Pitt lost another heartbreaker 68-67 in the final seconds despite a hard fought effort against Notre Dame at the Petersen Events Center Tuesday night. The loss drops Pitt to 5-8 and 0-2 in the ACC, with both conference losses coming by a single point. It was Pitt's third one-point loss of the season as Minnesota also hit a last-second shot to beat Pitt.
This time, it came at the hands of Notre Dame's three-point shooting getting hot in the final minutes. After going 5 of 17 in the first 32:30 of the game, the Fighting Irish exploded to hit all five of their final three-point shots in the last 7:30 of regulation, charging Notre Dame to take a 66-63 lead with 1:23 to go in the second half.
Pitt responded to those three-pointers with strong play on offense and defense, as John Hugley IV drew a shooting foul and hit both free throws. The Panthers followed that up by getting another defensive stop, Jeff Capel called timeout and called a play for Femi Odukale to drive to the basket. He did that, hitting the layup and drawing the foul.
But after a missed free throw, Notre Dame let their junior guard Prentiss Hubb work with the ball late. Pitt had a good defensive possession forcing Hubb to take a tough fadeaway shot with a second left on the shot clock, but Hubb made an amazing shot with 5.6 seconds left:
🎥 @PHubb_3's game winner (from plenty of angles, we'll let you pick which one you like most)#GoIrish | @accnetwork pic.twitter.com/TbPLpPEIZJ
— Notre Dame Basketball (@NDmbb) December 29, 2021
Capel would draw up a play to get Jamarius Burton one last look, and it was a good one, but the layup just missed and Notre Dame won. After hitting a game winning shot for Pitt against St. John's on Dec. 18 at Madison Square Garden, it was a tough loss after Pitt had, mostly, played the kind of game Capel has coached his players to execute this season.
"We didn't switch when we were supposed to switch," Capel said when asked about the three-pointers allowed in the final moments. "We didn't defend the ball screen the right way which enabled him to turn the corner and get to the middle, exploit us and get fouled. There were a couple times they drove in there and we left the guy in the corner, and we teach to never leave the guy in the corner, and the guy was wide open to hit three-pointers."
"They're really good players," Capel said of Notre Dame. "Wesley is terrific. I'm not saying it wasn't plays that they made, but they took advantage of us. We gave up middle penetration and baseline drives after two days of talking about how they will want to drive baseline. Then we let them drive baseline and we foul them and we knew they were a great free throw shooting team. We have to be more cognizant of and be better at executing."
Going into halftime tied 30-30, Pitt had flipped around its turnover issues after a -3.58 turnover margin per game through its previous 12 contests to have a 7-1 advantage over Notre Dame in turnovers.
Capel had coached the Panthers to defend the perimeter against Notre Dame, a team whose 282 three-point attempts were fourth-most in the ACC coming into Tuesday. It seemed his players got the message for most of the game until that final 7:30 of the game, when Notre Dame's freshman guard Blake Wesley started to get penetration and cause the Panthers' defense to collapse to the paint and give up open three-pointers.
"We just wanted to take away their three-point shots as they could," Hugley said after the game. "Coach told us to get them to drive and not help against their drivers because we know they would pass out to open guys on the perimeter."
The Panthers also held Notre Dame to shoot just 33 percent from the field in the first half. Capel's plan of defending the perimeter was working, as Notre Dame shot 4 of 12 from beyond the arc in the first half. The turnovers didn't flip around in the second half as Pitt finished with an 11-6 advantage in turnovers, but the shooting did, as Notre Dame shot 60 percent from the field in the second half, finishing with 42 percent on the game. That also included hitting 6 of 10 on second half three-pointers.
"If we executed and did it with pace I thought we could get whatever we wanted," Capel said. "If we were really wired and ready to go, John could foul all their big guys out. We made a few perimeter shots, got some good looks offensively and we played well enough offensively to win, but we can't have those breakdowns on defense against a team like this. We have to understand offensive game situations and execute what we call."
The execution part on offense came when Pitt's players started to go away from what was working and opt for taking unnecessary three-pointers in the second half. Between the 6:52 and 4:48 marks of the second half, Pitt attempted four consecutive three-pointers that all missed. During that span just over two minutes, Notre Dame went on a 6-2 run that turned a four-point Pitt lead into a tie game that halted the Panthers' momentum at a crucial point.
"Some of them were good looks," Capel said of Pitt's missed three-pointers. "Bottom line is if they back off you, you have to make a shot. If they're packing the paint you have to hit shots in those moments. I want our guys taking good shots. I've told guys this since I've been coaching, but the greatest player in the history of the game is Michael Jordan. His career shooting percentage is under 50 percent, which means he missed over half the shots he took. So as long as we're taking good shots and get them from what we want to run, I'm OK with that. But when we deviate from what's working, that's a problem."
That deviation Capel mentioned was Jeffress' taking two of the four missed three-pointers in that two-minutes span. Jeffress shot 1 of 6 on three-pointers on the night, bringing his season numbers to 8 of 33 for 24.2 percent.
Capel did a solid job getting his team to come out and play with energy against an ACC opponent and put them in a position to win. But his team still isn't developed enough in their skills as scorers or playmakers to have mental lapses like the ones that ceded the kind of three-point shooting Notre Dame likes.
After another close loss, Pitt's young players continue to deal with tight games and the disappointment of having victory snatched from them in the final seconds. It presents learning opportunities for young sophomores like Hugley, Jeffress and Odukale who make up the nucleus of the team.
"It's real tough, but it shows we can compete with anybody," Hugley said. "We just have to lock in more on defense and make sure in the last four minutes of the game we put together stops so we can come up with more wins."
Capel took that comment as if Hugley saw Tuesday's loss as a learning experience and being a seed of doubt against the notion that Pitt's players should already know they can compete with any team.
"That's an interesting comment," Capel said when asked about Hugley's quote. "I know we can. When I hear that he said that it makes me feel like maybe they're not sure. That's part of growing up that you have to have the confidence that we are good and we can win. I told our guys we can win every game we play and we can lose every game we play. But that's the line. We have to understand the things that are necessary and are required for us to win these types of games. We have to do it every possession, and that's difficult, but that's why winning is difficult at every level and especially in our league."
That's where Capel is at with his young Panthers, trying to get them to understand the nuances and intricacies of winning while also having an attitude that they have what it takes to win games those ways. How Pitt responds in the coming weeks will be telling on how those players are taking on that challenge.