize the right pass and the right time. We have good passers.”