I thought Pitt hit its low point this season would be a 78-63 loss to The Citadel in the season opener. But after that 87-77 debacle by the Panthers against UMBC Saturday, I think we have a new moment that takes that title.
Instead of reliving all the rough points of a horrible, ugly basketball game, here's my top thoughts from what happened here at the Petersen Events Center.
• Jeff Capel looks lost. This was a game that Pitt should've had control of from start to finish and instead it was UMBC, a mid-major program, that walked into an ACC arena who dominated the game. The Retrievers took a five-point deficit and turned it into a three-point lead at 21-18 with 10:13 left in the first half and never gave it up. UMBC maintained a double-digit lead over the Panthers for an approximate combined 13 minutes and 33 seconds of the game.
The Panthers looked like the team that never stood a chance. UMBC outshot Pitt 48 percent to 46 percent, and the Panthers turned the ball over 14 times to UMBC's eight turnovers, leading to a disparity of 17-5 points of turnovers that also favored UMBC. Four players on the Retrievers scored in the double digits when defense was supposed to be the calling card of this Panthers team.
Forget the minutia of the game details and how the game was lost for a second and think about what just happened. It's one thing to lose to an program with less resources from a smaller school in your home arena because of some fluky play or a crazy run at the end led to some miracle shot that knocked Pitt out in the final second. But that's not what happened Saturday.
Pitt lost outright in a rout where they looked outplayed, outhustled, outcoached, and knocked out by UMBC. The Panthers lost the game before they even got in the Petersen Events Center.
"We didn't come out with our regular energy," Odukale said. "We normally have our high intensity and our switches while playing alert. We were lackadaisical. We thought we won the game before we played it."
That last line really says a lot. This team has to know that after its loss to The Citadel this season, there's not a single team in all of the NCAA it should overlook. The fact that any of these players thought this team had played well enough for any game to be a cakewalk is a clear indictment of the attitude in the locker room and the lack of control around it by its head coach.
• Pitt used to win these games before they played them. Pitt is now 75-8 at the Petersen Events Center in November since the arena opened in 2002. But including Saturday's loss, five of those eight losses have come under Capel to Nicholls State and West Virginia in 2019, Saint Francis (Pa.) in 2020, and now The Citadel and UMBC in 2021.
These used to be the games that Pitt fans could come to and enjoy watching easy wins before things heated up with tougher out-of-conference opponents and a grind of a conference schedule. But now, it's anything but a given thing.
• Kudos to UMBC's head coach Jim Ferry, the same Jim Ferry who coached Duquesne basketball from 2012-2017. UMBC was quick with its ball movement and passing and shot the lights out hitting 14 of 31 three-pointers on the day.
"At this stage of my career, every win is awesome," Ferry said after the game. "It's always nice coming home to where you've been, but I think the last time I played Pitt I beat them too. The last time I was at Duquesne we won the City Game. It's always great when you can win a game like this. UMBC had the ultimate one a couple years ago beating Virginia as a 16-seed. It feels good coming back, being around friends and see people I haven't seen in a while."
• What's even more bizarre about Pitt losing this game was how it actually shot the ball well. Pitt hit 11 of 26 on three-pointers after coming into the game with only 13 made shots beyond the arc this season. Scoring 77 points was the season high, and if you had told me beforehand that they'd get that kind of offensive production I would've guaranteed they'd have won.
But the defense just completely fell apart, especially when UMBC went on a 20-3 run in the middle of the first half.
"We've been pretty good defensively this year," Capel said. "If you look at the season stats before this game, teams were shooting 43 percent against us and 33 percent from three. Our last three games those numbers went down to 38 percent from the field and 28 percent from three. We've been pretty good, but the last half of Vanderbilt and the first half of this game we weren't."
After every game this season, Capel has mentioned how Pitt has to win games ugly this year because of the lack of pure shooters and talented scorers on the roster. To have a defensive collapse like it did Saturday completely wasted its best scoring performance of the year and further showed the ineptitude of this team's hopes this season.
"Coach Capel already said we have to win ugly," Femi Odukale said. "We lost a lot of scoring pieces so wer'e not going to have a lot of nights where we score 40 or 50 in a half. We have to go out with the mindset that we're a defensive team first."
When UMBC was hitting its shots, Pitt was being late on rotations and looked like it came into the game with no idea of how to stop ball movement, drives to the basket, or really, anything.
• UMBC deployed its starting point guard Darnell Rogers, who stands at 5-foot-2, and got legitimate production out of him against Pitt. I know the saying goes 'it's not about the size of the dog in the fight, but the fight in the dog,' but there's no way Pitt should've allowed Rogers to come in and score ten points while leading UMBC with eight assists.
Not only that, but UMBC outscored Pitt by 17 points with Rogers on the floor. How Pitt didn't find a way to exploit someone who's literally more than a foot shorter than either of your point guards in Odukale at 6-foot-5 or Jamarius Burton at 6-foot-4 is beyond me. Each possession should've been about either of them bulling their way through or around Rogers, or using that to force UMBC to come to his aid and then feed the ball to the open man.
Pitt looked like it didn't have a plan to do any of that.
• What really struck me after the game was when I asked Capel about leadership. I remembered some tough comebacks from just last season when Xavier Johnson, Au'Diese Toney or Justin Champagnie would explode for points to bring the Panthers back from a loss. I even remembered against Syracuse how teammates credited Champagnie for rallying the team at halftime to refocus while he was injured and not even able to play.
It's obvious this team has a leadership problem, but according to Capel, that was a problem Pitt had last year too.
"I'm not sure we had one last year," Capel said when asked if he had a solidified leader. "And I'm not sure we have one this year. We had some older guys last year but I didn't think we had one guy last year that I felt was the leader of our team. I don't think think we've had that or we have one guy this year that steps up and says, 'this isn't going to happen,' or 'we have to do this,' or 'this won't happen to us anymore.' Unfortunately we haven't had that."
Well, Pitt needs that guy. Capel knows it, but the way he talks about it just makes it seem hopeless that the Panthers will find that guy before the season is over.
"It's an issue, Capel continued. "We need everyone. We're a young team. I'm not trying to make an excuse, but that's who we are. Our most veteran guys who are playing for us right now are sophomores. It's a learning experience. I don't think we have any of them who are natural leaders. Players like Brandin Knight, the Karl Krauser, the Levance Fields or James Robinson. That's something we unfortunately haven't had."
• Part of that lack of leadership has led to the "bickering" Odukale referenced after Pitt's loss to Vanderbilt Wednesday night. It's clear that the reason for said bickering is because there's nobody on the roster who can command attention or respect as the leader to set the team straight.
When a bad pass happens, or bad defense or a disagreement, there's nobody to rally around. That's a problem.
"It's the kind of arguing that happens when you're frustrated," John Hugley IV said, who led Pitt with 21 points. "It's frustrating man. But that happens when you lose. You just have to get back to the drawing board and get better. We're sticking together through this though."
I get it, losing is frustrating. Losing to The Citadel and UMBC is even more frustrating. But there has to be somebody that stops the disfunction when things start to fall apart for the Panthers. Capel hasn't been able to be that coach this season, and according to him, there's not a player who's going to do that either.
• Cap all of that with how Pitt ended the game, looking like it gave up in the final minutes. Down 78-69 with 5:03 left, Pitt's offense staggered and looked like nobody wanted to do the scoring that would bring the team back. Instead of working fast to find open shots or players driving to the basket, Pitt was playing slow possession basketball and failing to score.
Boos and jeers from the crowd were easy to hear in an spattering of fans that had thousands of open seats in the Petersen Events Center. Fans were shouting for time management, for effort, for just simply shooting the ball in those final minutes to give the Panthers a chance. But there was no sense of urgency and eventually UMBC welcomed Pitt to its eventual double-digit loss.
That part, the quitting without the desperation at the end, was the bottom line of a terrible game. It's different to have that when outmatched by a top ranked program like Duke or North Carolina when you're clearly outmatched by a blue blood program, but against UMBC, that's a bad joke.
• For what it's worth, I see Odukale as someday being that leader Pitt basketball needs. He's a sophomore who shows real grit at times, but he's going to need some performances that carry Pitt to wins before he becomes that certified leader.
Still, he sees himself and Burton as those guys who can fill that void for Pitt. He's a tough player who limped his way into the postgame press conference on a bad ankle that got stepped on towards the end of the game.
"I feel like it's me and (Burton) who come together," Odukale said when asked about team leadership. "JB is more of the person who will point out the issue right on the spot and talk about it during the game. I like to talk behind the scenes when nobody sees us so that it's one-on-one and it's more genuine so I can tell you how I really feel. But in those moments on the court, we have to bring the team together so we can play as a unit."
Somebody has to bring this team together. Or this team will go down as even worse than the one Kevin Stallings put on the court in 2017-18 that finished 8-24 an 0-18 in the ACC.
