3-Pointers: Three takeaways from Pitt's loss to Duke in the ACC Tournament
The Pitt basketball team bowed out of the ACC Tournament on Thursday with 96-69 blowout loss to Duke in Greensboro. The Panthers found themselves down 12-0 before they even knew what hit them, and Duke cruised to an easy win from there.
Here are three things that stood out about Pitt’s loss to Duke on Thursday.
Defensive woes continue
Duke really left off the pedal in the second half on Thursday against Pitt. The main rotation of Duke players reached 86 points with about 8 minutes remaining on a Dariq Whitehead bucket, but the reserves for the Blue Devils only made four shots down the stretch, or else we would be talking about how Pitt allowed 100 points in a meaningful March basketball game with their NCAA Tournament resume not entirely locked-in just yet.
Talk about deflating.
Unfortunately for this Pitt team, it’s nothing new and also a troubling late season trend. The Panthers have really unwinded down the stretch here defensively, allowing over 80 points in four of their last five games. Duke carved up Pitt for an even 48 points in each half on Thursday. That comes on the heels of the Panthers allowing a 15-win Georgia Tech team to score 50 points in the second half yesterday. Dating back to the end of the regular season, Notre Dame hung 88 on Pitt, and even in a winning effort, the Panthers broke down and allowed Syracuse to score 82 points
It’s not good.
Duke show a sizzling 62% from the field and they had 27 assists as a team on 36 made field goals. The Blue Devils connected on 11 3-pointers for the game, but they also got anything they wanted inside with 46 points in the paint. The sustained runs at the start of each half happened because Pitt could not match them offensively for sure, but also because the Panthers were allowing far too many easy looks at the basket.
Duke did not crush Pitt on the glass, with a 30-25 advantage, but it was another game the Panthers were out-rebounded. Pitt has had issues all along at allowing offensive rebounds and second chance points, and while Duke didn’t dominate there, it was still another advantage they had to overcome on top of the hot shooting.
Pitt needs to make shots to win, but they also need the defense to buckle down in some way here going into next week. If you are constructed as a three-point shooting team, it’s easy to play from behind and come back, but even when the shots are falling, allowing a team to shoot 62% is not something any team can overcome.
Not enough threes
Pitt needed to make at least 10 pointers to have a chance in this one, but with the way it turned out, they probably needed a lot more than that. The Panthers’ defensive issues are well documented at this point and they aren’t going to become better rebounders and defenders all the sudden 34 games into the season.
What has made Pitt a good, even a tournament team, this season has been its execution on the offensive end. The Panthers can get hot with the best of them from the outside, and on Thursday it just was never in the cards.
Duke shut down all of the driving lanes with their size on Thursday, but sagged just enough on Pitt’s three-point shooters to never let them get comfortable from behind the arc. The defensive effort by Duke led to forced, contested shots in the lane, and never let Pitt get comfortable from three-point range.
Pitt came into this game with 299 made three-pointers as a team in the first 32 games of the season. They averaged 9.3 makes from deep a game, good for second in the ACC, but the Panthers shot just 5-of-18 against Duke on Thursday.
Blake Hinson came into this game as Pitt’s leading scorer, averaging just shy of 16 points per game, but he was limited to only 5 points on Thursday. He was just 1-for-4 from three, with his lone make happening with 9:41 in the second half to make it a 79-49 game. Pitt is simply not going to win very many games if Hinson is being held to five points, but at the same time, he wasn’t even getting open looks in the 19 minutes he logged against Duke either.
Greg Elliott connected on four three-pointers in yesterday’s win over Georgia Tech, which was a welcomed sight after going scoreless against Miami, but he too struggled to find cracks in Duke’s defense. Elliott finished with 2 points on a 1-for-4 shooting effort. He missed his lone three-point attempt, which came when Pitt was trailing by 34 points in the second half.
Nike Sibande (3) and Jorge Diaz Graham (1) combined for four of Pitt’s five made three-pointers, more than the one the starting lineup produced. Pitt is a team that very much lives by the three-point shot, and that's really no secret. Hinson and Elliott have gone on big scoring bursts this season, as has Nelly Cummings, and that’s what will allow them to have a chance to win in their next game. Even though it felt like the defense played more of a factor in the loss to Duke on Thursday, Pitt simply can’t win any games going forward with only five makes from deep.
The resume is set
Pitt can do nothing more than wait at this point. With the loss on Thursday, the Panthers rest their NCAA Tournament case with a 22-11 overall record. Pitt secured an ACC Tournament win on Wednesday against Georgia Tech. It was a game many said Pitt needed to have in order to feel comfortable to make the NCAA Tournament.
We’ll see if that was true or not come Sunday.
The taste of losing to Duke by 27 points in the final game before Selection Sunday will certainly create some anxiety for the Pitt team and its followers.
The loss should not overshadow the 22 wins that came before it, however. We always hear about the NCAA Tournament selection committee talking about the entire ‘body of work’, and while the final audition was a dud for Pitt, it is only one data point that goes into making this decision.
The Panthers have plenty to offer as an NCAA Tournament hopeful. They accumulated 14 ACC wins and were in contention to win the league on the final day of the regular season. The Panthers own 7 combined ‘Quad 1’ and ‘Quad 2’ wins, including victories over ranked teams like Virginia and Miami. Pitt also secured seven road victories on the year, including one over the second place Big Ten team, Northwestern.
There is a lot of meat on the bone for Pitt’s NCAA Tournament resume, but there are some lingering question marks as well. Pitt has not been liked by the computer rankings much this season, as they have pretty much heard about that ‘Quad-4’ loss to Florida State since it happened, and adding a defeat to Notre Dame late in the year did not help matters either.
There is also the case of the ACC as well. The league has not been highly regarded by the computer rankings either, and failing to make the semifinals in what will likely be a 5-6 bid league is definitely cutting it close for Pitt’s part.
Given the buzzsaw Pitt ran up against in Duke, I’m not sure what needed to occur for them to win the game, but keeping it closer and competitive may have eased some minds heading into Sunday. Pitt probably has done enough to make the NCAA Tournament, and we’ll know in a few short days.