With five regular-season games remaining, what does Pitt still have to play for?
Players may well be wondering that, while coach Jeff Capel contemplates how to motivate them.
“I don’t know what I’ll use,” Capel said. “I haven’t thought about that as much. We’ve tried different things this year. They haven’t worked. We’ll continue to try different things.”
The ultimate goal of an NCAA Tournament appearance is well out of reach and has been arguably for months.
An NIT or CBI berth for Pitt (9-17, 2-11 ACC) also seems highly unlikely.
But attracting an invitation to either of those lesser tournaments would likely require a strong finish to the season coupled with some success in the upcoming ACC Tournament.
The problem is, were the ACC Tournament to begin Saturday, Pitt would be left out of the field.
When the ACC welcomed Southern Methodist, Cal-Berkeley and Stanford ahead of the 2024-25 campaign, it made the decision to convert the annual basketball tournament into a 15-team affair.
Fast forward to now and Pitt (along with Boston College and Georgia Tech) finds itself on the chopping block as a team with one of the three worst conference records.
So beginning Saturday afternoon vs. Notre Dame (12-14, 3-10) at Petersen Events Center, the Panthers will battle toward making the ACC Tournament with a Fighting Irish team that enters the day in position to take the 15th and final seed.
Making the ACC Tournament is certainly an achievable and graspable goal, but Capel hesitated to say he’d use it as a rallying flag for players.
“I don’t know if that’s something that will work with these guys,” Capel said. “Will it put more pressure on them? … We want to try to remove pressure from them and get them to play freely.
“When you’re losing and you’re going through a difficult time like we are, unless you’re a really secure person, it’s hard. If you throw things out there like that, sometimes it can make players shrink. It adds pressure.”
On top of trying to avoid putting undue pressure on players, Capel didn’t sound enthusiastic when discussing the prospect of having to use something like the making the ACC Tournament as a motivating tool.
For Capel, encouraging players to push toward that goal isn’t something that should need to be verbalized.
“I don’t know, man, I just feel like as a coach, if you constantly have to try to motivate and trick and do different things, you’re probably not good and you’re probably not going to be good if you have to do that,” Capel said. “There has to be some personal pride, there has to be some stuff within each guy.
“I didn’t have to do that with Bub Carrington, Blake Hinson, Jamarius Burton and things like that. I know we’re not that, but if you’ve got to start trying to do that stuff, man, that takes away from your prep (and) that takes away from all of those things that you have to do.”
Pitt, which has lost five straight game, prepares to host a Notre Dame squad that’s lost 10 of its last 12 games, with wins coming against Georgia Tech and Boston College.
Beyond that, the Panthers play at Stanford (Wednesday) and Cal (Feb. 28) before returning home against Florida State on March 4 and wrapping the season at Syracuse on March 7.
Saturday also will be Pitt’s first game following news of Brandin Cummings’ season-ending ankle surgery.
Cummings, who missed seven prior games because of injury, is Pitt’s leading scorer, averaging 12.5 points per game.
Whether Capel’s remaining troops can manufacture any momentum or at least end their skid remains to be seen.
Regardless, those who take the court are hyper aware of their situation and the disappointing season to date.
“They know that we’re losing,” Capel said. “They know that it’s been difficult (and) they know where we are.”
