Analysis: Pitt faces long odds in its quest to continue changing the season's trajectory

During his team’s journey from Pittsburgh to Durham, N.C., to Atlanta, Pitt coach Jeff Capel used only seven players to craft two important victories.

William Jeffress came off the bench for a total of six minutes. Jorge Diaz Graham didn’t play at all.

This is not meant as a criticism of Capel’s manpower usage. Pitt won both games, which is what matters most, and the Panthers received important contributions from non-starters Guillermo Diaz Graham and Ishmael Leggett.

The college basketball season can be a grind — January seems to drag on and on — and the rewards in March go to those teams that can overcome fatigue and aching limbs and muscles.

Pitt’s road test continues Saturday in Coral Gables, Fla., where the Panthers will confront the Miami Hurricanes, who lost four of five games before winning, 73-61, at Notre Dame on Wednesday night.

It’s been a strange ACC season for the Panthers, who are 0-4 at Petersen Events Center but 3-1 in front of the other teams’ fans.

Assistant coach Tim O’Toole considers Pitt’s schedule in the first half of the conference season a learning tool for a team that uses two freshman guards (Bub Carrington and Jaland Lowe), a sophomore post man (Guillermo Diaz Graham) and two players (Leggett and Zack Austin) who never played an ACC schedule before this season.

That’s a potentially problematic combination of youth and inexperience against top-level competition for five of those seven players. Thus, the losing record (3-5).

“That’s one of those things we’re trying to impress on a young team: how hard it is to win, period, let alone on the road,” O’Toole said on the 93.7 FM postgame show Tuesday night after the victory at Georgia Tech. “It’s nice to see because we can keep maturing.”

Logic and past events indicate Pitt can’t win consistently without Blake Hinson scoring in double digits, probably high teens or somewhere in the 20s.

Yet he managed only nine with one 3-pointer against Georgia Tech. That probably wouldn’t be enough against one of the ACC’s better teams, but it’s instructive that Leggett and Diaz Graham (26 combined points) had as much to do with the victory as Carrington and Lowe (31). Leggett and Lowe also combined for 28 against Duke to buttress Hinson’s 24.

“That’s what happens over the course of the year,” O’Toole said. “All of a sudden, other guys come out of nowhere to help. (Tuesday night), it was Guillermo.”

Can Pitt survive with two freshman guards carrying significant ball-handling and scoring responsibilities? Perhaps the two roommates — “young stallions,” according to O’Toole — can help each other out while they learn what it takes to win in the ACC.

“OK, you’re a young guard, Bub, you’re taking everyone’s best shot,” O’Toole said. “Now, all of a sudden, here comes J. Lowe, who’s another young guard, plays absolutely tremendous at Duke, plays great (at Georgia Tech). They are both super, super talented and can do different things. It makes it hard for other teams to guard.”

Their play — and that of others — during the two-game winning streak breeds optimism, but there is much more work to do. Pitt (12-7, 3-5) remains a long shot to earn an invitation to the NCAA Tournament.

The Panthers presented a 22-11 record to the tournament selection committee last year and were rewarded with a berth. To match that, Pitt must win nine of its remaining 12 regular-season games — 11 would be better — and another one in the ACC Tournament.

Pitt has only one Quad 1 victory (Duke), but has an opportunity to gain as many as four more in road games against Miami, Virginia, Wake Forest and Clemson.

The odds are stacked against Pitt, but it will be interesting to see how the rest of the season unravels. At this point, reaching even 20 victories would be a story worth telling.