CLEMSON, S.C. — While the final seconds ticked off the clock Thursday night in Clemson’s 72-48 rout of Pitt, the Panthers missed another close-range shot on a night when that was an all-too-common occurrence.
As the ball bounced off the rim and into a Clemson player’s hands, an elderly Tigers fan in Section 231, Row G of Littlejohn Coliseum couldn’t contain his disbelief.
“Oh my goodness,” he said in a thick South Carolina drawl, “I can’t believe he missed that.”
For those who have closely followed Pitt this season, it came as less of a surprise.
An inexperienced team that has worked to find something resembling a successful formula continues to fall short offensively, a trend that went well beyond the lopsided loss against the Tigers.
In 12 ACC games, the Panthers are shooting just 38 percent, ranking them last among all teams in the conference and putting them at least three percentage points behind every team other than Notre Dame. The 3-point shots an undersized team has to rely on haven’t been falling, either, as they are making just 31 percent of their attempts beyond the arc, the second-worst mark among ACC teams.
Game by game, it has been a slog, with Pitt shooting better than 42 percent only once since a Dec. 19 win against Delaware State (it came in the Jan. 6 loss at Virginia Tech). In that same time, it has made 35 percent of its 3s twice and never has averaged better than one point per possession, a bare minimum for any team that tries to say it has a reasonably good offense.
Those woes have been felt individually, as well. On a team with only four players averaging more than six points per game in ACC play, just one (freshman forward Shamiel Stevenson) is making more than 42 percent of his field goals. Of players who have attempted at least eight 3s in conference games, only one (freshman guard Parker Stewart) is shooting better than 38 percent from deep.
The loss against Clemson was, as Pitt coach Kevin Stallings said after the game, a product partially of the team’s top perimeter scorers — Jared Wilson-Frame, Marcus Carr and Parker Stewart, without having named them — going a combined 5 of 19 from the field (26.3 percent). But the problems, as they have for a while, go deeper.
“I didn’t think our performance was really good on either end, to be honest with you,” Stallings said Thursday. “We didn’t share the ball like we needed to, we didn’t take care of the ball like we needed to, we didn’t finish plays near the goal like we needed to at times.
“When the game starts getting tough for us, we’ve had this tendency to go solo. Our team is not made up of guys that are capable of winning games going solo. That’s a lesson that’s coming more slowly than it needs to.”
Too many chances
Pitt’s recent woes haven’t been limited to offense. Defensively, the Panthers have looked stout in fleeting moments, but, of late, they’ve been lacking in one crucial area — finishing off a possession by corralling a missed shot.
What was consistently one of the sport’s best offensive rebounding teams for the better part of 15 years has seen its opponents have a similar level of success against it. In its past six games, Pitt has allowed 83 offensive rebounds, an average of 13.8 per game, and has not had an opponent grab fewer than 10 in any of those games. Off those, Pitt has given up 88 second-chance points, a dangerous concession for an offensively impotent team that has a hard time keeping up with foes. In that same time, the Panthers have just 49 offensive rebounds and 36 second-chance points.
For the season, Pitt is giving up offensive rebounds on 33.9 percent of opponents’ possessions, the 22nd-worst figure among 351 Division I teams.
A staff addition
For the past six games, beginning with a loss Jan. 20 at Duke, there has been a new face on what was already a relatively crowded Pitt bench.
Stallings has hired Jermaine Beal as an assistant video coordinator, the university confirmed Friday. Beal played for Stallings from 2006-10, earning first-team All-Southeastern Conference honors as a senior. Beal, 30, played the next seven years professionally, most recently with Ironi Nes Ziona in Israel.
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG.
First Published: February 9, 2018, 10:57 p.m.
