Pitt fails to complete rally from 19-point deficit against Miami

Jeff Capel is too smart and has seen too many close calls in 30 years playing and coaching college basketball to get drawn into the eternal question:

Was he fouled, or wasn’t he?

Knowing that, no one should be surprised that Pitt’s coach declined definitive comment Saturday on the decisive play of Pitt’s 72-68 loss to Miami at Westco Center in Coral Gables, Fla.

With less than 10 seconds left, Pitt was down 70-68 after rallying from a 19-point second-half deficit. Pitt’s Jaland Lowe had the ball to the left of the basket and tried to shoot over Miami’s Norchad Omier, who had 4 inches on the freshman guard. Omier blocked the shot and a foul was called, but it was on Pitt’s Ishmael Leggett. Miami’s Kyshawn George hit two free throws to set the final margin.

When asked if Omier made contact with Pitt’s freshman guard, Capel kept his thoughts to himself.

“All you (reporters) know I’m not allowed to comment on that,” Capel said. “Whatever you saw, you can comment on it. I don’t want to get fined.”

Speaking on the 93.7 FM postgame show, Pitt assistant head coach Milan Brown was accepting of the non-call.

“Officials said he got a piece of the ball. It’s just part of the game,” Brown said. “We thought he may have got a piece of Jaland’s hand or his wrist. But credit (the Hurricanes) for making the stop that they needed to make.”

The game goes into the ACC books as another loss by the Panthers (12-8, 3-6), who ventured into South Florida with a 4-1 road record. It was Pitt’s third consecutive game away from home in the past week after victories at Duke and Georgia Tech.

With four players remaining from last season’s Final Four team, Miami (14-6, 5-4) has won two in a row after losing four of the previous five.

“We put ourselves in a position, just came up a little bit short against a really good team,” Capel said.

With 9 minutes, 30 seconds to play, Miami looked to be in total command of the proceedings, building a 60-41 lead while Pitt struggled to find rhythm on offense.

Finally, Pitt’s defense stopped leaving Miami players open. On the other end of the court, the Panthers made five 3-pointers in a span of less than six minutes — two each by Lowe and Leggett and one by Blake Hinson. Miami’s Nijel Pack and Wooga Poplar missed 3-point shots in the final 1:37. Suddenly, it was a two-point game and Pitt had the ball.

“Right around the 12-minute mark, we started fighting,” Capel said. “We put together stops.”

Through most of the afternoon, however, Pitt had little answer for Omier, a 6-foot-7, 248-pound forward who finished the game with 18 points and 10 rebounds. Pack and Poplar scored 17 points each, and George 11. Matthew Cleveland, Miami’s second-­leading scorer, was out with a hip injury.

For a spell in the second half, the game boiled down to a 3-point shooting contest. Pitt made 11 of 36 overall; Miami 10 of 31.

Hinson didn’t make his first field goal until 14 minutes into the first half, but he led all scorers with 21 points (four 3s). Lowe added 17 points (two 3s), recording all but two points after halftime. Leggett added 14 (three 3s) and Bub Carrington missed 2 of 11 shots overall and finished with four.

Although there were several big plays in the final minutes, the game might have been lost in the first half when Miami took a 40-29 lead into intermission after shooting 48.5% (16 of 33) from the field whereas Pitt was 10 of 31 (32.3%).

“It was rough there for us in the first half with our inability to make a shot,” Capel said. “I thought it affected our defense.”

But he also knows the Hurricanes came into the game No. 2 in scoring in the ACC (an average of 81.9 points).

“They made some tough shots, contested shots, deep 3s.”

Other than the loss, the chief storyline was the trust Pitt’s coach has placed in Lowe, a freshman who wasn’t a starter at the outset of the season.

“I thought he was terrific,” Capel said. “I thought his teammates were terrific with him, as well. He had a wide-open 3 in the corner opposite our bench in the second half and he shot an air ball, and he put his head down. Right away, (teammates) got on him about that and I thought that helped him get out of it.

“He was able to make some big plays down the stretch. We wanted the ball in his hands (at the end) just to make a play, whatever play was there.”

Capel also was pleased with how Hinson recovered from early shooting trouble.

“I think it shows a lot about Blake’s resilience and our team’s resilience to continue to fight,” he said. “It would have been really easy for us to put our head between our tails and give it up. But this road trip has shown an unbelievable amount of fight. That’s something we have to hang onto as we go forward.

“I like the fact that we stayed together on the road against a really good team.”

Forward Jorge Diaz Graham out indefinitely with an ankle injury.#H2P pic.twitter.com/0rYwIoXDcE

— Pitt Basketball (@Pitt_MBB) January 27, 2024

Note: Pitt sophomore Jorge Diaz Graham, who has played a total of eight minutes in the past five games, is out indefinitely with an ankle injury.