It was the worst of times, and it was also the worst of times.
Pitt basketball put out one of its worst performances with a 78-63 loss to The Citadel in the Panthers' season opener at the Petersen Events Center Tuesday night.
It's the second straight year Pitt has lost its home opener by double-digits, and in this one the Panthers weren't close after the first 2:57, when The Citadel established a nine-point lead that Pitt would never get inside of for the remainder of the game.
The Bulldogs led Pitt for 39 of the game's 40 minutes. It was quickly obvious their three-point shooting and fast-paced, quick passing offense was too sharp for Pitt. And that's The Citadel, a program from the Southern Conference who's never been a conference champion or made an NCAA Tournament appearance.
There weren't any reservations from Jeff Capel about how outmatched the Panthers were from the start.
"In the first eight minutes, they had 27 points," Capel said of The Citadel. "They ran their stuff hard with moves and cuts that knocked us back. We played the last 12 minutes better in the first half, but we never recovered from their first onslaught."
An onslaught. From The Citadel.
We haven't even begun to talk about the rest of Pitt's non-conference schedule that includes West Virginia in Morgantown, W.Va., this Friday, let alone the coming ACC schedule.
"They were disciplined with how they set screens," Femi Odukale said of The Citadel. "Everyone was playing together on that team. They had a lot of energy and confidence. We fell short of that. A lot was going on this week, we just want to bounce back."
I mentioned in my preview of the game how The Citadel had one of the highest volumes of attempted three-pointers in the country and how it could hurt Pitt if the defense allowed too many open shots. It was something Capel mentioned leading into the game, but you couldn't tell if Pitt's players were sure about that scouting report with the way they defended.
The Citadel hit 13 of 36 of three-pointers for 36 percent, which was just shy of Pitt's field goal rate of 38 percent. Plenty of those three-pointers came from a mix of Pitt's defense being late coming off switches while others came from the Bulldogs' nine offensive rebounds that 16 second chance points on the night.
"I don't think we had lack of effort," Capel said. "They were smarter than us and they executed. Their first basket came on an offensive rebound. We have to go after it, we can't sit and wait. That first three-pointer came on a rotation where we rotated to the non-shooter and left the best shooter open. That's what I mean about being smarter. It's not from not playing hard, but being overanxious. Some of that is rooted in inexperience, but we have to be better and we will be better."
A good deal of that was Pitt's players having no idea how to play off each other or even talk to each other on the court. It was a giant mess of confusion that made The Citadel looked like a mid-major titan.
"It was more about communication," Odukale said. "We didn't demand the switches like we do in practice. We were overthinking and we needed to be more vocal. This is a new core group and everyone is getting to know each other at different positions because we're changing more around. We're doing stuff that we're not used to, but we'll come together, talk about it, and get better."
I'll be fair to Pitt in that this was already a team expected to finish among the bottom of the ACC and it was down three of its best players, two of which were lost to the team within the past week with Nike Sibande's torn ACL and Ithiel Horton's suspension for being arrested just three days before the game.
That's a lot to overcome along with Jamarius Burton's injury on Oct. 8 that he's still recovering from with non-contact drills as of this week. Pitt resorted to starting freshman Nate Santos at forward, 18-year old sophomore forward William Jeffress at guard, and using walk-on Onyebuchi Ezeakudo for 23 minutes when he had never played more than 12 in a game.
That's a lot of moving around for a young team that still has no idea what their identity is supposed to be this season.
"We had some guys playing a lot of minutes in some different roles that we hadn't practiced," Capel said. "But we have to be better. We have to be better defensively and remember our scouting reports. We have to remember who the specialists are and who dribbles. We have to be a lot smarter about that aspect."
Pitt also wasn't seeking comfort in the fact that it was missing key players in its first game. When asked, John Hugley IV, who led the team with 27 points and 10 rebounds, didn't make excuses.
"It's tough losing two of our best players," Hugley said. "But it's next man up. The next two had to be up and ready. Nate is a freshman and did well for a freshman."
The bottom line is that Pitt just isn't good. And if it's going to compete against even the smallest teams from mid-major conferences, it has to get the basics down. The Panthers weren't even close to doing that, hitting only 12 of 25 layups, and 15 of 31 free throws.
"We missed a lot of stuff around the basket," Capel said. "We missed 16 free throws. Every time we seem like we're chipping away, they'd hit a three. Our guys fought, but we have to be better, smarter and we have to get back to work."
After Hugley, Odukale was the only Panther to score more than five points. He scored 20, hitting 8 of 14 from the field, but also only went 3 of 9 on free throws, something he said he work hard on during the offseason. But he wasn't the problem, it was the rest of the roster who looked lost the entire night.
Jeffress started the game and played 33 minutes, but shot 1 of 10 from the field, 0 of 5 on three-pointers and only scored four points on a night where his only field goal of the game came with 50 seconds left.
"I thought he had some good looks," Capel said of Jeffress. "He just didn't finish some plays. He had been shooting the ball really well in practice the past few days. I feel for him because he's put in a lot of work to not knock those down. But we have confidence in Will. As long as our guys take good shots, I'm good with it."
Jeffress wasn't the only culprit for Pitt's shooting problems. Santos shot 2 of 8 from the field, including 1 of 6 on three-pointers, even if it was his NCAA debut. Mohammadou Gueye shot 0 of 5 from the field, only scoring off two free throws.
"We've been inconsistent shooting free throws," Capel said. "We're not a great shooting team. Sometimes when you're not a great shooting team, that means you're not good at shooting free throws. We have to be better there. All I know how to do there is get in the gym and work. We got there 31 times, we have to convert at a much higher percentage."
Pitt's not going to be a good shooting team. Last year, even with its scorers in Justin Champagnie, Xavier Johnson and Au'Diese Toney, the Panthers shot 43.2 percent from the field, ranking 221st in the country. This year, Pitt has to find who its top scorers will be, and in the meantime, win with good defense, tough rebounding and fundamental play.
Pitt only outrebounded The Citadel 43-39, which isn't the advantage you wanted when Pitt's bigs in Hugley, who at 6-foot-9, 280 lbs. is at least an inch taller than the Bulldogs' tallest players and 55 pounds heavier than their thickest player, Hayden Brown, who led the Bulldogs with seven rebounds.
Those offensive rebounds led to several open three-pointers, where freshman Jason Roche made his NCAA debut and led the team with 27 points, with every single shot he took came from beyond the arc, where he shot 8 of 14 on the night.
"Some of their three-pointers came on offensive rebounds," Capel said. "It's one of the best times to get three-point shots because you're scrambling as a defense. Some of them came because we didn't keep guys in front. We allowed penetration and that caused rotation when we didn't bring help. In zone, we have to know where the shooters are."
Coming out of halftime, Capel addressed Pitt's poor rebounding while the Panthers were down 43-31 in their own locker room. Both he and Odukale confirmed after the game it was one of the biggest messages to the team at halftime.
Then within two minutes of the second half, Pitt allowed The Citadel's Brown to get an offensive rebound off a missed three-pointer from Roche, and make a layup while drawing a shooting foul. After his made free throw, The Citadel was up 50-35.
Even Odukale's quick turnaround of hitting a three-pointer on the ensuing possession couldn't stop Capel's frustration from coming out as he called timeout and became animated to his team. You couldn't hear what he was saying, but you could see on his face how he was driving home a point that he just professed to his team only minutes before.
"We talked at halftime about the second shots," Capel said. "We talked about how we have to rebound the basketball. We can't give them second shots. We have to wall-up on their drives, especially with Brown. We didn't do that to start and we had to match them bucket for bucket. When you're in a hole, you can't do that. You have to get stops and you have to score."
"He said enough is enough," Odukale recounted of Capel. "They had a lot of second chance points. That's how a lot of their threes and baskets came along. We practice boxing out but we didn't box out and get rebounds like we've been doing in practice."
If Capel can't get this group to do those basic things, Pitt is going to lose a lot more games like it did in its season opener. It's a young group still looking to play together, so there is plenty of room for real improvement that can put together hope for several of the sophomores on the roster.
Odukale made a point to address that when talking about the disappointment of the loss.
"We've got enough on this paper right now to still win," Odukale said. "I truthfully feel like when everyone's together and we all play like that, we can be one of the top teams in the ACC. We just want to prove everyone wrong. That's why this loss is so frustrating."
The ACC isn't in one of its elite basketball years, but even so, Pitt came into the season with an outside chance of competing in the middle of the conference, let a lone the top.
Putting too much on this loss would risk overlooking the potential for the growth in several of Pitt's young players. Even The Citadel's head coach Duggar Baucom made mention of the potential Pitt has to be better in future weeks after the game.
"I don't think ya'll saw the Pitt team that you'll see down the road," Baucom said. "They need some guys back. We knew the unfortunate situations with Nike and Horton. So we knew about their guard situation. But we knew Gueye was a stud, Hugley was a beast, and we knew Femi was a really good point guard. It might be a little more time before they find themselves because they need some time to find themselves. But the Capel brothers have been at it a long time. They'll get it figured out."
There's a lot for them to figure out, and a Big 12 opponent in West Virginia waiting for Pitt on Friday night for the Panthers' first away game. This season was already about development for the future and rebuilding after the fallout of last season, but the Panthers looked like the road to finding any foundation for that future is long, bumpy, and full of a lot of long nights on the hardwood.
