Florida Loss Opens Opportunity for Pitt
PITTSBURGH -- Identifying the turning point in the Pitt Panthers' 86-71 loss to the Florida Gators at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York is not particularly difficult. Ishmael Leggett hit a pair of free throws with 93 seconds left in the first half to put the Panthers up 34-31 and kept them in control of an ugly game. It all unraveled from there.
After a stop, Blake Hinson committed a turnover, leading to a 3-pointer from the red-hot Walter Clayton. Then the typically reliable Bub Carrington committed another turnover on the next possession and Clayton made him pay with a layup. In 57 seconds the Panthers went from up three to down two and a buzzer-beating triple from Thomas Haugh capped the half-closing 8-0 run from which Pitt would never recover.
“I thought the way we closed the first half out changed the momentum of the game," Pitt head coach Jeff Capel said. "We led for the majority of the first half. At the under four [minute] timeout, we had the lead. Then, from that point on, they won it.”
The Gators exposed Pitt's youth and, with two games against Power 5 opponents under their belts, used a physical advantage to rattle the Panthers' confidence and run right past them. But the good news for Pitt after suffering an ugly loss is that their mistakes from that game aren't fatal. Just like they did last year in Brooklyn, the Panthers were punched in the gut and have been handed a golden opportunity to prove they are capable of growing up in real time.
The frantic pace that lasted all 40 minutes of this game played to Pitt's advantage early, when they opened up an 11-4 lead by the 15:23 mark of the first half. That changed as the hits began to mount and Florida's veterans settled into a game that was more fitting to their experience and size.
Florida's bigs hedged freshman Bub Carrington hard on ball screens and tested his ability to make the right decision quickly. They hounded Blake Hinson and forced him off the 3-point line. The entire frontcourt depth chart for Pitt was simply no match for the waves and waves of 6'10 and up opponents that the Gators had on their roster.
The fine pieces of this loss are hard to swallow. The Panthers' "Big Three" of Hinson, Carrington and Leggett - their three leading scorers so far this season - each reached double-figures in points but failed to do it efficiently. Pitt missed 44 shots against the Gators, 32 of which came from those three, who made just 18 field goals all night and five of their 10 free throw attempts.
The rest of the starting lineup wasn't particularly impressive either. A late surge from Zack Austin got him up to 10 points and nine rebounds and Federiko Federiko didn't attempt a field goal while grabbing just four rebounds in the midst of foul troubles. And the reserves contributed little of anything in relief - 11 total points, 13 rebounds and five assists to four turnovers between four players over 46 combined minutes.
But despite all of their many shortcomings, the Panthers scored 71 points against a team that is now ranked in the top 50 of all of college basketball in defensive efficiency, per KenPom. And they did that without doing many of the things that they've hung their hat on through four games - creating fast breaks with good defense and rebounding, scoring in transition and moving, with and without the ball to create open looks.
“I think we [learned that we] can’t be rushed," Capel said. "We can’t get itchy. I think that’s what we looked like tonight. [Florida's] physicality made us at times try to do things individually instead of staying within the flow of what we do.”
After two weeks in which everything came easily to Pitt, something finally proved difficult and they were humbled on a big stage against a good team. Who knows - maybe this is a harbinger of worse things to come, but that doesn't seem likely because their issues are fixable.
Florida didn't overwhelm Pitt with superior talent, but wore them down with superior resolve to win a bruising game. The Panthers played their first game against a high-major opponent and looked like a team facing this level of competition for the first time. They were up to that task for about 15 minutes, not 40.
It takes a different brand of consistency force and focus to beat a Power 5 opponent, especially one that has the chance to be pretty good, than it does a mid-major foe and this entire group should now know that.
As the Panthers proved last year, when they took two ugly losses in that same arena around this same time in the calendar, this does not need to define their season if they don't want to. Losses can provide the best lessons and now it's on Pitt to learn them.
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