Jeff Capel wasn't pleased with Pitt's performance in Saturday night's loss to Wake Forest. Here's a full rundown of what he said.

Capel: Congratulations to Wake. I thought they were the tougher team for 40 minutes. Massoud was incredible. He played - we couldn’t find him, he made big-time shots, he was, by far, the best player on the court tonight, and he made us pay every time. We didn’t have the sense of urgency that we talked about in scouting for the couple of days that we had in preparation and even today to guard him. You can’t give up that many three’s to one individual, let alone give up 15 to a team. We’ve been pretty good in that area, but we were really, really poor this evening.

Our defense was poor throughout. The hustle plays - you know, we played against a team that was really hungry to win. I mean, really, really hungry. They’ve been close and to Steve’s credit and his guys, they’ve remained together and they’ve remained confident in believing in what Steve is trying to do.

When we came out to start the second half and we went up 12, we had a chance right there to really get some separation, but we showed a lack of maturity that we haven’t shown in awhile with some of our shot selection during that time and then our effort on the defensive end and they were able to cut it back, to regain confidence and then they took control of the game. We switched to a zone late because we couldn’t guard them in man and that gave us an opportunity where we had a chance, but unfortunately we came up short.

Coming off of a win like Tuesday’s, how much did you worry about a game like this, especially since Wake’s a team, as you mentioned, that has played better and played closer than its record may have indicated?
Capel: Yeah, I worried about it. It’s something we all, as a coaching staff, worried about and tried to have our guys mindful of, but obviously we didn’t do a good enough job of doing that, of getting that message across.

Both Au’Diese and X were talking about you weren’t happy with the Thursday practice and the guys were running a big. Did you feel that something that you saw in that practice carried over into this game or what might have led to that?
Capel: Everything about our preparation for this game led to this.

Karim had four fouls tonight and he’s gotten into foul trouble a few times in the past few games. How does he stay out of foul trouble and how do you make sure he stays on the floor?
Capel: I mean, he’s gotten some tough calls.

Justin didn’t score for the first 13 minutes of the second half. Were they doing anything special on him?
Capel: Not really.

What do you attribute his lack of production to?
Capel: He missed some shots. We didn’t execute. We turned the basketball over. I would say all of those things.

We talked about the three-point defense earlier. Aside from Wake just making shots, what were some of the biggest struggles or shortcomings you noticed from your team in that area?
Capel: Didn’t have a sense of urgency to understand scouting and to know who the hot guy was. They had different guys to shoot the basketball. We were mindful and talked to our guys - they made 13 three’s in their last game. But we just didn’t do a good job of finding Massoud. We were chasing guys off of stuff instead of going through the middle - just things that we talked about and tried to work on, we didn’t do a good job of executing.

You mentioned a lack of urgency and that is something that has come up before. Did you believe your guys were past that and had grown out of that issue?
Capel: I didn’t believe that we were, but I certainly hoped. I certainly hoped. And when we came back to practice on Thursday, I knew that we hadn’t.

Building off of that, how much does a loss like this show that your team still has some room to grow and some room to mature?
Capel: The loss didn’t - it didn’t take us losing for me to know that. I knew that when we beat Duke. I’ve known it all year. So it doesn’t take a loss to do that. This sucks, the fact that we perform like this. Not just the loss but - and again, that’s not taking anything away from Wake. They were tremendous. They were tremendous. But we weren’t deserving of winning. And even if that shot would have gone in, I would have felt that way. I would have been happier, but we weren’t deserving of winning by some of the things that we did.

What do you need to see from this team to know that they’ve reached that level of maturity?
Capel: We have to be able to handle success like mature people and be hungry for more and not be satisfied and understand what it means to show up every day. The same things I said after Duke. I talked about how we showed up - everyone wants to ask after that game, and it was two games in a row, what have you done? We’ve shown up, we’ve had an edge, we’ve had that. And for the first time in a long time, we didn’t have it.