Pitt’s recent progress tarred over
Judging a team with four freshmen starters based on how it fares in a single game can be a fool’s errand, but how Pitt looked Saturday against North Carolina would be somewhat telling in determining how sustainable the team’s recent improvement was. A 96-65 loss exhibited some of what had provided encouragement over the previous 10 days, but more than that, it showcased much of what ailed the Panthers for the majority of the 2017-18 season.
It was one day after the holiday, but for Pitt, the Tar Heels’ 31-point thumping was Groundhog Day.
“We can’t ever relax,” Pitt guard Marcus Carr said. “We’re all realizing we’re getting better. [Saturday], with the way we started the game, it was pretty good, but we didn’t continue that fire. We just expected it to come to us because we’ve been getting better instead of really trying to go out there and go take it for ourselves. We just have to keep that fire and that same competitive spirit, and build upon that and not just think it’s going to be easy.”
Things didn’t necessarily come easy for the Panthers in their previous three games — losses to N.C. State, Syracuse and Miami — but in those matchups, they displayed the kind of progress of which they often spoke but seldom exhibited until that point.
The Tar Heels provided them with an unsettling reminder of the team they can be and often have been.
Pitt continued to languish offensively, missing 19 of its final 24 3-pointers after netting five of its first six. By continuing to misfire on shots as the game increasingly got away from it, it failed to average more than one point per possession for the 11th time in as many ACC games.
Defensively, a group that had proven to be capable with a switch to a 2-3 zone was obliterated in a way it hasn’t been for much of the season. In a span of 21:22 — from late in the first half to the final minutes of the game, when its little-used players and walk-ons were inserted — North Carolina scored 65 points on just 42 possessions (for the rest of the game, it had 31 points on 31 possessions).
Those defensive woes were rooted in a mismatch coaches knew would haunt their team before the game even started. Those fears came to fruition. Tar Heels forward Luke Maye, the kind of big man who can spread the floor that Pitt has struggled against without senior Ryan Luther, finished with 26 points on just 15 shots, including a 3-of-5 clip from 3.
His performance was so impressive that Stallings, two minutes after saying he doesn’t comment on other teams’ players to deflect a question about former Pitt and current North Carolina forward Cameron Johnson, did just that to praise Maye.
“We didn’t have a great guy to defend him,” Stallings said. “We tried to play the zone and he came out and hit a couple of shots against us and it spread the lead out. We just weren’t able to guard them. We didn’t have an answer for them defensively.”
In all, those factors added up to Pitt’s fifth loss in 24 games this season by at least 25 points, four of which have come against ACC competition. After playing close with erratic N.C. State, one of the worst Syracuse teams in four decades and Miami without arguably its best player in Bruce Brown, it’s possible the Panthers reverted to their worst habits against a more difficult opponent.
But the loss, bleak as it might appear, wasn’t without its signs of hope.
Carr continued his recent tear, scoring 22 points on 8-of-11 shooting while adding a team-high five assists. In the past three games, the freshman guard has averaged 17.3 points, 8 assists and just 2.3 turnovers per game. Though he was toyed with defensively by Maye, freshman forward Terrell Brown finished with a career-high 14 points and added three blocks, giving him 11 in the past three games and 22 in the past eight. Freshman Parker Stewart showed he can contribute even when his outside shot isn’t falling, as he pulled down a career-high 10 rebounds.
Though he only knows Pitt’s crop of seven freshmen so well, one of the players on the opposing bench, the one who was set to be their teammate this season, could see promise.
“Any time you have that many new players, it can be difficult,” Johnson said. “I expected them to come in and play hard and play with nothing to lose. I thought they did that to an extent. As you go on, and this isn’t a knock on them in any way, you learn things. I’m a different player than I was a couple of years ago, too. They’ve got a lot to learn and they’ll learn it. Going forward, they’ve got some players there that can do some things.”
Pitt has lost by at least 25 points five times this season, four of the losses coming in ACC play.