Georgia Tech ended Pitt's three-game win streak, beating the Panthers 68-62 at the Petersen Events Center Saturday night. The loss prevents Pitt from recording its first four-game win streak against ACC opponents since the 2013-2014 season, and drops Pitt to 11-17, 6-10 in the ACC.
The loss was a badly missed opportunity against the Yellow Jackets, last place team in the conference at 11-15, 3-11 in the ACC, following Pitt's win over North Carolina, one of the conference's top teams. Jeff Capel spent the two days between Wednesday's win and Saturday's loss emphasizing to the team the importance of putting the last loss behind them to focus on Georgia Tech, but it didn't take enough hold.
Mouhammadou Gueye seemed to understand that urgency, as he finished with a career-high of 27 points and 12 rebound for his third double-double of the season.
"Our coaches preach to us," Gueye said. "Ever since we got off that flight from North Carolina, they told us to put that behind us. They told us to forget the fact that we won three in a row and things like that. I feel like the energy we came up with the last game was significantly different, and it showed."
Gueye, a super senior, celebrated his senior night 20 minutes before the opening tip. Even though this is his first season with the Panthers after transferring from Stony Brook, he could tell there wasn't the same drive for Pitt in practices and warmups.
"Maybe we walked into this game a little bit lackadaisical," Gueye said. "I could see it in our warmups. The energy from the past few games wasn't there, so that first half wasn't really surprising. It's frustrating because throughout the whole season, our biggest thing was trying to have consistency. We started put things together and won three games in a row. This should have been a fourth, but we took a whole half to wake up."
Capel could see it too, and was worried about it. Getting back after a late game against North Carolina Wednesday night going into Thursday, he gave the Panthers a walkthrough day Thursday to allow them to rest after a tough, physical game that saw his starters play for an average of 34.8 minutes. Both Ithiel Horton and Jamarius Burton played the entire game, and that impacted Pitt's practice plan for Georgia Tech.
"We didn't get back until late after Wednesday and we had guys with heavy minutes, so Thursday was more of a mental day," Capel said. "We walked through a couple of things we thought could be successful against the zone and the different things defensively with how we want to defend them. I didn't feel the same energy we had in preparation for North Carolina. I was really concerned coming into this game, and I had a right to be, unfortunately."
John Hugley IV and Horton joined Gueye as Pitt's only players to score in the double-digits. Hugley's 18 points and 11 rebounds got him his ninth double-double of the season while Horton scored 10 off shooting 3 of 9 on three-pointers and 1 of 2 on free throws. The Panthers' offensive struggles didn't come from shooting, as they hit 41 percent on the night, but more so from the 16 turnovers given to Georgia Tech.
The Yellow Jackets took advantage of those for a 16-11 turnover advantage and outscored Pitt 19-6 in points off turnovers. But plenty of those turnovers came from the Panthers' hesitation and uncertainty on how to break Georgia Tech's zone defense.
"We allowed the switching zone to make us hesitant," Capel said. "When they saw that, they preyed on it. That led to us having 16 turnovers and that led to them getting a lot of easy baskets."
Georgia Tech may be the lowest ACC team in the standings, but it's averaged 8.28 steals a game, the third-highest rate in the conference. The Yellow Jackets earned four steals Saturday against Pitt, with forward Jordan Usher getting four of them. The Yellow Jackets' zone defense slowed Burton and Femi Odukale from ever finding a rhythm on offense as Burton finished with four points, seven assists and three turnovers and Odukale finished with three points, three assists and four turnovers.
Between Pitt's two primary ballhandlers, the Panthers got as many points as they did turnovers. Meanwhile Georgia Tech's two starting guards had good showings as Michael Devoe led his team with 22 points and Kyle Sturdivant scored seven and tied Usher's team-high of five assists.
"None of our guards had good reps," Capel said. "The zone kept us off-balanced and we had difficulty finding areas. We got down to short clock several times throughout the game. When we moved it, shared the ball and ball-faked and did the things we talked about, we got good looks. But we didn't do enough of that tonight."
Defensively, Pitt had an even worse night allowing Georgia Tech to outscore them in the paint 38-28 and 17-4 on fast breaks. The Yellow Jackets consistently found holes in Pitt's defense that was late on switches and help defense for most of the game. Part of that is attributed to Pitt's lack of urgency coming into the game, and the "lackadaisical" effort in the preceding practices.
"I told our guys during a timeout, it doesn't matter what defense we're in, we have to make it work," Capel said. "We didn't make any of those things work tonight. (Georgia Tech) was good with the Princeton offense and the cutting. It requires us to communicate and command, and we didn't do that."
"That's communication," Gueye said. "We realized it ourselves that we didn't have any letdowns in the last three games because we were talking on defense. We talked through switches, knew when screens were coming and had more alertness to us. If we had that we wouldn't have all those mistakes."
For Capel, that's one of the most disappointing parts of the loss. His players seemed to understand in the majority of their recent games what it took to play the brand of basketball they need to win with the skillset of the roster.
"We didn't contest the elbow," Capel said. "We talked about running their bigs off the elbow and that allowed them to get layups off of cuts as we didn't have active help. We didn't have it tonight and the communication wasn't great. When we missed shots they were able to leak out and get quick baskets there. That's been uncharacteristic. We did that against our last two games against two of the better teams in transition, but we didn't do that tonight."
The combination of hesitance against Georgia Tech's zone defense and Pitt's own defensive shortcomings led to the Yellow Jackets taking a commanding 18-point lead with 5:43 left in the second half.
"We knew Pitt didn't want to guard us for the full possession," Devoe said. "For us it was all about the backdoor passes and playing through our offense to find guys. Coach tells us that the open man is the go-to man. We emphasized to push that way this game."
The Panthers did make a 14-0 run that cut Georgia Tech's lead to 63-59 with 2:09 to go. The run was pushed from Burton driving to the basket to either draw shooting fouls or open up opportunities for Hugley, who scored seven points in less than a minute, largely thanks to layup he made while being fouled. But that run was cut by Devoe hitting a three-pointer with 2:03 left, and that would be the final made field goal of the game as Pitt missed its last three shots.
But the loss wasn't about the Panthers' failures to close or score in the final minutes as much as it was about the team not coming into the game with the urgency and energy to play its demanding brand of basketball that had them on their three-game win streak.
"I'm kind of superstitious," Gueye said. "Coach Capel is kind of like that too. He was really focusing us on the fact we had to get past that last game and put it behind him. You don't want to get too high up on your horse, and then have your next game knock your right back down."
"Players have to listen and move on," Capel said. "We didn't do it. And that's not just them, because I have to do a good enough job to get us prepared for that. I have to figure out different ways to do that. I'm disappointed in me and disappointed in us. We had an unbelievable opportunity and didn't capitalize on it."
One way Capel mentioned for how Pitt has to work through any questions of fatigue or lack of urgency is to increase communication and talking on defense.
"For a lot of our guys, this was the first time playing heavy minutes," Capel said. "A guy like J.B. (Burton) didn't do that against Texas Tech. Femi didn't play heavy minutes like this last year. It's not an excuse, it's an explanation, because we have to be better in those situations. Even if you're tired, if you're talking, you're not thinking about being tired. When you do that, you're not thinking about yourself and you can trick yourself in those moments when you are fatigued. That's a way we can get out of that, mature, and be better in those situations."
Capel was in no mood for moral victories after the loss. His focus on the disappointment of Pitt finally having a chance to show it wouldn't suffer a big letdown after a big ACC win over a respected opponent like North Carolina, and whiffing hard. But for Georgia Tech's head coach, Josh Pastner, he had higher praises for Capel's efforts through Pitt's struggles this season.
"I think with what coach Capel has done, he should be in consideration for ACC Coach of the Year," Pastner said. "They obviously had some injuries and stuff with guys not playing. But how he's kept the guys together and how they've played so hard, that's not easy to do that and deserves a lot of credit. I think he should be in contention or at least in the discussion for ACC Coach of the Year."
That's nice of Pastner to say, but Capel isn't anywhere near the headspace to consider the possibility of accolades after his team botched a chance to prove they had more emotional maturity than his past teams.
"We should be better with this," Capel said. "We won three games last year in a row and crapped the bed in the fourth one. In order to take steps as a program, we have to better. That all falls on me, we have to be better at that. We weren't tonight."
Pitt has had losses like Saturday's against lesser opponents that followed big, potential momentum-building wins in each of Capel's past seasons. In 2018-2019 Pitt upset No. 11 ranked Florida State 75-62, but followed it up by losing to unranked Syracuse to start a 13-game losing streak. In 2019-2020, Pitt started the season with another upset over Florida State 63-61, but then lost at home to Nicholls State of the Southland Conference the very next game.
And in 2020-2021, Pitt upset Duke with a 79-73 win in which Justin Champagnie would declare after the game that "Pitt is back." But the Panthers would lose their next game to Wake Forest, one of the worst teams in the ACC that year, on their way to finishing 2-10 in their last 12 games after their 8-2 start.
It's become a pattern, especially in February. But for all of Pitt's struggles this is the best February Pitt has had under Capel as the Panthers are 3-4 this month. However that only highlights how bad the Panthers have been in this month in previous years going 1-5 in 2020-2021, 2-7 in 2019-2020, and 0-7 in 2018-2019. That puts Capel at 5-23 in February throughout his career coaching Pitt.
• Capel mentioned after the game that although Onyebuchi Ezeakudo, who has a year of eligibility left, participated in senior day activities with Gueye, that there's been no declarations on who's returning or not. Specifically he said Pitt hasn't "gotten into those kind of discussions" with their players yet.
But it's worthy of note that Pitt had four seniors who didn't participate in senior day while also having a year of eligibility left in Dan Oladapo, Nike Sibande, Aidan Fisch and Chayce Smith. Neither Fisch nor Smith have played this season, but both Oladapo and Sibande are transfer players who could return next year, or use the Transfer Portal to play their final college basketball season elsewhere.
