In all three of its ACC league games, Pitt has put forth competitive stretches but failed to generate enough steam for a winning result.
Saturday at Petersen Events Center vs. Syracuse, the Panthers faced a deficit as big as 18, got within striking range down the stretch but lost 83-72 as the Orange shot lights-out and scored 22 points off of 12 Pitt turnovers.
Brandin Cummings exploded for 29 points off the bench, going 11 of 17 from the floor, but his individual heroics weren’t enough. With the defeat, Pitt (7-9, 0-3 ACC) remains winless to begin conference play.
“We fought, we did some good stuff but you can’t dig a hole like we did, play the way that we played the first 22 minutes and expect to beat a good team,” coach Jeff Capel said.
“Our attention to detail was not good. Our intensity on the defensive end to start the game, and really, the first 22 minutes, was not what it needed to be in order for us to be the team that we say we want to be.”
Syracuse (11-5, 2-1) shot 55.8% (29 of 52) from the floor, including 10 of 22 (45.4%) from 3-point range, compared to Pitt’s 43.8% make rate (19.2% from long range).
Donnie Freeman paced the Orange with 22 points, followed by JJ Starling with 19.
Behind Cummings, Roman Siulepa was next with 13 points and eight rebounds.
After the game, Capel lamented the inconsistent play of Pitt’s backcourt, with Damarco Minor finishing with five points, Omari Witherspoon scoring eight (along with a team-high four turnovers) and Barry Dunning Jr. also managing eight.
Minor, Witherspoon and Dunning shot a combined 8 for 24 (33%), including 3 of 14 (21.4%) from deep.
“We have not had a game where all of our guards have played well together,” Capel said. “Not one. Today, Brandin played well. No other guard played well for us. It’s not because of us not believing in them or whatever. Look, at some point — this isn’t AAU, this isn’t grade school basketball, this isn’t middle school basketball — at some point, you’ve got to produce. You’ve got to play well.”
After trailing by 11 at halftime and seeing Syracuse take a 64-46 lead with about 14 minutes to play, the Panthers showed signs of life past the midway point of the final half.
With 6:33 to go, a 3-pointer by Cummings cut Syracuse’s lead to 72-66.
But from there, Pitt scored only six more points.
Cummings missed a good look from 3-point range with just under three minutes to go that would have trimmed a 77-70 Syracuse advantage to four points. For the remainder of the contest, Syracuse ate away time off the clock with some lengthy possessions, scoring the necessary buckets to stay comfortably ahead.
“We had some good looks that we missed. They went zone and slowed us down. We didn’t attack the zone well at times. The zone wants to stand you up, and it stood us up, even though we worked on it,” Capel said. “Some of it was we just missed shots. We wanted to get the ball to Brandin because he, obviously, had it going and was in a great rhythm. No one else was for us.”
Turnovers weren’t the key issue for the Panthers when they took their shot at the Orange, but a lack of ball security significantly contributed to the day-long hole.
To start, Witherspoon and Minor committed back-to-back turnovers, allowing Syracuse to go on a 13-0 run after Pitt scored the first basket of the game.
With 13:14 left before halftime, the Orange led 19-4.
Pitt scored the final five points of the first half to trail 48-37, but turnovers early in the second helped the Orange approach a 20-point lead.
“It was turnovers, it was defensive lapses, it was a whole bunch of things that went into it,” Cummings said. “Obviously, we can’t turn the ball over. I was telling my guys out there, ‘We’ve got to stop turning it over.’ But we didn’t execute our game plan when we were supposed to.”
Cummings’ missed 3-pointer at the 3:26 mark spelled the end of Pitt’s rally.
Nearly two minutes followed with no baskets by either team before the Orange scored a pair approaching the final minute of play to put things away.
“At times, we were good. But we can’t be a team that’s good at times if we want to be the team we say we want to be,” Capel said. “That has to be there all the time.”