Irish shoot lights out to beat Pitt
bench and reciprocated teammates who halfheartedly held out their hands. He got to his designated seat, grabbed the towel draped over it, threw it on the floor in frustration and sat, left to do nothing else but sit and watch the Panthers, already trailing by 20 points, endure the final indignities of an 8458 drubbing against the Fighting Irish Saturday at Petersen Events Center.
As play resumed, he dug his face into his hands, vexed not only by his own play, but how the night had transpired.
He wasn’t the only one unable to bring himself to watch.
Coming off of back-to-back losses that temporarily derailed an excellent and encouraging start, Pitt turned in perhaps its worst performance of the season, something that’s only a question because of a double-digit November loss to a Saint Francis squad that has gone 4-9 since that ignominious night.
The Panthers struggled mightily in every facet of the game aside from the good fortune of having perhaps the conference’s best player on their team, flailing offensively and putting up little in the way of resistance defensively against one of the ACC’s worst teams. It was a loss Pitt coach Jeff Capel labeled harshly, describing it as “deplorable” and “embarrassing in every sense of the word” in his opening remarks after the game.
Notre Dame shot 56.1% from the field, making an astounding 54.2% of its 24 3point attempts. It’s the second time in the past three games a Pitt opponent has shot at least 46% from beyond the arc. The Irish scored 84 points on 66 possessions, marking the third time in the Panthers’ three-game losing streak that it has allowed a team to average more than one point per possession.
“They were able to get whatever they wanted — middle, baseline, transition,” Capel said. “Whatever they wanted, they were able to get.”
For all of its struggles this season, Notre Dame, under the guidance of one of the best offensive coaches in the sport in Mike Brey, has been able to score points. What was much more concerning for Pitt than its defense was its offense.
Against the Irish, who are last in the ACC and 155th among 357 Division I teams in defensive efficiency, the Panthers (8-5, 4-4 ACC) shot just 31.5% and had only 58 points on 66 possessions. That was their second-worst points-per-possession average in a game this season, outdone only by a Dec. 22 loss against Louisville in which they were without their top two scorers. Only Justin Champagnie, with 19 points and 11 rebounds, finished in double figures, earning his seventh double-double in the 11 games in which he has appeared this season.
Capel said there was no inclination that such a result may come, nothing he had seen in the days leading up to the game that caused him to worry more than usual. It wouldn’t be fair to say something was off for the Panthers in their eighth ACC game this season. Everything was.
“We didn’t play with necessary energy,” Capel said. “We didn’t play any defense all game. We certainly had no energy and weren’t connected on that end. The things we talked about, that we worked on in practice and tried to do to prepare for this game, we came out and did nothing as far as execution by us on the defensive end. We have to change it. We have a lot of work to do.”
The Irish made 16 of its first 25 shots, including five of its seven 3s, and built a 13point lead. Even once it fell off from that pace, the Panthers weren’t able to capitalize, missing 18 of their final 22 shots in the first half, a stretch in which they were outscored by a 22-9 margin to go into halftime down 12, 4129.
The second half didn’t offer a second chance, at least not one upon which Pitt was able to capitalize. The Irish (69, 3-6) scored the first seven points of the period, extending the lead to 19 and prompting Capel to call a timeout barely two minutes into the half.
His team’s circumstances and its play didn’t improve.
“We were just trying to find five guys to play hard,” Capel said. “It didn’t matter whether it was big, small or whatever. We were just trying to find five guys to execute some of the things that we talked about . ... We’ve got to figure out who our best guys are who are going to be able to do what we need to do to give ourselves the best chance to win.”