Analysis: ACC Tournament gives Pitt the chance to rediscover its formula for success

ACC Tournament preparations started early for Jeff Capel, who said he planned to watch Pitt’s 78-76 loss to the Hurricanes on the flight home from Miami.

No planned nap for Capel, even though he was still in the midst of a long, disappointing Saturday. He probably could have used some quiet time to shut off his brain for a few minutes, but resting in the face of adversity is not his style, nor the way his players have reacted to trouble this season.

“We’ll move onto the next (game) pretty quickly,” he said.

Next up for fifth-seeded Pitt (21-10, 14-6) will be a second-round game at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday in the ACC Tournament in Greensboro, N.C., against No. 12 Florida State or No. 13 Georgia Tech on ESPN. Those teams open the proceedings at 2 p.m. Tuesday on the ACC Network.

Disappointed Pitt fans are asking each other two questions:

1. Can the Panthers win four games in four days and claim the ACC Tournament championship and the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament? Virginia Tech did it last year, beating Duke by 15 points in the championship game, but the Hokies are only the second team in history to pull off that unlikely four-game winning streak.

2. Will the tournament committee bestow an at-large NCAA bid on Pitt if it shows up March 12 (Selection Sunday) with, perhaps, a 22-11 record? Teams with double-digit losses are chosen for the tournament every year. Alabama and Indiana did it with 13 defeats last year, and the Hoosiers were even below .500 (9-11) in the Big Ten. With 14 conference victories, Pitt has a resume worthy of the tournament.

Yes, the Panthers did lose to West Virginia and Michigan by a total margin of 56 points. But those games were in November, and Pitt compensated by beating a 20-win Northwestern team and the top two seeds in the ACC, Miami and Virginia, plus conference blue blood North Carolina twice.

If Pitt loses its first-round ACC game, however, that might create some anxiety inside Petersen Events Center.

That first game, of course, is Capel’s immediate concern. Pitt already lost once to Florida State before evening the score last month in Tallahassee, Fla. The Panthers toppled Georgia Tech twice, but the Yellow Jackets take a three-game winning streak into the tournament.

Who is the most likely team to challenge top seed Miami, which has won eight of its past nine?

Duke has won six in a row, and North Carolina’s only loss in its past four games came to the Blue Devils on Saturday. No one should be surprised to see the Tar Heels in the title game against either Miami or Duke. They open with either Boston College or Louisville, and North Carolina is in the bottom half of the bracket with N.C. State, Clemson and Virginia, three teams that have had some recent struggles.

Capel has too many immediate concerns buzzing through his head to look that far ahead on the bracket.

• He must find a way for his players to win — or, at least, break even — on the boards. Miami had more than double Pitt’s rebounding total Saturday (42-20), and the game was lost by allowing the Hurricanes 25 second-chance points.

Capel made the point that Miami has several players who are difficult to move out of the paint, but that’s not a good enough reason for failure for a Panthers squad that has become one of the best teams in the conference.

Whether the opponent is Florida State, Georgia Tech or Duke in the quarterfinals Thursday, Pitt will need more than the three rebounds Federiko Federiko collected against Miami.

Federiko, a sophomore junior college transfer, has been an able replacement for John Hugley most of this season. Federiko was averaging 7.3 rebounds in the previous six games and 2.2 blocks in the past 10.

• Meanwhile, Greg Elliott, who is as big a reason as anyone for Pitt’s resurgence, has scored a total of two points in the past two games. He played only 16 minutes Saturday and was 0 for 5 when trying his signature 3-pointers in losses to Notre Dame and Miami. The good news is he was averaging four 3s per game in the previous six.

Capel didn’t single out any player, but he did say Saturday night, “We didn’t close it the way we wanted to, but now we’ll head into the second segment of the season and, hopefully, we can learn from all these things we’ve been through and we can be better in the second part.”

He’s not ready to evaluate the season from start to finish.

“We put so much into this,” he said. “Maybe when it’s over with, we’ll be able to really understand it. But when you’re in the mix of it and you’re in the middle of competition, you’re staying focused on where we are.”

But he is so focused on the following observation that he repeated it three times before getting on the plane to come home:

“We don’t give up. This group doesn’t give up. I don’t expect this group to give in.”