Three-pointers: What stood out in Pitt's win over Syracuse?
Volume shooting, senior success and a loud Pete - here's a look at what stood out in Pitt's home finale win over Syracuse on Saturday.
Turn up the volume
If, at first, you don’t succeed…
It’s not that Pitt wasn’t succeeding in the first half of Saturday’s win over Syracuse. The Panthers were leading the Orange, after all, sitting on a four-point advantage at 37-33. But they weren’t exactly shooting well; or, put another way, they weren’t hitting a lot of shots. Pitt went 11-of-35 from the field in the first half, a paltry 31.4% that was only a little better than the Panthers’ 23.8% (5-of-21) mark from three.
The home team made up for the poor shooting percentage by hitting a perfect 10-of-10 from the free throw line, but they had to improve from the floor in the second half. And that was exactly what they did, turning in a 63.6% shooting performance in the final 20 minutes.
Jeff Capel said after the game that he thought the team was taking good shots in the first half - good shots that just weren’t falling. But the key for Pitt on Saturday, as with most of the season, is that the Panthers didn’t stop shooting.
They fired up 35 shots in the first half - the seventh time this season they have tried 35 or more field goals in a half - and nearly matched that with 33 attempts after halftime. With a belief in good shots eventually falling, Pitt just kept shooting, finishing with 68 total attempts. That was the 11th time this season that the Panthers have attempted 60 or more shots, and they have gone 10-1 in those 11 games.
This team is not shy about shooting, and that willingness to keep firing has been a big part of this season’s success.
A good night for seniors
Sometimes the storylines play out to perfection, and that was the case on Saturday when Pitt’s seniors celebrated Senior Night by contributing 59 of the Panthers’ 99 points in the win over Syracuse.
Not only did the seniors put up points, but they made big plays to help secure the win, and it’s tough to say which senior led the group.
Greg Elliott had 19 points - the most of the seniors - and put up 17 of those in the second half, when he made 5-of-6 from three.
Nelly Cummings had the first double-double of his long career, scoring 14 points and handing out 13 assists, including nine in the second half.
Jamarius Burton got a double-double of his own with 14 points and 10 rebounds.
Nike Sibande scored 10 points, eight of which came during a crucial two-minute stretch early in the second half when he sandwiched a pair of three-pointers around a blow-the-roof-off dunk from an inbounds pass.
And if any single play caused a greater eruption than that dunk, it was the final basket of the game, when former-manager-turned-walk-on-turned-scholarship-player Aidan Fisch landed his second basket of the season with 14 seconds left in the game.
With that basket, every senior on Pitt’s roster had scored in the game - 59 points in total.
Truly back
There were plenty of takeaways to draw from Pitt’s win over Syracuse, but it’s hard to talk about that game without discussing what happened a few feet away from the court.
Actually, it happened everywhere in the Petersen Events Center, from the floor to the ceiling, as 12,508 fans piled into the 20-year-old venue for a game that was reminiscent of the heyday of Pitt basketball.
That’s not an exaggeration. For the first time in what felt like a decade or more, the Pete was rocking. The students were high-energy from the start, and if the “adults” in the room didn’t always maintain the same level, they found it with every made three-pointer in the second half.
It was like the old days, the days when the Petersen Events Center crowd was among the most intimidating in college basketball, making the Petersen Events Center itself one of the most hostile environments in the country.
Those were the days when the Pitt basketball program was among the best, consistently successful and operating at the top of the game. And while it remains to be seen if Jeff Capel’s program is headed back to that kind of year-to-year winning that defined that era of Pitt hoops, there’s no question that the 2022-23 season was the best the Panthers have seen in years, and it was punctuated by the best crowd in years.