After Pitt's loss to Virginia on Wednesday night, Jeff Capel talked about the biggest issue that doomed the Panthers. Here's a full rundown of what he said.
Capel: Congrats to Virginia. They’ve gotten better since we played them last time. It was a hard-fought game by both teams. Our inability to defend at the level that we did the first 16 minutes and 51 seconds is what did us in. At 3:51 - at the under-4 timeout, I think it was 3:51 - I think they were 34% from the field and I think they had 17 points. From that point on, I thought our defense wasn’t to the level that it needs to be to beat a championship program like them. And they made us play. They got into a great rhythm offensively. It didn’t matter what we did - man, zone, we tried both - it wasn’t effective. Even with that, it was still a three-point game late in the game and we had an opportunity with a strong drive; we just weren’t able to finish it to put more game pressure on them.
So congrats to them. Beekman was terrific. Our game plan against him coming in was to play off of him; he made us pay in the first half by hitting three three’s. I could tell the kid’s worked on his game; he’s a terrific player, a really talented player, and he stepped up and had an outstanding game for them.
Do you feel like you’ve seen consistency from your defense this season in ACC play?
Capel: No. We haven’t. We’ve been good in spurts. We were really good on Saturday and we weren’t good today.
What are the ways, I guess, if anything -
Capel: Talk. Effort. Just attention to detail. I wouldn’t say effort; attention to detail and talk - those two areas. In order to be good defensively, you have to talk. Talk unites us, talk connects you, it unites you, and when we do that and the attention to detail, then we’re pretty good there. But when we don’t, then we’re like we were tonight.
Does that roll over to the offensive rebounds, and how key was that?
Capel: I thought the biggest stat at halftime was, I think they had 10 offensive rebounds and we had eight turnovers. I thought that was huge. We talk all the time about valuing the basketball and we didn’t do that. And we knew coming into this game, their four’s and five’s were the ones that offensive rebound, and they had 11 more possessions than us in the first half. So, again, that’s the attention to detail that we talk about.
Femi seemed to be struggling to get any scoring early on and in the final minutes, he seemed to get something going. Did you say something, was there a challenge to him or what changed that got him going?
Capel: No, I don’t think it was anything that I said. I just thought that we found something that seemed to work for us, and he was able to get downhill and get to the basket and had some opportunities there.
Again, this wasn’t anything about our offense. It wasn’t anything about our offense when we shot 50% from the field. Obviously we would love to make some more three’s. Just, we didn’t have the type of effort we need defensively in order to beat a really good team.
First time we’ve seen Dan in a month getting on the court; what did you see out of him?
Capel: Had two good offensive rebounds and scored, but again, he, like the rest of us - we didn’t do a good job defensively. Simple as that. And they got easy stuff, stuff at the basket. We just weren’t connected. The ball screen defense wasn’t connected, the help side defense wasn’t connected, all of those things - it wasn’t.
What can you do in a situation like that?
Capel: Just have to keep working. Keep demanding it. I’m not on the court. You can sub, but no one did it, so we just have to keep working, keep demanding, keep holding them accountable and keep getting better. Hopefully we can have some consistency.
I know you have brought the defensive struggles up before, but playing a team that also gets down in the mud like Virginia, are there things you can point at and say, ‘This is what we have to be like in these moments’?
Capel: Yeah, that’s what they do. That’s who they are. That’s who they are as a program. They’re going to run their stuff offensively, they’re going to usually be efficient there. They’re going to screen, they’re going to block, they’re going to be together, they’re going to talk, they’re going to communicate, they have great leadership on the court. A guy that won a national championship was on the court for them. Another guy in Caffaro that was on a team that won a championship. So they have championship - they’ve won multiple ACC championships, including last year. So it’s a program that’s a championship program. That’s what we aspire to become, and it’s going to take a lot of work. But it takes consistency, it takes all of those things, and today was a lesson in that.
Offensively and defensively, how much did things change for you when Mo went out with his fourth foul?
Capel: It changes a lot. It changes a lot, especially against them because they’re big. And so, we can’t go smaller. It changes our spacing on the court. Offensively, it changes some of the things that we want to do because of our spacing. When they have two bigs in, whether it’s Gardner and Caffaro or Caffaro and Shedrick, we can’t have a smaller guy out there. So it changes a lot of stuff for us, offensively and defensively.
What is the thinking that a coach does in that situation where he’s got four fouls and you’re waiting for the right moment to put him in - what goes into your decision-making in those moments?
Capel: Trying to see where we are in the game. If it’s getting too far away and you feel like it’s slipping, then you put him back in a little bit earlier. If you feel like you’re keeping it within distance, you maybe can try to ride and get to a certain thing.
The other thing is how the game is being officiated; that’s a big part of it. And your opponent, like, who would he be matched up with? So all of those things go into that decision.
Near the end of the game when so many of Virginia’s bigs got into foul trouble, how did you guys try to take advantage of that down the stretch?
Capel: Down the stretch, it was a three-point game and we got a layup and missed it. They came down and they scored, it was a five-point game, we came down again, we got a layup and we missed it. We got some looks down the stretch. We have to be able to finish those through contact, through - we knew that it was going to be a very physical game. But again, it wasn’t anything offensively. We lost this game because we didn’t defend well enough to win the game.
Look, we did a good job of fouling them out and things like that. All of that’s great. But we didn’t defend well enough. A team shot 60% in a half against us. You’re not going to win many games like that, man. It does’t matter what you do offensively, unless you’re hitting a ton of three’s, which, that’s not who we are.
On the offensive end, John had one shot and one point in the final 13 minutes. What, if anything, were they doing effectively or differently on him?
Capel: They were very physical. During that time, I’d be interested in how many free throws he got. But they were being very physical. He got the ball. He turned it over sometimes. So it was all of those things. It wasn’t that we weren’t going to him or looking for him; he got fouled, he got to the free throw line. But we also had some turnovers in there as well.
He had two foul shots in that time.
Capel: Okay.
O gave you 32 minutes tonight. How different is it when he’s out there running the point, how confident are you in him when he runs than when you give out a look with Femi and JB together?
Capel: Yeah, I thought O did some okay things today. Look, this is not about one guy. This is about us. We did not defend well enough to win this basketball game today. We over-helped. We, at times, we hugged our guy at times. We didn’t defend ball screens well. We gave up easy baskets. All of those things.
O was a part of that. O also had some great penetration and drop-offs to guys where we got some easy baskets. We need all of our guys understanding what it is we’re doing, executing it at a high level and playing with incredible urgency and passion. We collectively as a group did not do that today.
Do you see a theme when you guys have gotten some ACC wins and haven’t been able to stack more wins on top of them - is there something that kind of lapses in between wins?
Capel: We just have to learn how to become consistent. That’s the main thing. We have to learn how to become a consistently good basketball team. It’s hard. But we have to understand the things that are necessary to do it.
