Jeff Capel rips Pitt basketball after embarrassing Virginia loss
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Monday night was a tough one for the Pitt basketball team as they fell at home against Virginia. This is one that the Panthers needed to have as they look to get into the NCAA Tournament picture. A home loss to a team with a losing record certainly isn’t going to help their case. It wasn’t close, either, as the Cavaliers won this one 73-57, and Pitt head coach Jeff Capel was not happy after the game.
Pitt came into this game favored by 13 points, and they lost by 16. According to Jeff Capel, it was one of the worst performances that he has ever seen from one of his teams.
“Really disappointed in our performance,” Capel said after the game, according to an article from Pittsburgh Sports Now. “This is probably as bad of a performance of any team I've ever coached. It was embarrassing. I'm sorry to the crowd, the students, the fans. It's my responsibility. I have to do a better job of making sure we're ready to go. Thought we were, obviously we weren't. We were bad in every aspect of the game of basketball: turnovers, rebounding, defense, offense, everything.”
Sometimes, there are games where you run into a team that is flat-out better, and you lose even if you do everything that you control. That wasn’t the case for Pitt on Monday as Capel doesn’t think the team did much of anything right.
“We didn't play with any passion, any toughness, any connectivity,” he added. “I thought we got embarrassed and so we maybe tried to be cool — seems to be what young people do today. It was everyone. Wasn't just one guy. It was the starters. We had a group that came in that gave us a little bit of a spurt, but you have to be able to sustain it.”
Pitt had a tough time trying to stop Virginia’s Dai Dai Ames in particular. Ames led all scorers with 27 points.
“Hats off to Ames, but the guy's averaging 6.2 points destroy us,” Capel said. “He saw it earlier in the game that he could drive. He knocked us off balance, we didn't stand up to him and it got him going.”
All in all, Virginia played with the edge that is needed to win a college basketball game, and Pitt did not.
“They played with great energy, great physicality and they man-handled us at every position, just about every possession,” Capel said.
Capel thinks that the team has shown good effort for the most part this year, but after Monday night’s performance, something needs to change.
“We've given, for the most part this season, pretty good effort,” he said. “What we're doing right now is not enough. We have to change some of the things we're doing in practice maybe. Maybe look at a little different lineup — I'm open for anything right now. When we get back on Wednesday, we'll have a better idea.”
The Pitt basketball team is now 14-8 overall and 5-6 in ACC play. The Panthers will look to bounce back on Saturday on the road against North Carolina.
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