Jeff Capel was happy Saturday night, and for good reason. After playing a rotten two months of basketball and losing 12 of their last 16 games, his Panthers capped the regular season with a blowout win over Boston College at Petersen Events Center on senior night.
“First of all, I’m really happy for our seniors. … Really happy for them to have the opportunity to go out on a high note at home,” Capel said. “Really happy for our guys that we were able to win and have a performance like this.”
Boston College (12-19, 4-16 ACC) has struggled mightily, and the ACC’s 17th-place team looked the part on Saturday night in Pittsburgh. But even adjusting for the quality of its opponent, Pitt (17-14, 8-12) did what it’s supposed to against a bad team: dominate.
The Panthers executed on offense, moving the ball to generate clean looks at the rim from everywhere on the court. Furious efforts defensively created a 29-point cushion going into halftime that the Panthers used to cruise to a 93-67 victory.
The only question left after such a thorough beatdown is whether the Panthers can pack the same energy in their bags before a trip to the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C., for the ACC tournament.
“Hopefully seeing the basketball go through the basket gives us some confidence,” Capel said. “We’re going to be 0-0 just like everyone else. We’re going to be playing in a venue no one’s played in. We’re excited to still have an opportunity to play.”
Pitt checked plenty of boxes in the victory over the Eagles, but the offensive numbers stood out. In the first half, Pitt assisted on 10 of 14 field goals and hit six 3-pointers. The ball swung all over the court as four Panthers scored 14 points or more and the team averaged 1.431 points per possession.
The leader of Pitt’s unselfish and efficient offense was point guard Jaland Lowe. He entered Saturday’s game having taken 28.3% of Pitt’s field-goal attempts for the season, but Lowe didn’t attempt a shot until the game was nearly nine minutes old.
By the time his first shot — a short-range jumper as the shot clock was winding down — caromed off the rim, he already had a pair of assists, a handful of connecting passes that led indirectly to buckets, and a rebound.
Lowe’s stat line read five assists, two rebounds, one block and zero turnovers before he scored his first points on a pair of free throws with 3:59 left in the first half. The buckets came later, and Lowe finished with 15 points on 50% shooting from the field to pair with 10 assists and just one turnover.
“It’s the same way I approach every game — taking what the defense gives me,” he said. “The game plan was for them to be in the gaps heavy, so I was just making the right play to get my teammates open. That’s what I do. I’m a point guard.”
Say what you will about the quality of opponent, but the way Pitt got to this win should serve as a blueprint moving forward. Defensively, the Panthers cut off the Eagles’ best scoring option, Donald Hand Jr., who scored 12 points on 13 shots. They scored 20 points off 12 Boston College turnovers. They won total rebounding by eight and second-chance points by seven.
Some of those statistical advantages won’t be as easily replicated when the competition levels up this week in the ACC tournament. But especially on offense, the way Pitt played and the outcomes it created are repeatable. Ball movement and energy are easily controlled, and Pitt would be well-served to keep that switch flipped on.
Glass half full
The Panthers sent their seniors out in style on Saturday night, but more importantly built momentum going into the ACC tournament. They face long, but not impossible odds to make the NCAA tournament. It would take a miraculous run to the title game, if not an outright win, but that’s the beauty of conference tournaments and the automatic bids that come with winning them.
A loss to Boston College would have felt completely deflating, but a win, especially one by a margin that large, allows for some suspended belief. At one point this season, Pitt played like it was capable of competing with some of the best not only in the ACC, but nationally. The Panthers have looked like a shell of that team for the past two months, but perhaps that better version is waiting to be revived.
Glass half empty
The Panthers built a massive lead early against Boston College but coasted on it into the second half. The Eagles never made meaningful inroads on their halftime lead because Pitt kept scoring at such high rates, but the Panthers’ defense allowing 57.1% shooting in the second half wasn’t impressive. The offense was consistently good for Pitt all night long because of consistent, disciplined decision-making — but the same wasn’t true on the other end of the court.
State of the ACC
The Panthers’ spot as the No. 13 seed in the ACC tournament had been locked up by halftime of their win over the Eagles. Florida State’s home win against SMU and Notre Dame’s four-overtime victory over Cal did much of the heavy lifting before they finished off Boston College and sealed it. Pitt finished 13th in the league standings, six spots below where the voting media picked them to finish before the season started.
Meanwhile, Duke completed a season sweep of North Carolina to lock up the league’s top seed, followed by Louisville and Clemson and their 18-2 conference records. Wake Forest secured the final double-bye by finishing in fourth place.
Pitt sank to the bottom of a five-team logjam in the middle of standings. Virginia, Virginia Tech, Florida State and Notre Dame, with their 8-12 ACC records along with Pitt, rose above the Panthers because of a second round of tiebreaker: record in round robin play against tied teams.
Bracketology
The only way Pitt gets into the NCAA tournament is by winning ACC tournament, but it got a fairly favorable draw given how the seeding shook out.
If the Panthers get past Notre Dame in the opening game of the tournament at 2 p.m. Tuesday, they’ll face North Carolina. They split the season series with the Tar Heels, winning by eight at home and losing by one on the road. Then, in a hypothetical semifinal matchup, Wake Forest, who beat the Panthers at home but by just two points, awaits.
What got lost in their miserable two-month skid was Panthers’ competitiveness against some of the ACC’s best teams. In eight games against the league’s top six teams, four were decided by single digits. As this one-game season begins, the Panthers should feel confident in their ability to hang with quality teams.
“I don’t think I’ve got to tell anybody to get more locked in than this. This is the end of the season. This is all we’ve got now,” Lowe said. “We didn’t have the season we wanted to have, so we ended tonight on the right note knowing how we need to play going into this tournament.
“I don’t need to tell anyone to lock in. They know what it is.”
First Published: March 9, 2025, 2:17 p.m.
Updated: March 10, 2025, 1:35 p.m.
