Pitt shows growth in bounce-back effort

MORE COVERAGE FROM PITT'S WIN OVER VIRGINIA TECH - Breakdown: Pitt dominates final 16 minutes to beat Virginia Tech | Video and transcript: Capel, Austin and Lowe after the win | Post-game: Virginia Tech HC Mike Young on the Hokies' loss to Pitt | Three-pointers: What stood out in Saturday's win? | Slideshow: Photos from the 79-64 win

If the attendance for Saturday night’s game against Virginia Tech was any indication, Pitt fans full expected the Panthers to bounce back from their 33-point loss at Wake Forest last Tuesday.

More than 12,000 fans showed up to watch Pitt at the Petersen Events Center for the first time this season, and they got what they were looking for:

A bounce-back effort and, most importantly, a win.

And the fans weren’t the only ones who expected a bounce-back.

“When we showed back up Thursday to practice, I knew that we were ready,” Pitt head coach Jeff Capel said Saturday night after the Panthers beat the Hokies 79-64. “I felt like we had learned a lesson. I didn’t say anything to them. I didn’t talk to them about Tuesday night. We didn’t watch any film. But right when we started and we walked through first, that was the first thing, I knew that they already had maybe talked by themselves or their antennas were up and they knew what we needed to do. So I’m just really, really proud of the effort today.”

Freshman guard Jaland Lowe, who scored 18 points, grabbed four rebounds and handed out six assists in the win over Virginia Tech, said that the Pitt players took an in-game lesson and applied it to the bigger picture as they looked to come back from the loss.

“Really, like a next-play type of thing,” Lowe said. “We knew it wasn’t pretty. We knew that we didn’t play our style of basketball or how we wanted to play, so we just - it’s a sign of maturity. You’ve got to move on, get back to how we play and I think we did a great job of that tonight.”

Pitt hit the ground running against Virginia Tech, knocking down three consecutive shots to jump out to a 7-0 lead in the first two minutes. The Panthers went cold after that, missing eight in a row to allow the Hokies back into the game and then playing a game of you-score/I-score for the final 13 minutes of the first half and the first four minutes of the second half, a 17-minute stretch that saw the lead change hands 10 times before Pitt finally went on a run to put the game away.

Lowe started the run with a fade-away jump shot, and in less than five minutes, the Panthers had scored 18 while the Hokies scored zero, creating a 16-point cushion that would eventually grow to 20 before settling at 15 for the final score.

“Really, just keep playing solid,” Lowe said of the team’s focus at halftime. “We thought we did a pretty good job of not letting them shoot the three-pointer well in the first half, so we knew to come out in the second half, we just had to bring it to another level, play straight-up more, less fouling, and just continue that.”

Pitt also experienced a bit of upheaval when starting guard Bub Carrington played just five minutes in the first half due to foul trouble. The freshman guard, who averages more than 30 minutes per game, came out in the second half and played a strong, efficient 15 minutes, scoring seven points on 3-of-4 shooting and grabbing three rebounds.

“A huge spark,” Lowe said of Carrington’s return. “Bub’s a great ball-handler, a great scorer, a great facilitator, so we knew coming into the second half, him playing more would take less stress off everybody else. He did that immediately right when he came in, and that’s what Bub does.”

“I thought in the second half, we got back to our regular lineups, our regular rotations,” Capel said. “I thought the ball moved really, really well. Obviously we made shots, but I was just really pleased with the defensive effort throughout the game, especially guarding the three. I thought in the second half, we did a little bit better job of defending them without fouling them, trying to make them take contested two’s.”

Now the Panthers are heading into the final four games of the regular season at 18-9 overall and 9-7 in the ACC. They’re generally considered to be on the bubble or just outside of it, but they’ll have a Quad 1 opportunity at Clemson on Tuesday night and three winnable games after that (at Boston College and home against Florida State and N.C. State) before the ACC Tournament.

It’s not an easy path, but it’s one the team has put itself on - and one it can navigate if the players can continue the growth they showed bouncing back from the Wake Forest game.

“Look, we have grown up a lot,” Capel said. “We got beat pretty bad early this year here against Duke and here against Syracuse, and then we went to Duke and won. We lost at Miami when we were down big, we made a rally, but we lost the game and then we came back and we beat Wake Forest. So this team is learning. We’re growing. We’re getting better. We learn from every situation. And I’m proud of the maturity that we showed on Thursday, how we responded in practice Thursday and Friday - I thought that led to us playing well today.”