Pitt wins 6th in row vs. LSU in Greenbrier Tipoff

Matt McMahon isn’t an NBA scout, only a guy who coaches LSU and saw his team get punched in the mouth Friday afternoon by Pitt and its guard combination of Jaland Lowe and Ishmael Leggett.

Four days after recording a triple-double against VMI, Lowe did a little bit of everything again in Pitt’s 74-63 victory against LSU in the first round of the Greenbrier Tip-Off in White Sulpher Springs, W.Va.

“He showed why he’s a first-round draft pick,” McMahon said, perhaps predicting the future. “He really dominated the game.”

Lowe scored a career-high 22 points, with eight rebounds, six assists and three steals. He led the Panthers in three of the four categories, bowing only to Leggett, who had five steals to complement his 21 points and six rebounds.

Together, the two guards played all but five seconds of the game and were especially dominant in the second half when Lowe scored 19 points to help Pitt recover from its first halftime deficit (28-27) of the season.

The victory gave coach Jeff Capel his second 6-0 start in his seventh season at Pitt.

When Capel walked into the locker room at halftime, he knew what he wanted to say, but Lowe and Leggett beat him to it.

“They were already talking,” Capel said. “Jaland and Ish had control of everything in there.”

Capel reminded his players to play with more force and not get frustrated. Lowe received a technical foul for complaining to an official late in the first half, leading to the deficit at intermission.

“We got frustrated … we can’t do that,” Capel said.

That blip was forgotten almost as soon as the second half began when Pitt went on a 13-0 run, and LSU (4-1) was scoreless for the first 6 minutes, 47 seconds.

The Panthers scored in a variety of ways to seize a 40-28 lead that included one of Lowe’s four 3-pointers, dunks from Zack Austin and Cam Corhen, 2-point baskets from Leggett and Damian Dunn and Austin’s two foul shots.

But Capel was most pleased with his team’s “defensive intensity.”

“That set the tone for the last 20 minutes of the game,” he said. “Our guys took it up another level, understanding what was needed for the game. We had to do it with toughness. We had to fight.”

Said Leggett: “We had to throw the first punch, and we threw the first punch and we sustained it.”

“It’s great when you have good guards who understand how to play and make winning plays,” Capel said.

Lowe opened the season scoring 21 and 20 points in the first two games before hitting a shooting slump (9 of 30, 30%) and scoring a total of only 27 in the next two games.

“Sometimes, good players can get in their own heads,” Capel said. “The last two games, he was playing with the joy he always had, not allowing the missed shots (to affect him).”

“As we always say, trust your work and he’s been doing that,” assistant coach Milan Brown said on the 93.7 FM postgame show. “When the temperature rises, he’s going to go ahead and go with that temperature. He won’t be below it. He was ready for this fight. We had that one segment where Jaland was just wearing them out on the left side with the ball screen action.”

Later in the second half, Pitt was not affected by a brief LSU rally when the lead was trimmed to 58-54 with 5:41 to play. At that point, Leggett hit two foul shots and Lowe four in a row to regain control of the game. Pitt hit 19 of 22 foul shots for the game.

The Panthers were thrown off track when Dunn, who had been averaging 15.2 points, got in foul trouble and ended up scoring only two. But putting different guard combinations on the floor didn’t affect the outcome.

Freshman Brandin Cummings played 21 minutes and came away with three points and a steal and only one turnover.

“I know (Dunn) appreciated it,” Brown said, “but he knew (Cummings) would be able to do it because he’s seen it every day.”

During halftime, Capel challenged the 6-foot-10, 235-pound Corhen, who was on the court for 36 minutes, to play with more physicality, and he responded.

After grabbing only one rebound in the first half and scoring six points, Corhen had four rebounds and eight points in the second. Plus, he scored off two alley-oop passes from Lowe in the first half.

“As a team trying to win a championship, I can’t let that happen” Corhen said on the postgame show. “We obviously have more we want to do in this tournament.”

Pitt will play No. 19 Wisconsin in the Greenbrier championship game at 5:30 p.m. Sunday. Wisconsin (6-0) defeated UCF, 86-70.