Pitt got the style of game it wanted in a defensive showdown with Virginia, but couldn't hold up in the important moments late in both halves as the Cavaliers beat the Panthers 66-61 Wednesday at the Petersen Events Center.
Jeff Capel has often talked about Pitt having to drag opponents down into the mud to force them to play a slower, defensive game that minimizes Pitt's weakness in scoring and shooting. But the problem is when facing Virginia, you must outperform a program under Tony Bennett that's lived winning with that style of basketball since they first made the NCAA Tournament in his tenure back in 2012.
Pitt had a foothold in such a game early as the Panthers surged to a 22-17 lead with 3:32 left in the first half as the Cavaliers shot 30 percent from the field in the first half. But after a timeout, Virginia surged with a 10-0 run from it's leading scorers. Reece Beekman hit three consecutive three pointers on his way to leading the Cavaliers with 19 points on the night and Jayden Gardner put up 14 points, mostly from the paint.
"Our inability to defend at the level we did for the first 16 minutes and 51 seconds is what did us in," Capel said after the game. "Before the timeout they were 34 percent from the field with 17 points. From that point our defense wasn't at the level it needs to be to defeat a championship program like them and they made us pay."
Virginia's defense came into the night allowing 58.6 points per game, the ACC's best and ahead of Pitt's 64.9 points allowed per game that's third best in the conference. But the Panthers' stingy defense was pushed past by a tough offense that's used to slower paced games, including guard Kihei Clark who saw significant time in Virginia's 2019 national championship team. Clark and Beekman would drive to force Pitt's defense to collapse and find the open man, with Clark finishing with six assists and Beekman finishing with eight.
"That's what they do and who they are as a program," Capel said of Virginia. "They're going to run their stuff offensively, be efficient there, screen, block and be together. They're going to talk and communicate. They have great leadership on the court with a guy (Clark) who won a national championship and was on the court for them and another guy in (Francisco) Cafarro who was on that roster too. They have a championship, they've won multiple ACC championships including last year. That's a championship program and it's what we aspire to become again. It's going to take a lot of work but it takes consistency and it takes all of those things. Today was a lesson in that. They got into a great rhythm offensively. Man, zone, we tried both and neither was effective.
Pitt's primary offense came from its star forward John Hugley IV, who finished with 23 points, seven rebounds, but also seven turnovers. Hugley did what he normally does in drawing several fouls, as Virginia saw both their bigger forwards in Cafarro and Kadin Shedrick both fouled out in the final minutes in the game.
But regardless of who was assigned to guard Hugley, Bennett had Virginia double-teaming him almost every possession and denying him the basketball. Hugley only scored one point off a free throw in the final ten minutes of the game.
"They were being very physical," Capel said of Virginia's defense on Hugley. "He got the ball, turned it over sometimes and it was all those things. It was all those things. It wasn't that we weren't going to him or looking for him. He got fouled and got to the free throw line, but we also had some turnovers in there as well."
"They did a great job on defense," Burton said when asked about why Hugley didn't get the ball late. "We love going down there to him and we're looking for him at all times. I can't say we're ignoring him or anything like that. We couldn't get the ball down to him at the end of the game."
Pitt's other primary forward, Mouhammadou Gueye, saw a dip in his minutes as Virginia's physical style of play got him into foul trouble in the second half and he had to sit. He still had eight points, six rebounds, a block and a steal, but with only 25 minutes in the game his effectiveness was lessened.
"It changes a lot, especially against them," Capel said about missing Gueye. "They're big and we can't go smaller against them. It changes our spacing on the court and the things we want to do when they have the two bigs in. We can't have smaller guy out there and it changes a lot for us offensively and defensively."
Pitt saw struggles without Gueye both on the offensive glass and consistency on defense as the Cavaliers had 11 offensive rebounds and worked its way to own the paint on the night 36-30.
"The biggest stat at halftime was they had 10 offensive rebounds and we had eight turnovers," Capel said. "That was huge. We talk all the time about valuing the basketball and we didn't do that. We knew going into this game their fours and fives were the ones who offensive rebound. They had 11 more possessions than us in the first half. That's the attention to half we're talking about."
When it comes down to it, Capel wasn't trying to focus on Pitt's shortcomings on offense, but more so on where the Panthers let up on defense. After a dominant defensive performance in a 65-53 win over Louisville Saturday, the second-fewest points allowed by Pitt this season, the Panthers' defense couldn't hold up for a repeat performance.
"No, we haven't," Capel answered when asked if Pitt's defense has been consistent this season. "We were really good Saturday, then not good today. I wouldn't say it's about effort, but it's about attention to detail and talking. In order to be good defensively you have to talk. Talk unites us and talk connects you, unites you, and when we do it the attention to detail is there. But when we don't, then we're like we were tonight. We just have to learn how to become a consistently good basketball team. It's hard, but we have to understand the things that are necessary to do it."
It's true, Pitt's defense has lapsed after its biggest performances this season. After holding Towson to 59 points in a win, Pitt allowed Vanderbilt to score 68 points in a loss, just as after holding Jacksonville to 55 points in a win the Panthers allowed 68 points in a loss to Notre Dame. Each time different reasons could be pointed to, and this time it was because of the offensive rebounds or allowing Virginia to find the shot it wanted just before the shot clock expired.
"It was defensive fatigue," Jamarius Burton said. "We couldn't finish plays off. We played great defense for a majority of the shot clock and then they'd capitalize on us in the last second. Coach warned us it could be like that and we came up short today. When you guard for 28-29 seconds and they get an offensive rebound then you have to guard for another 30 seconds, that's tough on your defense. They don't just shoot quick, they run their sets for great shots."
That fatigue was part of the issue for Pitt's younger team still learning to play to this identity of a defensive team that bears down in the toughest of moments. That's something Bennett has made a staple of Virginia basketball, whose entire identity is based in playing that kind of defense for 40 minutes.
"We talked about trying to outlast," Bennett said. "Both of our teams have improved since our last game and you see how close they've been in games. I knew they would try to go inside and attack off the dribble. We know we're in a blue collar town where they're tough so we had to come and be tough with them. I thought our guys did that. We have to keep seeking quality and last longer, which is why the message was to outlast."
The loss drops Pitt to 7-11 on the year, 2-5 in the ACC, and prevents the Panthers from stacking their first set of back-to-back ACC wins since they beat Duke on Jan. 19 of 2021, when Justin Champagnie declared "Pitt is back." The win brought the Panthers to be 8-2 on the season, and since then have been 9-21.
The Panthers have a tough uphill path to actually being back someday, but for this group to achieve what Capel's set out they'll have to prove they can string together multiple dominant defensive games before the end of the season. If that identity can at least be somewhat established going into next year, it will set up a foundation for Pitt basketball to develop an identity that new recruits can work to live up to as Capel tries to bring the program back to ACC relevance.
