Pitt braces for huge home tilt with Florida State

The Pitt Panthers are at the 11th hour of the 2023-24 college basketball regular season. Pitt has two more games to close out the year to help bolster its NCAA Tournament resume. The Panthers happen to get both of those contests at home and it starts tonight with a visit from the Florida State Seminoles.

Florida State is just 15-14 on the year with a 9-9 mark in ACC play. The Seminoles started out the season cold in the non conference position of the schedule, but then rebounded with a 6-2 start in the ACC. Things have since gone in the opposite direction as Florida State is just 3-7 over its last ten games.

Pitt head coach Jeff Capel noted Florida State was without some key pieces to start the year, but have been a better team in conference play, even with this recent slide. The main thing that stands out to him will be the length of Florida State, a pretty common trait for a Leonard Hamilton led team. He believes Florida State will be a different look than Pitt has seen recently.

“They’re going to pressure you, they have great length, they switch a lot of stuff,” Capel said of the challenges Florida State brings. “Offensively, they play at an incredibly fast pace. They do a great job of attacking the paint and getting fouled. So this is a style that we have not seen since earlier in the year. It’s going to be difficult to prepare for it in practice because we don’t have a bunch of 6’7” to 6’10” guys on our practice squad.”

The Seminoles have one of the more dynamic players in the conference in 6’7” junior Jamir Watkins. The VCU transfer has easily been the best player for the team this season as he averages 15.1 points per game. He has reached double figures in 15 consecutive games.

“I’ve been very impressed with him,” Capel said of Florida State’s star player. “I’ve been very impressed with how aggressive he’s been. He’s scoring the basketball. He’s getting fouled a lot. He’s shooting it from three well although it’s not a lot of volume, but he’s really shooting it well. Just how confident and aggressive he’s been. He’s been really impressive on film.”

To Capel’s point, he does shoot it 35.4% from three, but Watkins only has 28 makes on the season. Pitt will need to be mindful of Darin Green Jr., however. The Florida State sharpshooter has made 363 three-pointers in his five year career, and scored 24 points against Pitt last season.

There are plenty of storylines in this game involving Florida State, but really this whole thing comes down to how well Pitt plays. The Panthers are currently in the NCAA Tournament mix and have been sweating life on the bubble for some time now.

The pressure will be magnified this week with two crucial home games that are most definitely in must win territory. For a team with two freshmen playing prominent roles, Jeff Capel doesn’t expect this to be heightened pressure for Bub Carrington and Jaland Lowe, because this pressure has been there for some time now.

“We’re at the point of the season now where I think everyone understands that,” said Capel. “This game tomorrow is the most important game because we’re playing. It doesn’t matter who we’re playing…we’re playing. That’s the mindset that we have to have: the competitive urgency, every second we’re out there, every guy that’s out there, we have to plan in a manner that’s worthy of winning. If we do that, then hopefully we can win the game.”

The Panthers received a big-time boost on Saturday from Carrington. The 6’5” freshman scored a career-high 27 points with seven 3-pointers. This followed an 18-point game earlier in the week, and it looked as though Carrington found his early season form at the right time for this team.

“Against Boston College, they didn’t defend him out to three as much, probably looking at his percentages and he was able to make them pay,” Capel said of Carrington’s performance. “They went under on some screens and he was able to make them pay. When he’s had an opportunity when they put two on the basketball, he gets off of it pretty quickly.”

The Panthers will need all of their parts working in unison on Tuesday night. The game is of the utmost importance for the team’s postseason chances, but Florida State has given Pitt some problems at times. Pitt lost to Florida State last season in a key home game, and it turned out to be one of the bigger blemishes on the team’s resume later in the year. This game comes much later date than that January 21, 2023 71-64 defeat a year ago.

The Panthers have no room for error at all at this point and there would not be much time to come back from a loss to Florida State this season. The stakes could not be any higher, and Tuesday is one of the biggest games the Petersen Events Center has hosted in a while.