Pack-line defense did just enough to hold off Pitt

For Virginia, the pack-line defense has been transformational, helping turn the Cavaliers into a national power that won the program’s first national championship last season and making the mere mention of the name ‘Tony Bennett’ into something it wasn’t previously -- a question of whether someone is referring to the world-famous crooner or the college basketball coach.

Conceptually, the scheme is simple enough to understand. The player guarding the ball-handler provides tight defense on their man, even well beyond the 3-point line, while the team’s four other defenders, the eponymous “pack,” stay within an imaginary arc, so as not to stretch themselves too thin and allow for openings. If the on-ball defender is beaten, the offensive player runs into a pack of defenders all too eager to deny dribble penetration and force them to kick it out, where lower-percentage shots await.

That defensive gameplan and the way it is executed have made Virginia the best defensive team in college basketball for much of the past decade. In the past six years, the

Cavaliers have finished the season ranked among the top seven Division I teams in defensive efficiency and have placed first or second in three of those seasons. This season, they’re fourth.

That excellence presents a Herculean challenge to any team that faces them — how, exactly, do you break it?

There often isn’t an easy answer to it, which Pitt knew going into its game against Virginia Saturday. The Panthers lost, 59-56, and finished with an underwhelming stat line. They shot just 38.6% overall and 20% from 3-point range. Their 0.88 points per possession was the third-lowest total Virginia has allowed in its past 13 games.

“I don’t think it matters what kind of offense you have,” Pitt coach Jeff Capel said. “Any kind of offense you have. I think anyone that has played against Virginia, with the exception of earlier in the year of Purdue, has struggled to score against them. That’s just the way their defense is built, whether you’re a transition team or a shooting team like Notre Dame, no matter what, they’re kind of able to strangle you.”

In a fuller context, though, Pitt fared reasonably well, especially given its multitude of recent offensive struggles and the Cavaliers’ general effectiveness on that end of the court.

The Panthers’ greatest successes came when it avoided the pack line entirely. Pitt forced 16 turnovers, off of which it got 18 points. Numbers like that can be slightly misleading, though. It’s obviously great for a team to hand its opponent an empty possession, but there’s sometimes a misnomer that those points often come in transition. Against Virginia Saturday, they didn’t.

Of the 16 possessions that followed a Cavaliers turnover, only four led to a fastbreak opportunity for Pitt. On those four possessions, before Virginia could get its defense set, the Panthers were lethal, scoring 10 points, many of which came late, when they went on a 15-5 run to very nearly win a game they were out of for much of the afternoon. Even on plays that weren’t technically turnovers, like an Xavier Johnson block on Kihei Clark with two minutes remaining, led to numbers on the other end.

“We were the aggressor,” Johnson said, noting that his team sped up it low-possession opponent and dictated the pace if the game, largely out of desperation.

In half-court sets, both off turnovers and not, Pitt wasn’t nearly as efficient, scoring 49 points on 60 possessions (0.82 points per possession). In many of those instances, the defense did its job.

It wasn’t as if the Panthers were offensively hapless, though. In some cases, they put themselves in a good position, but simply couldn’t finish the play. Of their 35 missed shots, 16 came on relatively clean, open looks.

“We just weren’t finishing through contact,” forward Au’Diese Toney said. “That’s what you’ve got to focus on the most, not worrying about the fouls so much. You’ll never know if you’re going to get the call or not, so you’ve just got to play through contact all the time.”

The Cavaliers defense — which aims to minimize dribble penetration and prevent scoring opportunities close to the rim — stood as a particularly bad matchup for a Pitt team with two quick, athletic dribble-penetrators in its backcourt and little in the way of reliable outside shooting.

Capel and his players found ways around some of those fundamental problems, even if it didn’t always work.

Johnson and Trey McGowens were, coming off screens, able to get some room to generate momentum and either drive to the basket or pull up or finding big men on the low post.

Though it didn’t qualify officially as a transition opportunity, the guards would sometimes lob the ball over the defense before it could get set following a missed shot, often to Terrell Brown and his 7foot-3 wingspan (Brown finished the game with nine points and nine rebounds). Even in cases where it didn’t work, the execution was generally there and the thought was great.

There were occasional mismatches, as well, like when the 6-foot-6 Toney found himself being marked by 6-foot-3 Casey Morsell near the basket. Justin Champagnie lobbed him a pass, easily clearing Morsell, for an open layup to cut Virginia’s lead to 12, 53-41, and begin Pitt’s run with 5:05 remaining.

Pitt did well with offensive rebounds, as well, at least early in the game, giving it valuable looks against a disheveled defense. It had five second-chance points in the first half on seven offensive rebounds, helping it go into halftime down just two, 31-29.

It wasn’t enough to get the Panthers a win, but it wasn’t a discouraging showing against a defense that often leaves opponents feeling gutted.

“I thought we did some good things offensively,” Capel said. “They’re just elite on that side of the ball.”