Pitt missed too many open 3s
Struggled without an inside presence
For all of its complexities and nuances, basketball is what coaches often like to refer to as a make-or-miss sport, meaning the difference between being a victor and a loser, a hero and a goat, is a handful of makeable shots that either fell or didn’t.
In a 66-57 loss Tuesday at Boston College, their eighth in a row, Pitt saw what could be dismissed as a cliché play out.
While shooting a seasonlow 29 percent from the field, the Panthers attempted a program single-game record 37 3-pointers, making only 10 of those (27 percent). That mark, while subpar, isn’t inexcusable. It’s also not a product of a team yet again unable to crack a zone defense for extended stretches, chucking up 3 after 3 in a search for an easy, but ultimately futile, answer.
To coach Jeff Capel and anyone who watched the game, Pitt got some good looks. It simply didn’t make them. In a game in which it trailed by four in the final four minutes, those misfires went a long way in telling the story of the setback.
“If it’s 37 that we took, it would be interesting to see how many were wide open,” Capel said. “I bet over half of them were wide open. I bet well over half of them were wide open.”
Though it wasn’t well over half, Capel was on the right track. Of the Panthers’ 27 missed 3s, 14 were open. Some didn’t have a defender within a few feet of the shooter. Jared WilsonFrame and Sidy N’Dir embodied some of those struggles, with the former making only four of 15 and the latter missing each of his six tries from deep. The 15 are a program record for one player in a game.
That high volume of attempts was inflated late in the game, as the Panthers
missed six 3s in the final 1:48 as they tried to climb out of a nine-point hole. The Eagles’ zone played a role, too, as Capel acknowledged their quick guards like Ky Bowman pushed Pitt out a bit and forced it into some regrettable shots, a handful of which were hoisted as the shot clock was about to expire.
It was, as he noted, “a combination of both” the opposing defense and simply not capitalizing on opportunities.
Against that zone, without an effective big man to pick it apart with an insideout game, another culprit was more obvious in helping explain the Panthers’ shortcomings.
“We don’t have an inside presence,” Capel said. “We don’t. I wish we did. We don’t. For us, getting the ball inside is going to be penetration, and people are clogging the lane up against us, so the 3-point shot is the shot that is available.”
History in the making
Those 3-point marks, both from Pitt as a team and Wilson-Frame individually, were not the only records that fell Tuesday night. The Panthers’ loss to Boston College was their 21st consecutive road loss, a drought that is now the longest in program history.
The current skid broke a nearly 50-year-old mark set between February 1968 and February 1970.
It hasn’t just been that Pitt has lost those games, it’s that it has been largely non-competitive in them. Those 21 losses have come by an average of 13.9 points, with the 18 defeats against ACC teams coming by an average of 15.1 points.
Of those 21 setbacks, only four were decided by two possessions or fewer.
ACC releases schedules
As the Panthers enter the final stretch of their 2019 ACC schedule, the Panthers now know what teams they will be facing and where for each of the next three seasons. Thursday, the ACC released its matchups for the 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons, all of which feature 20 conference games, two more than the current schedule.
Though dates and times will be set later, the Panthers’ opponents are as follows:
• 2019-20. Home-and-home: Louisville, Syracuse, Florida State, Georgia Tech, North Carolina and Miami; home only, Boston College, Clemson, Virginia and Wake Forest. Road only: Duke, N.C. State, Notre Dame and Virginia Tech.
• 2020-21. Home-and-home: Louisville, Syracuse, Clemson, Duke, N.C. State and Wake Forest. Home only, Florida State, North Carolina, Notre Dame and Virginia Tech. Road only: Boston College, Georgia Tech, Miami and Virginia.
• 2021-22. Home-and-home: Louisville, Syracuse, Boston College, Notre Dame, Virginia and Virginia Tech. Home only, Duke, Georgia Tech, Miami and N.C. State. Road only: Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina and Wake Forest.