Jeff Capel met the media after Pitt's loss to Virginia on Saturday. Here's a full rundown of what he had to say.

Capel: First of all, congrats to Virginia. Really, really good basketball team. Tough to defend, because they’re very unique. Their shooting comes from their bigs - their five man, their four man, and so it’s a difficult matchup. It’s something that’s not common. I thought we came out ready to play, I thought we played well, except for that little stretch there in the second half from about the under-16 timeout until about the seven, eight-minute mark, and we dug too deep of a hole. We were able to fight to get back in it, to give ourselves a chance in the end, but it was just during that stretch that it got away from us. They hit three’s, their defense buckled down and forced us into some tough shots.

But again, I’m proud of my guys. We fought, we did some really good things in this game, and hopefully it’s a lot of stuff we can build off of.

What was your assessment of Clark? He seemed to have a pretty good night with eight assists and getting some things going on Virginia’s side?
Capel: He’s really good. He’s a national champion point guard and has been in big moments and is the head of the snake for their basketball team. He does a lot of stuff that equates to winning, and it may not show up as far as scoring, but I think the last thing on that kid’s mind is scoring. I think the only thing he thinks about is, how can he help his team win? He’s a really good player, he’s experienced, he’s been in big moments and he made some huge plays all afternoon for them.

How have you over the past few games noticed teams defending Justin differently?
Capel: Getting more physical, doubling him; I would say those are the two things. Being way more physical. I mean, way more physical. It’s interesting, when teams weren’t as physical, he was shooting more free throws. But being way more physical and double-teaming him.

To follow up on that, you guys finished with 42 points in the paint today; that’s pretty high against the pack-line defense. What do you think you were able to do effectively to get the ball close to the basket and get some effective dribble penetration?
Capel: We got 16 fast-break points and we got 12 second-chance points, so I think trying to put their guys in ball screens and opening up the floor a little bit, I think we made some pretty good reads and got their guys rolling. You force them to play in close-outs and we tried to attack the close-outs on the drives.

This is a tough stretch for your guys, playing some really good teams in a row. Do you think that might help your team mature a little bit as it moves into the rest of the season?
Capel: You know, we don’t need the other teams to help us mature. We’re mature. And today was a big-time effort, as far as maturity for our team. I’m hopeful that, no matter who we play, no matter who’s in front of us, we continue to do that.

What was it like when you got the news that you were playing Virginia and the response you saw from your team going into this game, knowing that you’re playing a top team in the ACC?
Capel: I didn’t expect anything less. This season has been so disjointed; I imagine the rest of the way it’s going to continue to be disjointed, so you have to be able to make adjustments on the fly. It’s not big deal to them; they just have to show up and play and listen. For the coaches, it can be a little bit more difficult because of trying to make sure you’re prepared. So we were prepared to play Florida State, we were prepared to play Wake Forest; those were the two that we had heard - Florida State first and probably Wake Forest once we found out the Florida State news. Then we found out after the game Wednesday that it was Virginia. So it rushes your preparation; you think that game is going to be February 24th, so the assistant that’s in charge of the scouting for that particular game had to start watching stuff a little bit quicker.

This could be answered in the days to come, but what do you take away from a game like this where your team is largely with them for 36 minutes but there’s that four-minute stretch where they scored 16 unanswered points?
Capel: Again, we’re getting better. I knew this would be a big-time challenge for us, playing one of the better teams in the country and a team with such great experience, two guys that were big parts of their national championship team, the last time we had an NCAA Tournament. And then doing it on their home court, we knew it would be tough. But I’m proud of how we played, I’m proud of a lot of the things that we did. If we can eliminate that four-minute stretch, then maybe it’s a little bit closer. But we put ourselves in position at the end to have a chance and we’ll continue to grow from this, we’ll continue to get better.

What was your assessment of Karim’s play? He came out pretty hot with eight points early and didn’t get any more from there but he did seem like he was feeling it a little bit earlier.
Capel: He did some good things. They maybe had some mistakes on their ball screen coverages and we were able to take advantage of that. He was able to get Huff up in the air and finish. So he did some good things early and he did some good things throughout the game.

What have you seen from Au’Diese offensively in the last few games? It seems like he’s really kind of leveled out a little bit. Efficient, but only six shots.
Capel: You know what? He’s done what we’ve asked him to do and taken what’s available in the game. I’m not a coach that’s thinking about what a kid is averaging and trying to get him to get to that average. We’re trying to win a basketball game. So we won the last one and we didn’t win today; I thought Au’Diese played really well in both games. I don’t know how many shots he took against Virginia Tech. I can look at it right now and see that he had six shots today. I think Au’Diese is a really good offensive player; he’s shown that all year. But more importantly, I think he’s a really good player and I think he played very well this afternoon.

We talked with you last game about how that looked much more like the team that you’ve known this season and the three-game losing streak was a little more of an aberration. Was the team that you saw today, even in a loss, much more like the one you had been hoping to see coming off of that three-game losing streak?
Capel: Yes.

What did you see from them that makes you feel that?
Capel: We played hard, we played together and we fought. Just like we did the last game. The three-game losing streak’s in the rearview mirror for us.