The 3-2-1 Column: Opportunities, title games, season success and more

In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about how far Pitt has come, how far the Panthers can go and a lot more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Sometimes the obvious answer is the right answer
Pitt went to Notre Dame Wednesday night and suffered its second-worst loss of the season (losing at home to Florida State was still worse).

It was a seven-point defeat on paper but far more of a 14 or 16-point defeat in how the game played out. Notre Dame was more or less in control for most of the game, leading by as many as 20 midway through the second half, and there were a lot of reasons for that.

Pitt’s defense takes a lot of the blame. Allowing the Irish to shoot 51.9% from the floor and 46.7% from three in the first half pretty much sunk this game for the Panthers. And while the defense is a stain on Pitt’s players and coaches, I have to come back to the rather obvious explanation for the loss:

Free throws.

I’ve said this a couple dozen times since the game, but it really did come down to that.

Usually, I don’t go that route. If a team misses six free throws and loses by five, I tend to shy away from blaming the failures at the line, because there’s probably some other element that was a bigger issue.

But on Wednesday night, it wasn’t just a handful of free throws that Pitt missed; it was the sheer volume of points the Panthers left at the line.

18, by my count.

16 missed free throws plus two instances where they missed the front end of a one-and-one.

38 potential points from the free throw line, and just 20 of them went on the scoreboard for Pitt.

I’m not even saying they would have made all 38. Going 38-for-38 at the line is a pretty high bar to shoot for. But if they were even close to to what they were hitting before the game (77.1% overall, 80.9% in ACC games), they win.

I think it’s as simple as that.

Let’s say Pitt makes 10 more free throws. That would be 30-of-38, or 78.9%. That’s a really good percentage, but still two points lower than what they shot in the first 18 ACC games - and it would have been enough to win the game, enough to overcome the poor defense and the technical fouls and any of the other ways Pitt shot itself in the foot.

In some sense, the free throw shooting almost - almost - makes Wednesday night’s loss easier to stomach. Pitt was so bad from the line, so far out of character in that department (the Panthers were a full 25 percentage points below their season average in ACC games) that it kind of opens a rather smooth path to dismissing the loss entirely.

Yes, they played pretty bad on defense in the first half. Yes, they seemed to lose their composure. Yes, they didn’t do a good job adjusting to the way Notre Dame was generating matchups.

And yet, if they were just close to their season average from the line, they still win. They didn’t need a Herculean effort; just an average performance, and it would have been enough.

We don’t have to pretend like Pitt played good defense (although the Panthers were better in the second half than they were in the first). But I think we can call it what it is, and when you leave 18 points at the line, well, that’s what it is.

It was always going to come down to Miami
Wednesday night’s loss was disappointing. No two ways around that. The top team in the conference should beat the bottom team in the conference, regardless of where the game is played, regardless of the circumstances and regardless of what’s on the line.

A 14-win team should beat a two-win team.

That didn’t happen, and Pitt missed a big opportunity in the process - the opportunity to clinch a share of the ACC regular-season title.

That’s a bummer.

But here’s the thing:

Tomorrow’s game at Miami was always going to be the Big One.

“Now they have to win if they want to get the ACC title.”

They always had to win at Miami to win the title. They could have clinched a share on Wednesday, but if the Panthers were going to win the league championship outright and/or claim the No. 1 seed in the ACC Tournament, it was always going to be about what happened in Coral Gables.

That was the case regardless of what happened in South Bend.

A win over Notre Dame would have locked up a top-four seed in the ACC Tournament, which would have meant a coveted double-bye - a valuable extra day of rest for a team that has run its starters for a lot of minutes lately.

But the double-bye isn’t entirely off the table for Pitt, even in the wake of Wednesday night’s loss. The Panthers will be the top seed if they beat Miami, and even if they lose, they can still end up in the top four if Duke loses at North Carolina or Clemson loses to Notre Dame or Virginia loses to Louisville. Any one of those outcomes would lock in a top-four seed and double-bye for Pitt, regardless of what happens in Coral Gables.

So the double-bye is still very much in play, and there are a lot of Saturday outcomes that can lead to it.

Either way, Saturday’s Pitt-Miami game was always going to be the Big One. The one that decided the conference. The one that determined the No. 1 seed and the ACC champ. So while Wednesday night’s loss was a disappointment and a missed opportunity, the biggest opportunity is still waiting in south Florida.

The most surprising meaningful game
If you’ve listened to the Morning Pitt this week (or maybe even last week), you’ve heard me talk about this, but I’m amused enough by it that I’ll bring it up here again.

After years and years of trying to get a meaningful game out of Pitt-Miami by putting the two teams together in the regular-season finale for football, the ACC is finally getting it.

In basketball.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that the ACC has been trying to make this happen in football for a long time. Basically since Pitt entered the league.

In 2013, Pitt’s inaugural season in the conference, the Panthers ended with a home game against Miami. The Hurricanes had an outside shot at winning the Coastal if they beat Pitt and got help, but the help never came so the win didn't matter.

In 2014, Pitt went to Miami for the finale. The Panthers were 5-6 and the Hurricanes were 6-5. Both teams would walk out of the stadium that day with 6-6 records; appropriately, nobody really noticed that the game even happened.

In 2015, Pat Narduzzi’s first season at Pitt closed with a home game against Miami. The Panthers went into that one at 8-3, while the Hurricanes were 7-4, but neither record mattered since North Carolina was 11-1 overall and 8-0 in the ACC.

The conference finally dropped the forced relevance of a Pitt-Miami final in 2016 (that year, a midseason blowout loss in Coral Gables served as a prelude to Pitt’s win at Clemson) but the season-ender came back in 2017.

You probably remember that one.

But while Pitt’s upset of previously-undefeated Miami stands as one of the high points of the Narduzzi era, the game itself didn’t matter much in the context of the 2017 season. The Hurricanes had already clinched the Coastal, while Pitt went into the finale at 4-7.

Nor did the 2018 finale matter. Pitt had clinched the Coastal the week prior at Wake Forest, while Miami was 6-5 entering that game.

Finally, the ACC gave up. Pitt and Miami became an October matchup in 2019, 2020 (even before the schedule was reorganized that August) and 2021, but the powers that be decided to give it a go once again in 2022.

After all, the Panthers were fresh off an ACC championship and the previous year’s Pitt-Miami game was a good one. Maybe those two teams were ready for the spotlight again. Maybe they would meet in the finale and it would mean something.

Nope.

Sure, it did mean something to Pitt to win at Miami for the second time since the Kennedy assassination and get to eight wins on the season. But in the context of the Coastal Division, it didn’t matter at all.

So, in six of the last 10 seasons, the ACC has tried to make Pitt-Miami matter as a regular-season finale in football, and it hasn’t mattered once.

Now, in the first basketball regular-season finale meeting of the Panthers and Hurricanes, it means everything.

Funny how that worked out.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Is the season a success?
Diving into the topic of the moment, and you probably already know my answer…

Look, we’re all sports fans. We all live and die with every pitch, every snap, every shot. Every quarter, every half, every inning, every game. It all means everything. Every moment lives in eternity until the next one comes along, and in that eternity of the moment, the future seems foretold.

Execute a great play on first down and you are unstoppable. Run a great defensive set on a possession and the other team will struggle to score.

Give up a touchdown drive and your defense has been exposed. Go three-and-out and you will be lucky to play for field goals.

This is what we do. We all know and understand this, and anyone who is unfamiliar with this particular tick of sports fandom needs to just take a post-game look at the in-game thread on the message boards - from any game - and you’ll see the full gamut of emotions. It’s all in there, even on the best of days (and especially on the worst).

All of this is to say that the Notre Dame game on Wednesday night did not undo the accomplishments that preceded it.

All of this is to say that the Notre Dame game on Wednesday night has left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, but it’s one of 30 games.

All of this is to say that this season has been, without question and beyond debate, an unmitigated success.

That was a true statement on Tuesday, it’s true today and it will be true on Sunday - regardless of what happens at Miami tomorrow.

I will even go so far as to say that if this Pitt team loses out, if these Panthers fall at Miami and then bail from the ACC Tournament in their first game, leaving them likely headed for the NIT, the season will have been a success. Without question.

Will it be disappointing to miss the NCAA Tournament? Absolutely, and there’s nothing wrong with having that reaction. But it won’t overshadow the success of the season.

Now, I’m not going down the road of saying, “If I told you before the season that Pitt would accomplish these things, would you have considered it a success?” I hate that logic, because it ignores the reality that expectations change over the course of 30-plus games. We have learned about this team for more than three months, and its accomplishments have raised the level of expectations - rightly so.

To fall short of those expectations would be a disappointment; no question about that. But that doesn’t lessen the significance of the accomplishments that led to the expectations being raised in the first place.

And those accomplishments have already pushed this season into “success” territory.

21 wins? 14 ACC wins? A winning record overall and in conference? The most wins in seven years? The most ACC wins ever? First place in the conference in the final week of the season? Playing for the league title in the finale?

Are you kidding? After where this program has been for the last six seasons?

That’s a giant success, no matter what happens the rest of the way.

Is this the biggest surprise season?
I think this is an interesting discussion, because the answer isn’t readily apparent.

This current hoops season, with what has been accomplished already, is a huge surprise. Pitt hasn’t won more than six ACC games in seven years and was picked to finish 14th in a 15-team league.

Now the Panthers are on the cusp of possibly winning the whole damn thing.

Talk about a surprise, and that’s just on the surface level. Start getting into the personnel and the roster makeup and the guys who have been leading this charge, and you’re talking about a team whose success is almost unbelievable.

But is this the most surprising Pitt sports season in recent memory?

I have to think pretty hard about the competition.

I guess we could start with the 2021 football season. Pitt was picked to finish fourth in the Coastal; six other ACC teams had more points in the preseason poll than the Panthers, but Kenny Pickett and company did the unthinkable and won the conference.

That was a pretty big surprise.

2018 was a big one, too. Pitt was picked to finish fifth in the Coastal that year, and the Panthers ended up winning the division to get to Charlotte, beating three of the four teams that were picked ahead of them along the way.

I don’t know if there are any obvious basketball options. The two years that Pitt received a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament weren’t surprises; the Panthers were top-five nationally in 2008-09 and they were picked to win the Big East in 2010-11.

I wonder if you could make a case for one of those early Ben Howland years. Pitt was 13-15 and 5-11 in the Big East in his first season, but in his second year, the Panthers won 19 games and took Boston College to overtime in the Big East Tournament championship game.

The next year, Pitt took it a step further, winning 29 games, finishing in first place in the Big East’s West Division and making the NCAA Tournament for the first time in nine years.

Those two seasons have to count as surprises, to varying degrees. That first appearance in the BET championship game was a big one, for sure. But was it as big of a surprise as what this year’s team has accomplished? I don’t think so. That team improved its record from the previous season by six total wins and two conference wins, and the progression of success in Howland’s first few years feels like a slow burn, incrementally building over the course of two or three seasons.

This year’s team has made jumps of 11 wins overall and nine in the ACC. They went from being one of the worst in the conference to one of the best, and they did it with a roster that was almost entirely rebuilt.

Nobody saw this coming. Nobody. I can’t believe even the most optimistic among us would have predicted the details of this team’s success. And I really don’t think there’s another season that comes close in terms of sheer unbelievability on how much it accomplished.

ONE PREDICTION

The ACC POY will be on the court in Coral Gables on Saturday
We’ve talked about everything that’s on the line in tomorrow’s game.

The No. 1 seed in the ACC Tournament and the regular-season championship. That’s a lot, for both teams.

But I think there’s one more thing.

I think the ACC Player of the Year award will be clinched tomorrow, too, and I think it will happen at the Watsco Center. I think the eventual Player of the Year is going to be playing on that court tomorrow, and I actually think the two top candidates will be matched up, head-to-head.

Of course, I’m talking about Jamarius Burton and Isaiah Wong.

There are plenty of good candidates for the award, of course. Armando Bacot is averaging a double-double and wears the right shade of blue. Tyree Appleby is the league’s leader in points and assists per game. Even likely Newcomer of the Year Judah Mintz is outscoring Burton and Wong.

But Burton and Wong have a few things going for them.

For starters, and perhaps most importantly, they’re the two best players on the two best teams. Pitt and Miami are playing for the ACC championship tomorrow night, and Burton and Wong are the reasons why their teams are in the positions they’re in.

Yes, I realize Blake Hinson is outscoring Burton and Jordan Miller’s contributions have arguably matched or exceeded Wong’s, but Burton and Wong are the MVP’s of their teams. I don’t think either team is here right now if not for those two games.

Wong is averaging 16.2 points, 4.3 rebounds and 3.4 assists, while Burton is averaging 15.6 points, 5.0 rebounds and 4.4 assists per game. Wong’s stat line is near the tops of the ACC in all-around production, while Burton has arguably the most complete line of anyone in the conference, since no other player averages 15/5/4.

Stats aside, when their teams need big plays to be made, Wong and Burton are the players they call on.

That was the case in Pitt’s first meeting with Miami, as Burton and Wong went head-to-head in the last few minutes to decide the game. The Panthers overcame an eight-point deficit in the final 145 seconds, and Burton had a lot to do with it, ending four consecutive Miami possessions with two defensive rebounds and two steals.

The final steal came on the Hurricanes’ last gasp with 25 seconds left to play. Wong tried to drive into the lane against Burton, but Burton simply took the ball away from him.

Burton won the head-to-head matchup in that one, nearly recording a triple-double with 19 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists in addition to three steals, while Wong had 14 points, six rebounds, two assists and four turnovers.

They’ll meet again tomorrow, and when they do, I think the ACC Player of the Year award will be at stake. I don’t think it would be at all out of line if voters base their entire decision on who wins that one-on-one matchup.