Pitt's ACC run ends with 72-65 loss to North Carolina

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the end, Pitt’s 72-65 loss to North Carolina on Friday night did nothing to throw the team off its intended course.

But there is nothing more Pitt’s players can do about their NCAA Tournament chances.

The loss to the Tar Heels (27-6) in the ACC Tournament semifinals might cause the Panthers (22-11) to slip off the bubble — others were winning Friday while Pitt was losing — but Blake Hinson said he plans to spend the next two days working on his game as if there’s another game to play.

Danger time for UVa...and goodnight for me! pic.twitter.com/UiNgq1tq0C

— Joe Lunardi (@ESPNLunardi) March 16, 2024

Guillermo Diaz Graham agrees with his captain, saying he will prepare as if he’s still in the middle of the season.

“A little bit of recovery. A little bit of rest and back to work,” Diaz Graham said. “Prepare to play again this season. I know we’re going to play again.”

That’s not for him to say, however.

Although Jaland Lowe said he believes Pitt is a tournament team, he admits he is a bit nervous after putting the decision in the hands of 12 selection committee members.

“Nervous? Not gonna lie, a little bit,” Lowe said. “I’m very confident we should be in the tournament, but there are other people saying stuff that doesn’t matter. I have to wait until Sunday (when bids go out). That’s the sad part about it.”

Coach Jeff Capel said he thinks more about how his team evolved this season than what outsiders think of his tournament chances.

”I’m not a bracketologist. I’m not an expert. I’m a basketball coach,” he said. “I try to worry about my team. I know we’ve gotten better. I know if you look over the past, since January 20, I think we’ve played as well as anyone in college basketball.”

It’s undeniably true that North Carolina, the No. 4 team in the nation, played better than Pitt when the stakes for both teams were highest. Especially when the Tar Heels outscored the Panthers, 10-3, in the last four minutes after Lowe tied the score 62-62 with a basket, the last two of his 17 points.

Freshman guards Lowe and Bub Carrington kept the game close throughout the evening, and the Tar Heels’ seven-point advantage at the end was their largest.

Carrington played all 40 minutes and scored 24 points, with five rebounds and three assists. Lowe added four assists and four rebounds to his 17 points.

Meanwhile, ACC Player of the Year R.J. Davis and all-conference center Armando Bacot scored more than half the time they put up shots for the Tar Heels. Davis recorded 24 points, five rebounds and two assists. In the final decisive, tie-breaking minutes, he scored nine, including two 3-pointers.

Nonetheless, Diaz Graham was proud of his team’s effort.

“We let it slide at the end,” he said, “but I saw us playing way better than them for a long time in the game.”

With Pitt bigs Federiko Federiko and Diaz Graham in foul trouble for much of the game, North Carolina had a decided advantage on the boards, 44-34. Bacot had his way in the paint with 19 points and 11 rebounds. Together, Bacot and Davis hit 16 of 31 attempts.

Diaz Graham admitted his foul trouble made it difficult to stop Bacot.

“You’re going against an All-American center. I understand,” he said. “If I’m a ref and I see a guy like Bacot going in against me or Fede, I’m going to call fouls all the time.”

Additionally, he said, “We couldn’t be there to help our guards play defense because we can’t foul.”

There were other flaws in Pitt’s game that surfaced, and that allowed North Carolina to outscore the Panthers, 39-30, after halftime. Somehow, Pitt led 35-33 at intermission even while Ishmael Leggett and Blake Hinson, who scored 30 and 20 points, respectively, in the quarterfinal victory against Wake Forest, were scoreless in the first half. Hinson finished with only five points, missing 10 of his 12 shots, including all five 3-pointers. Leggett managed only six.

It was clearly North Carolina’s game plan to stop Hinson. He was followed everywhere he went on the court, but the Pitt captain placed the loss squarely on his shoulders.

“They try their best to not let me score. It’s my job to score. I didn’t do my job,” Hinson said. “Not necessarily anything they did in particular. They played good defense, for sure. At the end of the day, it’s my job to overcome the good defense.

“I have to do my job better, regardless of what’s going on. They could have eight people on me. It’s my job to do my job. (If) I do my job, we win this game. I know my team. My team can beat that team.”

Asked if Pitt is a tournament team, Hinson said, “I hope so. We are, for sure, a good enough team to be in there. So it would be lovely to get in there. We’ll see. We definitely deserve it.”