71 - 70 
Well, that’ll take some wind out of the sails.
Pitt’s basketball team had been impressing all year long but suffered a shocking loss on Monday to Niagara, losing 71-70. The loss drops Pitt to 7-2 on the season while Niagara improves to 3-4.
A lot of people will look at this game and wonder how Pitt loses this one. Facing a bad team missing a key player. Playing at home. Fresh off a great game against a Top 15 Iowa team and a win in the City Game against Duquesne. But it’s a perfect example of what can happen when you run into a hot-shooting team. Niagara shot 48% from the field, including 42% from the three-point line and had just enough to prevail.
Pitt fell behind by as much as 12 in the second half but still was able to fight back and get back in it. They had a chance at the end trailing by only one with the ball. But after making a nice move to get to the basket, freshman Xavier Johnson missed a point-blank layup and the Panthers fell just short.
If you saw the game, you know it wasn’t a circus-shot layup. The move to get to the basket was a great one but Johnson virtually found himself all alone. I expect he makes that shot 95 out of 100 times with no pressure on it. But at the end of the game with everything on the line, it’s not quite as easy for a true freshman.
Basketball, at its core, isn’t real hard to figure out. You make enough shots and you’ll give yourself a chance to win. Sometimes it’s a matter of a team just getting hot and that’s what Niagara was. The Panthers rebounded, forcing turnovers, hitting clutch shots, and playing much more alive once they realized Niagara was crumbling at the end. But it was too little too late and Niagara had shot so well up until the end.
My guess is what will kill the players is knowing they should have had that one. Aside from facing a team you should beat ten out of ten times, Niagara really put on a clinic of how not to close out a game. Turnovers, hurried shots on offense, suspect defense. It was easy to see they were feeling the pressure at the end. That’s not to downplay what those guys did during most of the second half but, aside from making a couple of free throws towards the end, they were a train wreck on offense in the final couple of minutes. They scored three points in the final 3:48 of the game and all were from the free throw line.
It wasn’t all bad for Pitt, I suppose. We sort of saw Johnson continue to cement his place as the guy on this team. He was a big reason Pitt got back in it and he had 19 points. Much will be made of the final layup that he should have made but he still played a heck of a game. Simply put, without him, Pitt isn’t even in position to win the game at all.
There’s zero reason to put this game on him despite the makeable shot at the end. Kid is a player and he’ll rebound from that. It’s unfortunate but hardly the end of the world. Audiese Toney also continues to impress and he looks like a double double threat almost every time out. 12 points and nine rebounds for him was a really solid effort. Trey McGowens, despite looking out of control on offense quite a bit added 12.
Pitt was sort of bitten by the turnover bug again and coughed up the ball 18 times. That wasn’t the sole reason they lost (after all, Niagara had 24 turnovers). But if you’re looking for difference-makers in a one-point game, my guess is that head coach Jeff Capel would suggest that turnover number has to be cut by about a third. At least.
Add it all up and you just see that this is a team that has a lot of work to do. Much of it is simply growing up and getting more experience. Some of this can’t be rushed and these guys will have to learn by simply playing more. This team has been better than expected and that’s great to see. There’s lots of promise here and, suffice to say, it’s more than almost all of us figured there would or should be. But this is still an incredibly young and experienced team, so you’re going to see games like this.
Knowing that, it gets easier to understand. But it doesn’t make it any less frustrating. Particularly against a team like Niagara that really wanted no part of claiming victory down the stretch. That game lasts another minute and Pitt probably takes it, but what’s done is done and you credit Niagara for taking control early in the second half to build up the lead they would practically live off of in the last few minutes.
Next up is the Backyard Brawl at West Virginia on Saturday.
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