After a brutal 5-point swing in the final ten seconds cost Pitt another game at the buzzer, Jeff Capel discussed the positives and negatives from the Panthers performance at Virginia.

Here’s what the fourth-year head coach had to say.

What were you seeing on that inbounds play, the next-to-last one there where they get the five seconds called?
Capel: What was I seeing?

Yeah, I mean did you think that Will should have called timeout, did he have a play, were you not where you guys wanted to be?
Capel: You know, I’m not going to answer that question. Next question, please. You can judge. Whatever you want to judge on that, you can judge.

Fair enough, the sequence leading up to that, is that a foul you don’t want John Hugley to take up four?
Capel: We didn’t try to foul them.

Are there any positives that you can take, just from the fight of the team, obviously shorthanded, even more shorthanded tonight?
Capel: Yeah, a lot of positives. We fought. I thought we defended well, I just thought we fought. We were incredibly together. We got up off the mat from the last game and put ourselves in a position to win. Guys stepped up and made big plays, Ony’s three JB’s free throws. It was lot of good stuff. Mo hit a big three late, there were a lot of good things. We just have to be able to finish, so it’s disappointing but I’m really really proud of my guys for staying together and for fighting together.

How do you drive that point home to them, because like you said it’s such a disappointing end, even if there are positives to take away?
Capel: Winning’s hard. It requires a lot, and we’re close. We just gotta keep fighting, we gotta keep chipping away. We have to keep teaching; we have to keep learning. We were a couple of rebounds away from… I mean that’s the difference between winning and losing. We’ll continue to work and we’ll continue to teach and eventually we’ll figure it out.

What do you think was the secret to you getting some of those three-point shots to fall tonight?
Capel: Just made some shots. Some good ones, made them. Guys stepped up with confidence and made shots. I don’t think it’s a secret, we just stepped up and made shots.

That was the most we’ve seen Burton handle the ball, how do you think him and Ony handled things without Femi in there?
Capel: I thought they did a pretty good job. I thought they handled… Virginia’s not really a team that pressures a lot, we knew that coming in. I thought they tried to pick JB up a little bit and wear him down, but he had four assists and one turnover, so I thought he was very solid there as far as not turning the basketball over. I thought Ony did an incredible job for a walk-on to come on the road in your first ACC game and to start and play 28 minutes and to have the guts to step up and take a big-time three and knock it in speaks volumes of him and speaks volumes of the confidence we have in him.

What’d you think of John tonight? They obviously threw a ton at him in terms of double teams and things like that?
Capel: I thought he was terrific. I thought he was terrific. You know, his field goals, that doesn’t look good, but I thought he drew fouls, I thought he made really good passes. I thought he played a really good game, 7 for 8 from the foul line. I thought he played well.

You tightened up defensively there at the end of the first half, and the beginning of the second half. What do you guys think you did well there that made a difference?
Capel: Well, I thought we did a better job of keeping them in front of us. Early in the game they were getting penetration, they were driving us, and they were getting to the basket and finishing in the paint. I thought we did a little better job of that, of keeping them out of our paint. I thought our zone was pretty effective, so again we made a couple of adjustments, a couple of different things that we did that I thought our guys did a really good job of doing, executing.

They went on, I think it was a 9-0 run to make it 30-20, and then you didn’t give up another basket the rest of the first half. What changed there that you were able to stop their momentum and really get some back going into the break?
Capel: Well again, I thought we fought. We called timeout, we talked about some of the things that we weren’t doing well defensively, namely giving up penetration, and we got back to the principles of backing off, understanding who the shooters and the non-shooters are, the guys we need to get out to, the guys that need space and the guys we can play off and give help. I thought our guys did a good job of executing it and then we were able to score a little bit.