No. 16 Florida State offers no relief for slumping Pitt

Although Pitt players, coaches and fans have plenty of reasons to feel frustrated, angry and let down, the season isn’t over.

Although no one can be sure how many games will be played, there will be enough time for Jeff Capel to steer his team to a respectable finish, starting at 4 p.m. on Saturday against No. 16 Florida State at Petersen Events Center. But it won’t be easy.

Here’s a look at five issues surrounding the Panthers:

1. Opportunities wasted

Pitt’s current 1-6 slide includes losses to Wake Forest, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech and N.C. State. None of them has a winning record in the ACC and, collectively, they are 20-31.

Pitt should have been no worse than 2-2 in those games. Add two victories, delete two defeats (perhaps the two decided by a point) and 11-6, 7-5, suddenly looks so much better than reality (9-8, 5-7).

But there are reasons teams lose close games, and the failure to play good defense is at the top of Pitt’s list.

2. Next up: The Seminoles

When a team is competitive in defeat — and Pitt has been that most of the time — the problems often can be fixed in practice. But Pitt has only one day of serious work to prepare for, perhaps, the best team in the ACC.

Florida State has won seven of its past eight games, including a 21-point crushing of No. 7 Virginia on Monday.

How good is the talent coach Leonard Hamilton has assembled in Tallahassee, Fla.?

Scottie Barnes, a preseason first-team All-ACC selection and preseason Freshman of the Year, has started only half the games. Speaking Thursday on 93.7 FM on “The Jeff Capel Show,” Pitt associate head coach Tim O’Toole called Barnes “one of the best players in the country.”

M.J. Walker is the only Seminoles player listed among the ACC’s top 20 in scoring and rebounding — and he’s 17th in scoring (13.9). It’s a team effort that has carried Florida State to a 12-3 record, 8-2 in the ACC. The Seminoles lead the conference in scoring (79.3 points per game) and are second in field-goal percentage (47.3).

Can Pitt shore up its defense in two days? For the record, Capel is 2-1 against Florida State as Pitt’s coach.

3. Brown’s emergence

Senior center Terrell Brown, the lone holdover from the Kevin Stallings era, played a season-high 25 minutes against N.C. State, grabbed seven rebounds, blocked three shots and scored six points (his first since Jan. 26).

Brown played like he wants to make the final days of this season the best of his four-year career.

Capel hopes so.

“When we play zone, he can be effective,” he said. “He can alter some shots down there. We have to be drastically better at that spot because we’re getting hurt at that spot.”

4. ACC physicality

Sophomore center Abdoul Karim Coulibaly starts ahead of Brown, but he had only one rebound in 15 minutes against N.C. State. That followed two of his best rebounding efforts of the season (six vs. Virginia, eight vs. Georgia Tech).

O’Toole described Coulibaly as the “Rock of Gibraltar for us inside.”

Meanwhile, Coulibaly is learning the rigors of big-time college basketball.

“Karim is like a Euro big. He’s very skilled on the perimeter,” O’Toole said. “The reality is a lot of teams we played recently have bigs that are power bigs. He’s getting a taste of that world, and it’s a very physical world, which means very physically debilitating over the course of the season.”

Brown’s increased presence could help down the stretch, but O’Toole has high hopes for Coulibaly.

“As he keeps maturing and learning and getting better and better, his future’s really bright,” he said.

5. Don’t assume anything

The ACC waited until Wednesday to announce Pitt was playing Florida State on Saturday, but that’s the covid world all college basketball teams must endure.

“You have to be able to, at the drop of a hat, be ready to play whoever is going to be in front of you,” O’Toole said.

Pitt has played only 12 of its 20 ACC games so far, and there’s been no word about rescheduling the Duke, Boston College, Louisville and Clemson postponements.

But after Florida State, there are no games on Pitt’s schedule until Feb. 28 at N.C. State. Capel can assume his team will be idle in that time, but he can’t know for sure.

Get the latest news about Pitt basketball and all things Panthers athletics.