Clemson keeps Pitt winless in ACC play
chance they’ve had at success over the past six weeks and made many question whether there’s been any sense of progress among players and coaches who often discuss such improvement as a silver lining, a way to make loss after loss seem more palatable.
From 63 offensive possessions, the Panthers (8-17, 0-12 ACC) managed just 48 points, tying their lowest average of the season. In conference games, they are averaging fewer points per possession (0.85) than Virginia, the ACC’s best defensive team, is allowing opponents to average in that same span. In effect, a team can statistically resemble the sport’s most decorated and suffocating defense merely by playing Pitt.
It marked the second time in the past six games the Panthers failed to crack even the 50-point barrier and it was the ninth time in 15 ACC games they had scored fewer than 60.
Freshman forward Terrell Brown was a bright spot from a game that offered few for his team, scoring a career-high 19 points on 9-of-15 shooting, but his 12 teammates who also saw the court combined for 27 points and missed 22 of their 31 field-goal attempts.
By the time the final buzzer sounded, Pitt had fewer made 3-point field goals as a team (five) than Clemson guard Gabe DeVoe had by himself (seven). At one point late in the game, in fact, DeVoe had more second-half points (19) than his team’s opponent (14).
“Some of it is still youth, some of it is lack of experience,” Stallings said of his team’s offensive woes. “It’s lack of a go-to guy that can create an easy basket for someone else.”
As it was Thursday and has been throughout the season, Pitt continued to run into a problem created in some part by that youth. Whenever the Panthers are desperate for a basket, when a game is swiftly swinging in the other direction, their players have a tendency to revert to isolation ball, abandoning Stallings’ motion offense and having one player take it upon himself to score with little or no help from his teammates.
While not an ideal strategy, it can be an effective one with a talented enough player or an instinctive enough scorer. The problem for Pitt is it doesn’t have either, meaning the team is often relying on one player to shoulder a load they’re incapable of carrying.
“That’s what they’ve done in their prior life,” Stallings said. “At some point, they’re going to realize that life’s over with. This is the ACC. You can’t go solo in this league and beat anybody. You better play as a group, you better play as a team.”
All those deficiencies lead to moments in which their shortcomingsare all too real.
With 11 minutes remaining and his team down 25, freshman guard Marcus Carr airballed a contested 3 with eight seconds remaining on the shot clock, apparently thrown off by the Clemson student section chanting “three, two, one” when, in reality, there were 11, 10 and nine seconds left. When Kene Chukwuka missed an open layup on a putback, Pitt’s final misfire on a night in which it went seven of 17 on layups, some muffled chuckles broke out from fans seated in the top rows of the arena.
In the second half, when a 10-point Clemson lead at halftime grew as large as 28, the only drama that seemed to remain was whether the Tigers (20-4, 9-3) would finish the night with 10 3-pointers, meaning everyone in attendance would get a free chicken sandwich (they accomplished the feat with 14:18 remaining, receiving a hearty ovation for doing so).
The drubbing was yet another in a season in which they add up at an alarming rate. For the players, even as the offense continues to languish, there’s a sense of unity that remains. At this point, 25 games into the season, it’s about all they have.
“It’s extremely difficult, but the most you can do is be together,” Brown said. “As long as you know the team’s together, that’s the main thing that’s constant.”