Pitt falls to Louisville, drops back-to-back games for 1st time this season

The difference between Pitt and Louisville on Saturday afternoon was only four points in the Cardinals’ 82-78 victory at Petersen Events Center.

But there was so much more that made Jeff Capel angry and frustrated after a defeat that led to his team’s first two-game losing streak of the season. It starts and ends with two basic tenets of basketball: rebounding and defense.

Pitt (12-4, 3-2 ACC) did neither remotely well enough to defeat a good team, and Louisville (12-5, 5-1) looks the part after stretching its winning streak to six games.

Louisville had a 44-31 advantage on the boards, including 17 offensive rebounds. The Cardinals scored 47 points in the second half while hitting 9 of 16 3-point attempts. Overall, Louisville scored 36 points in the paint, 22 on second-chance shots.

“Disappointed that we didn’t rebound the basketball better,” Capel said. “That was the game.”

Capel said the inability to rebound has been “the one common denominator” in Pitt’s four losses. The collective deficit in those games is minus-54.

“That’s an area where we have to change,” he said. “We collectively, as a group. I have to do a better job of enforcing it more, doing more stuff in practice and film, even more than we’re doing. Because, obviously, it hasn’t gotten through.

“We scored enough to win, but we didn’t rebound the basketball and that’s the reason we lost.”

Louisville coach Pat Kelsey said his team has been effective on the offensive glass all season, and he said it’s just a matter of being “nasty.”

“To me, the key to being a good offensive rebounding team is you’re nasty,” he said. “Be nasty. Go get the stinking ball. Somebody blocks you out. I don’t want any excuses. Go get it, anyway. Offensive rebounds is strictly toughness, strictly effort, strictly tenacity. That’s kind of the standard of our program.”

Capel wasn’t in the room to hear Kelsey’s remarks, but he probably would agree.

“We have to go after the ball. We have to find it,” he said.

At no time was Pitt’s inability to grab a rebound more crushing than with 37 seconds left and Pitt down 80-78. Louisville’s J’vonne Hadley missed a 3-point shot but immediately grabbed the rebound directly off the rim. The Cardinals’ maintaining possession was enough for Chucky Hepburn’s driving layup to become the final dagger with 8 seconds to play.

The Cardinals’ 3-point shooting was equally as responsible for the victory as their rebounding in front of a mostly hostile crowd of 9,065 at The Pete. Guard Reyne Smith led all scorers with 25 points.

Playing for Kelsey the past three seasons at the College of Charleston, Smith scored 1,212 points, including 294 3-pointers. After hitting 7 of 11 3s against Pitt, Smith is shooting 39.1% from long range (61 of 156) this season.

“I don’t know how many (points) he had, but it seemed like a million,” Kelsey said. “When he really gets going, he said that rim looks like the ocean.”

Capel acknowledged Smith’s shot-making talent, but he said, “We didn’t get to him quick enough. He’s a really good player. They run really good stuff for him. It wasn’t anything that we didn’t see, that we didn’t prepare for. We just didn’t execute getting to him, and he made us pay for it every time.”

Despite the obvious areas of deficiency, Pitt largely traded blows with the Cardinals throughout the game. No team led by more than eight points.

Pitt held an 18-10 edge with 12 minutes, 58 seconds left in the first half, but Louisville responded with a 14-0 run. That was not unlike the final eight minutes of the Duke game Tuesday when Pitt was scoreless.

Still, Pitt trimmed the Louisville advantage to 35-34 at halftime and took a 73-72 lead into the final three minutes of the game after Zack Austin’s 3-pointer. But Smith scored his team’s next eight points on two 3s and one 2, and Pitt was unable to recover.

Jaland Lowe and Ishmael Leggett played well, leading the Panthers with 24 and 16 points, respectively, after combining for only 12 on Tuesday at Duke.

Lowe was 13 for 13 from the free-throw line, making him 31 for 31 in five ACC games. Leggett recorded a personal season-high four 3-pointers.

“It was good to see them make some shots,” Capel said.

Yet the coach couldn’t get the negative aspects of the game out of his head. In the same breath, he said, “I would like to have seen us rebound a little bit more and defend a little bit more.”

He said it over and over in different ways: “That’s the main thing.”