For this young Pitt team, every game serves as a learning opportunity, a chance to grow and espouse knowledge in building up to the team and program Jeff Capel seeks.
Some games render more lessons than others. Some games remind Capel just how far his team is away from the one he hopes for.
Roughly a month ago, Pitt lost 82-69 to Clemson in a performance that Capel said was one of the Panthers' most disappointing of the season. Pitt fell behind early in that game, having trailed 15-5 five minutes in, a deficit that ballooned to 51-23 at halftime.
As Pitt prepares for a rematch against the Tigers on Wednesday, the lesson gleaned from that previous game is obvious to Capel and his team.
“How to make sure that we punch first, swing first, and know how to take a punch as well,” said senior guard/forward Jared Wilson-Frame. “They got out on us early, and at no point did anybody come together and lock in and say, ‘let’s start over, let’s refocus.’”
In the six games since that loss, Pitt’s tendency to get into ruts, especially at the beginning of games, has become ever-present. The Panthers have trailed by an average of five points at halftime in its last six games, with the damage often starting in the first five to ten minutes of the game.
Most recently, Pitt extended its losing streak to ten games with a 73-65 loss at Georgia Tech, having trailed 18-7 ten minutes in and 34-27 at halftime. In the midst of the first half, the Panthers went scoreless in a stretch lasting 6 minutes and 11 seconds.
The slow starts, Capel reasons, aren't a reflection of a team not ready to play, or a lack of preparation. Rather, it’s a cold reminder of his team’s deficiencies, a squad that lacks experience and shotmakers, among other things. The loss to Clemson in January was perhaps the strongest example of those issues
“If we go specifically that game, we got some good looks early, but we missed, and they made everything. That was the slow start for us. It was 8-2, then it was 8-5, and then we got good looks after that, we just didn’t make them, and then they were making everything,” Capel said this week.
“And then for a young team, if you’re not making shots, that can at times influence your defense. And it negatively impacted our defense in that game.”
In Pitt’s struggle to absorb punches, the punch Clemson threw was a bit unexpected. Clemson had struggled to shoot the ball up until to that game, leading Capel to play zone, daring the Tigers to shoot jumpers. Clemson proceeded to make 14 three-pointers in that game.
Some of the shots the Tigers hit, Wilson-Frame said, were of the variety that Pitt hoped they would take. Others were a product of a defense that careened under adverse circumstances. Capel hopes to build a culture at Pitt where his team can weather such lapses and unexpected moments, when good shots aren’t going down and tough shots are sinking on the other end.
Capel doesn’t have to look hard for examples of that kind of culture in the ACC. He saw it at as an assistant at Duke. He saw it last week when he was watching the Virginia-Virginia Tech game, when Cavaliers forward Mamadi Diakite missed a breakaway dunk, and two of Virginia’s junior guards, Ty Jerome and Kyle Guy, immediately grabbed him and talked to him, helping the big man regain composure
That type of accountability and leadership is what Capel wants, but he also knows it takes time. As Capel notes, Virginia didn’t always have that culture, it took years to develop under Tony Bennett’s leadership.
“There’s a standard there,” Capel said. “The players hold each other accountable. That’s when you have a really good program, that’s when you have a really good team. We’re trying to built it. We have no one who can do that because we have no one who completely and truly understands that.”
The hard truth, according to Capel, is that Pitt lacks any players who have been part of a successful college team, shy of Sidy N’Dir, who played for a New Mexico State team that made the NCAA tournament last season. N’Dir, along with Wilson-Frame are the lone seniors on the team, the latter of which has tried to step up as a vocal leader. Still, in those tough moments, the scars of last year’s winless ACC season linger, as Capel believes the remaining remembers of that team have thought ‘I hope it’s not like last year’ throughout the losing streak.
Such thoughts, Capel believes, already signal defeat. To push through, Pitt will have to eliminate such doubts, and try to stay calm throughout those lapses, game by game and minute by minute.
“We have to fight against that, and we have to try to teach that,” Capel said. “We have to be tougher.”
