On Monday night, Pitt men’s basketball marked the fifth loss in its last seven games in a 73-57 stinker against Virginia. The Panthers’ lazy showing in their home loss to the under .500 Cavaliers raises questions about the teams’ March Madness plausibility.
“I don’t want to say anything crazy. That’s how I feel right now. So I’m really trying to answer calmly,” head coach Jeff Capel said after the loss to Virginia.
While the team underperformed in “every aspect of the game of basketball,” according to Capel, the coach highlighted a few key components in the Panthers’ collapse.
“We just didn’t play with any passion, any toughness, any connectivity,” Capel said. “You know, we’ve given for the most part this season, pretty good effort. But obviously, what we’re doing right now is not enough.”
The Hoos got out to an early lead from which Pitt ultimately could not recover. Huge runs — like their largest of 17-0 — put the Panthers away early. Virginia held the lead for 35:34 minutes, during which Pitt was out-rebounded, out-shot and flat-out out-played.
Bottom-feeder Virginia looked wildly inflated against the Panthers, its season averages of 44.5% from the field and 37.6% from beyond the arc up 12% and 8%, respectively, on the night. Sophomore guard Dai Dai Ames, who holds a season average of 6.2 points, came into the Petersen Event Center and dropped 27.
“This is probably as bad of a performance as any team I’ve ever coached, and it was embarrassing,” Capel said.
Back in December, the team was ranked No. 5 in NET and No. 18 in the AP after fighting through a juggernaut of a non-conference schedule. But the current state of the season has seen a major derailing from what it once was.
Is this squad still a tournament team? Bracketologists currently have the team placed as a “last-four in” projection, and advanced statistical projections still give the team a 48.7% chance of grabbing a bid in the spring.
This number though is about 30% less than the odds stood just a week ago, and 26% less than they were before the UVA game, putting Pitt at the forefront of the current “Top Losers” on teamrankings.com.
Numbers aside, the eye test is certainly not doing Pitt any favors. While the Panthers look like a strong group in some games, others see the complete opposite — a type of inconsistency that simply won’t have them stacked up amongst the nation’s best come Selection Sunday.
Winning out would cause Pitt’s chances of making it to the tournament to skyrocket. Twenty-two total wins, which would equate to an 8-1 record in their final stretch, puts the Panthers’ projection at 78.2%. Twenty-one wins put the team at 51.3%. Losing a majority of their last chances, though, could see this number significantly plummet, and with just 20 wins on the season, their chance of making the tournament would fall to 20.3%.
With nine games left to prove themselves to the rest of the country, the Panthers need to keep fighting, use this loss as a motivational stepping stool and pile on as many wins as possible.
“We need to learn from this, and this has to be that game that changes the season,” junior forward Jorge Diaz Graham said. “I believe there’s still time, I believe we are a good team. We just need to keep fighting together and just be that team.”
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