Fatigue, Syracuse next on Pitt's list of problems to solve

No one should be surprised if Pitt’s players are showing signs of fatigue as they approach the end of the first half of the ACC season.

Game 9 is Saturday at Petersen Events Center against Syracuse, and it will be a good test for two reasons. It will reveal:

• How much players learned about attacking Syracuse’s 2-3 zone in the 74-63 loss at the Carrier Dome on Jan. 19.

• How the team is battling the inevitable fatigue many college basketball teams experience at this point in the season.

“I’ve always felt like the middle toward the end of January and early February is when you start to see these (signs of fatigue),” Pitt coach Jeff Capel said. “Everyone is little fatigued. Everybody is little banged up. The teams that are resilient and mentally tough, they’re the ones who are able to survive it.”

Pitt hopes to become a part of that group, but it must reverse an unfortunate trend that dates to the early days of the post-Jamie Dixon era.

Pitt is 7-40 in ACC games since Dixon left, including losing 25 of the past 27 under Kevin Stallings and Capel.

The good news is the rough conference schedule starts getting a little easier. The ACC has seven schools (tied for an all-time high) ranked among the Associated Press’ Top 25, but Pitt plays only three — No. 23 N.C. State, No. 12 Virginia Tech and No. 3 Virginia — among its final 10 games.

Still, fatigue is one of the factors Capel must monitor. There will be travel (five more road games) and classes, plus the inevitable injuries and illness. Already, freshman Au’Diese Toney has missed one game with a hand injury, and Terrell Brown is recuperating from strep throat.

“You have to adjust things you do in practice,” Capel said. “Some of the things they’re doing off the court. You have to get more rest, how they eat. All those things.”

Capel also said practice schedules and procedures can be adjusted but with limitations.

“Don’t go as long, don’t do as much contact,” he said. “But as we’re trying to build habits and trying to build a program, we have to do some of those things. We have to be mentally tougher. We have to grow up quick.”

Part of the maturation process is learning from past failures.

Pitt was stymied by Syracuse’s zone, especially in the first half, last month when the Panthers scored only 25 points. But they recovered to score 38 in the second half. Capel would accept that latter scoring pace Saturday.

“As the game went on, we were able to attack the zone a little bit better,” he said. “We were able to penetrate it some.”

But he said the Orange are improving, too. Syracuse (15-6, 6-2) has won two of its past three, including a 77-71 victory Wednesday at Boston College when the Orange hit 11 3-pointers. Syracuse likes the 3-pointer, attempting the second-most shots beyond the arc in the ACC (514), led by Elijah Hughes, fifth in the conference at 36.4 percent.

Freshman Buddy Boeheim, son of 74-year-old coach Jim Boeheim, hit three 3-pointers in the BC game.

But it’s the zone that makes Syracuse tough to beat.

“I’ve felt, watching them and competing against them since they’ve been in this league, that as the season goes on, the zone gets better,” Capel said. “Because the guys get more comfortable in their positions, in their rotations, in their movements.”

If Pitt’s Xavier Johnson and Trey McGowens can’t penetrate the zone, they’ll drop back and join Jared Wilson-Frame in launching 3s. At the Carrier Dome, half of Pitt’s successful shots (11 of 22) and more than half of the attempts (35 of 65) came from beyond the arc.

Overall, Johnson, McGowens and Wilson-Frame hit 8 of 15 3-pointers Tuesday in the 82-69 loss at Clemson. Johnson scored 30 to boost his ACC average to 17.8, seventh in the conference.

Johnson said he prefers playing against man-to-man defenses — “I’m pretty sure I’m one of the fastest dudes in the league” — but he’ll need to find a way to score one way or another.

Shooting over the zone might be a smarter move than trying to bulldoze through it.

“We’re going to have to make some shots because they do such a great job of protecting the rim,” Capel said. “And we don’t have anyone on this team that can have those types of confrontations at the rim against their size, length and athleticism.”

Jerry DiPaola is a Tribune-Review
staff writer. You can contact Jerry at jdipaola@tribweb.com or
via Twitter @JDiPaola_Trib.