Pitt sleepwalks through home loss to Clemson

Jeff Capel left no doubt Wednesday night how he felt after his Pitt players stumbled through their worst loss of the season, 72-52 to Clemson.

“This kills me,” he said. “I won’t sleep tonight.”

Now, the trick for Pitt’s second-year coach is to get his players to feel the same way.

He doesn’t want them to lose any sleep – he admitted his team was tired, anyway, against Clemson — but he said the losses may need to hurt a little for Pitt to take the next step.

“We have to get to a point where this really bothers you and you have to change it,” he said. “We have to grow up.”

Capel lamented his players’ inability to handle success, even something as modest as their two victories in the previous three games. He said he noticed something amiss at practice this week.

“We won Saturday (against Georgia Tech) and it was a good win for us,” he said.

Then, he added, “Just the energy in practice wasn’t what it needed to be.”

“I thought we played tired. I thought we looked tired. This is the time of the season where you are tired. But we have to be able to push through.”

The only part of the game where Pitt showed any life was after it fell behind, 50-31, with 12 minutes, 11 seconds left in the game. The Panthers scored the next 12 points and later trimmed the lead to 51-45 with 7:03 to play. But the rally ended there, sending many in the crowd of 7,530 to the exit doors of the Petersen Events Center.

Capel might have been able to handle a 20-point loss if it occurred, for example, at the beginning of the season. But with only six regular-season games remaining – four on the road – the Panthers (15-10, 6-8 ACC) don’t have much time to fix their problems.

“It’s the middle of February,” he said. “We should have learned from Nicholls State (a loss) in November, the second game.

“At some point, guys have to listen. They have to get over themselves. They have to understand the requirements that it takes to be really good, consistently good. Not good for a moment.”

Capel gave Clemson (12-12, 6-8) credit for pulling itself out of a three-game losing streak.

“We faced a team that was really hungry,” he said, noting Clemson entered the game shooting 29 percent from beyond the 3-point arc and made 59 percent of those shots Wednesday (13 of 22).

“We were bad across the board, energy, communication, execution on both sides and a really disappointing performance by us,” he said. “They made a lot of shots, but a lot of it had to do with a breakdown in our defense.”

Pitt scored the game’s first five points, but 5-0 turned out to be its largest lead of the game. The Panthers ended up hitting a season-low 15 field goals in 48 attempts (31.3 percent), a product of too much tentative play, standing and watching everyone else, Capel said.

Sophomore guards Trey McGowens and Xavier Johnson, who are averaging 13 and 12 points for the season, were a combined 2 for 20 from the field. Johnson missed all nine of his attempts and McGowens was 2 for 11.

“We can’t be afraid if we miss,” Capel said. “If you’re hesitant and you’re doubtful, you’re not going to make it.”

He mentioned a shot clock violation early in the game, followed by two other occasions “where we had to put up a shot at the end of the clock to avoid a shot clock violation.”

“We weren’t intelligent with some of the things we were doing early in this game.”

Freshman Justin Champagnie led Pitt with 11 points, and afterwards he might have put his finger on the problem.

“We came out a little bit lackadaisical, and just going through the motions and it hurt us,” he said.

“We came out flat. Against good teams in this league, you can’t just turn it on and off.

“We weren’t moving the ball. We’re always taught to let the ball move (against) the zone (defense), swing it around, hit the corner, hit the high post, hit the baseline.”

But he said the basketball “kind of just stuck in our hands.”

“It’s unusual. It shouldn’t have happened. We have to learn how to come off a win and be hungry for more.”

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