Louisville blasts Panthers
The loss was the Panthers’ 12th in a row to the Cardinals, the past three of which have come by a combined 115 points. Additionally, the 34-point setback marked the 10th time in the past 13 games they have lost by at least 14 points and the sixth time in that same span they’ve fallen by at least 20.
“We’re just not as good as that team we just played,” Pitt coach Kevin Stallings said. “We’re not as good as most of the teams we’ve played.”
In a loss even mild-mannered, soft-spoken freshman Parker Stewart described as “kind of embarrassing,” a team that’s perhaps as bad of a matchup as any for Pitt in a league full of them showed for much of the game why that’s the case.
Louisville’s decisive advantage in speed, length and skill presented a problem in every facet of the game. Offensively, it allowed them to shoot 63 percent from the field, 52.6 percent from 3-point range and average 1.38 points per possession, all of which were season worsts for Pitt. Defensively, it held the Panthers (8-18, 0-13 ACC) to 34.5 percent shooting, the fifth time in 13 conference games they haven’t hit more than 35 percent of their field goal attempts.
“Every game you lose, you can learn from it, but at the end of the day, everything we talk about, we really have to try to change,” Stewart said. “We can’t keep going out there playing the sameway.”
That disparity existed anecdotally as much as it did statistically.
Terrell Brown, at 6-foot-10 and 240 pounds, was unable early in the game to back down Perry, over whom he had a height advantage of eight inches and a weight advantage of 65 pounds. Anas Mahmoud, Louisville’s 7foot center, successfully fought for a rebound in the second half with only one shoe.
In a moment that seemed to embody Pitt’s woes of the past six weeks, Shamiel Stevenson inbounded a pass to Marcus Carr with 1:32 remaining in the first half, only for Carr to immediately step out of bounds and turn possession right back over to the Cardinals (18-8, 8-5).
“I don’t think that our guys are not getting better,” Stallings said. “I don’t think our guys are not playing hard. We’ve got some obvious weaknesses and those weaknesses are getting exposed a little bit. Some of those things, presently, we can’t do a whole lot about.”
The concerns that Stallings indirectly referenced — that youth has become an excuse or a crutch for a team that doesn’t seem to be improving — have grown over the past three games, contests that Pitt has lost by a combined89 points.
Toan opposing coach, one who has faced them twice this season, the Panthers are at least proficient in some of the most fundamental aspects of the game.
“The effort is there,” Louisville coach David Padgett said. “As an assistant coach, I’ve been on teams that have won six total games in a season and the main thing you worry about as the year goes on is ‘Is the team giving up?’ This team hasn’t done that at all.”
As lopsided as the final score was, Pitt trailed by just five, 22-17, after a Stevenson jumper with 8:53 remaining in the first half. The problem, however, was that would be its last made field goal of the half, a time in which Louisville scored 24 of the next 27 points to take a 46-20 lead into halftime. That advantage only swelled in the second half, getting up to 36 points with 11 minutes remaining and leaving a once-energized Pitt student section with little else to do other than chant “F-B-I” in reference to the federal corruption investigation that has ensnared Louisville and a handful of other programs.
There was some encouragement for the Panthers, as there almost always is, even in limited doses. Stevenson finished with 15 points on 5-of-8 shooting, giving him his highest point total in more than six weeks and Stewart broke out of a recent shooting slump with 12 points an a 3of-6 mark from 3.
The problem with such glimpses, though, is they’re often just that. They’re sparks of hope that, in ACC games, seldom materialize into anything more. And, because of that, Pitt remains in a position of desperation and desolation.
“We show signs of guys getting better,” Stallings said. “Shamiel had a nice day today. It would have been nice if he could have knocked down a few more free throws. We have Terrell plays well one night, Shamiel plays well one night and Marcus plays well one night. The battle for us is to get more things going on the same night.”