Pitt pulls away from Florida Gulf Coast for home victory

Pitt confronted its most difficult test of the season Monday night at Petersen Events Center. Jeff Capel was eager to see how his team would handle it.

The Panthers beat back repeated challenges from a veteran Florida Gulf Coast team and survived – even while shooting poorly from the free-throw and 3-point lines – to record an 86-74 victory in front of a crowd of 6,567.

After the game, Capel’s work was just beginning.

“This was a great game for us,” he said. “A great game to learn from. I can’t wait to get to the film. I think there are so many teachable moments from this game that will help us as we go forward.”

Pitt (3-0) missed 20 of 28 3-point attempts and continued its sub-par free throw shooting (18 of 32). But Capel’s most important takeaway from another big scoring night – Pitt is averaging 91.7 points per game – was this:

“I’m really proud of our guys for being resilient and fighting,” he said.

“To score this many points and not shoot free throws well and not shoot the 3-ball as well as we are capable of doing, I think that’s big for us.”

Attempting to fix mental lapses on defense and a tendency to do too much in traffic around the basket will keep Capel and his players busy all week before their next game Friday against Jacksonville.

“We got tested defensively this game by better players,” the coach said.

The game was close throughout the first half, and Florida Gulf Coast (1-2) even forged a 30-30 tie before Pitt expanded its lead to 45-35 at intermission.

Freshmen guards Jaland Lowe and Bub Carrington repeatedly came up with big baskets and Williams Jeffress’ two steals also came at opportune times, stifling the Eagles’ comeback efforts.

Lowe played his best game, scoring 10 of his 12 points in the first half, hitting five of nine shots overall and handing out two assists.

“It was great to see him trust his shot and trust his instincts,” Capel said. “He gave us a huge boost.”

“They’re special,” guard Ishmael Leggett said of Lowe and Carrington. “They’re sponges and they know how to hoop, for sure.”

Jeffress’ initial assignment was Florida Gulf Coast’s Zach Anderson, who had been averaging 14.5 points per game. Anderson ended up with 10 points, but Jeffress “guarded everybody” by the end of the game, Capel said.

Carrington led all scorers with 19 points, and he added seven assists and four rebounds. Blake Hinson added 18, even while he was missing 7 of 10 3-pointers, and Leggett played another complete game with 17 points, seven rebounds and five assists.

Capel described Leggett’s contributions as “driving and defending and scoring and making big plays and being a facilitator for us.”

Capel was interested to see how his team would respond to challenges presented by the Eagles’ Andre Weir (6-foot-10, 265 pounds), Keshawn Kellman (6-8, 225) and Zach Anderson (6-7, 205). “We haven’t seen that yet this year. We know that’s coming,” Capel said.

“There are some great things to learn from this game, some real live game situations we try to simulate in practice. But it’s different when there are people (in the stands) and there are people coming after you.

“Some of them we didn’t handle well. The last one we did a really, really good job of that.”

Florida Gulf Coast trailed 71-56 with 8 minutes, 26 seconds left, but five minutes later Pitt’s lead was only 78-73.

At that point, Federiko Federiko added a free throw and a dunk off an assist from Leggett, who also hit a turnaround jumper. All of sudden, the lead was up to 10 and the game all but over.

“This was not as good a performance defensively as we have had,” Capel said. “Hopefully, we learn a lot from this.

“I think we have a high ceiling. As long as we have the right attitudes and come in and be about the right stuff, I think we will get better.”