CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The shocking and unceremonious ending to Pitt’s season left its players and coaches swirling in a storm of emotion.
They were angry the final foul that sealed their fate was called. They were frustrated their season had slipped so far from its strong start. They were sad this is how it all had to end — by way of a controversial foul call at the end of a rock fight on the first day of the ACC tournament.
“I'm in disbelief. I'm hurt,” Jaland Lowe said. “Nobody should have to go out like this.”
Disbelief is an appropriate reaction to what transpired not just on Tuesday afternoon in Charlotte but how Pitt (17-15, 8-13 ACC) finished a once promising season. Pitt had bigger dreams than an unceremonious exit in the first round of its conference tournament, but a 12-2 start was marred by a 5-13 finish. The Panthers felt short-changed by the officiating in their final game, but their miserable finish to the year was only underscored by one controversial call, not caused by it.
Going into an extended Christmas break, the Panthers were 10-2 and undefeated through one game in ACC play. Their two losses came either on the road or at a neutral site to a pair of teams that spent the vast majority of this year ranked in the AP top 25. The heights Pitt climbed to were dizzying — as high as 5th in the NET rankings, 12th in KenPom and 18th in the AP poll.
But something shifted around Christmas. The Panthers had beaten two more ACC teams — Stanford and Cal — but they didn’t necessarily look dominant while jumping out to a 3-0 record in league play. They were falling behind by multiple possessions early, and defensive rebounding and individual defense on the perimeter were lacking. Nevertheless, Pitt was still winning and, heading into a Jan. 6 trip to Duke, getting healthier at the same time.
But from that moment on, Pitt was never the same. Pitt was winning but those issues were becoming persistent and more painfully obvious. Losing on the road at Duke, even in blowout fashion, is easily explained away. Even dropping four in a row during a stretch in which you play the ACC’s top three teams wasn’t a death sentence. But dropping games to Virginia, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech and NC State were fatal.
“We haven’t played good basketball, and that’s on me,” coach Jeff Capel said after beating Boston College in the regular-season finale. “I think that when we lost to Louisville and Clemson [at home], that really knocked us back in terms of confidence. And then we weren’t able to close some of these games.
“I think our confidence was a little rocked and we couldn’t get out of it.”
Before the start of the new year, Pitt was playing like a top 25 team in the sport. It had assembled a harder nonconference slate and won in it. By the time the ball dropped in Times Square, Pitt had the No. 19 offense and the No. 45 defense in Division I by adjusted efficiency. Per the college basketball analytics database Bart Torvik, Pitt was 21st in wins above the bubble.
In other words, the Panthers were more likely than not to follow through on their preseason goal of “leaving no doubt” and making the NCAA tournament comfortably, instead of having to sweat it out on the bubble like they have for the past two years.
But from Jan. 1 through their second loss to Notre Dame, the Panthers barely played like a top 100 team in Division I. Their offensive and defensive ratings cratered to 84th and 134th in the country during that 20-game stretch. In the final two-and-a-half months of this season, Pitt’s wins above the bubble mark was minus-5.2, ranking 177th in the nation.
There may yet be more games in this team’s future. It won’t be in the NCAA tournament, but maybe the NIT or a new tournament, the College Basketball Crown, will come calling. But there are no wins left satisfying enough to supersede the disappointment of these final 18 games. And in the immediate aftermath of their loss in the ACC tournament, Capel’s mind turned to preparing for next season.
“You have to build a roster. That's the nature of what we do now,” he said. “There is no break time really. It's free agency after each season, and so we'll take some time to try to decompress. But we'll immediately get into trying to figure out what's next for us as far as roster management.”
Ishmael Leggett, Zack Austin and Damian Dunn are all set to graduate. There will be transfers — that’s just the nature of college basketball. Capel and Pitt will have to either re-recruit the players they’ve already coached or allow them to explore other options elsewhere to make room for incoming transfers. The Panthers have just one high school recruit signed in their latest recruiting class, meaning they are likely to hit the transfer portal hard in search of scoring, rebounding, defensive and ball-handling abilities.
Walking out of Spectrum Center on Tuesday afternoon, Pitt was left with more questions than answers. Why were they unable to improve as rebounders? How did so many nonshooters torch them for gaudy scoring totals? Why did Lowe not shoot as efficiently as he did in his freshman season? Why did playing Guillermo Diaz Graham in the power forward spot not work? Why was the bench unable to contribute more down the stretch?
Where did it all go wrong?
The mounting losses became increasingly crushing for the fans, coaches and players. This was the best team Capel had assembled during his time in Pittsburgh — until it wasn’t. And when it was all finally over, the Panthers let their emotions spill out.
Lowe and Austin shed tears while answering questions at the podium following their loss to Notre Dame. They embraced each other and, after speaking for a few minutes about their love for teammates and coaches and what two years at Pitt meant to them, walked back to the locker room with their arms around one another.
Pinpointing one moment or factor that tanked this season for Pitt basketball is a useless exercise. Collapses this dramatic are a collective effort from the top down. Pitt had good players but ones who didn’t fit together nearly as well on the court as they did on paper. The stark contrasts between the team that won so much in November and December and the one that lost so much in January, February and March are what makes judging the season for Pitt basketball so frustrating.
Midway through the first half of their ACC tournament loss to Notre Dame, the Panthers trailed by multiple possessions. When the players returned to the bench, Capel told his team “We’re [expletive] better than this.” He believed it because he had seen it — these players were capable of more. Ultimately, they weren’t able to prove Capel right.
“I'm hurt, frustrated, angry, so it's hard for me to think about the past two months,” Capel said. “I try to be in our players' moment, and this was a moment, and it's really hard to see them hurting like this.
“It'll take me some time to figure that out.”
First Published: March 14, 2025, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: March 14, 2025, 8:46 p.m.
