There's no explaining some of the plays that led Pitt to victory against Wake Forest

There were a few funny elements to Pitt’s 81-79 victory against Wake Forest on Wednesday night.

Not funny, “ha-ha,” but funny strange.

Set aside for a moment that Pitt won its seventh of 10 ACC games, a victory total that’s been unreachable by a Panthers team for the previous six seasons. (And there are still 10 conference games on the regular-season schedule.)

That might be historically unusual, but the game presented three other even stranger things.

• First, the basket that gave Pitt its margin of victory was scored within inches of the rim by center Federiko Federiko after the Panthers set a school record by hitting 18 of 37 shots (48.3%) from outside the 3-point line. It was Federiko’s only shot attempt in 28 minutes on the floor.

• Wake Forest did Pitt a massive favor by missing seven of 18 foul shots (61.1%) after entering the game hitting free throws at a 73.5% rate. The Demon Deacons’ Cameron Hildreth was an 81.8% shooter from the line in ACC games, but he missed three of five against Pitt, all in the second half and two with 37 seconds left.

“Cam hit two big free throws to beat Wisconsin (on Nov. 29),” Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes said. “Nobody’s hurting worse than he’s hurting.”

• But the strangest occurrence of all almost cost Pitt the victory.

After shooting the basketball like it was on fire — 58 attempts in 40 minutes — Pitt failed to get a shot off while protecting a two-point lead after Hildreth’s misses. The shot-clock violation gave Wake Forest the ball with a chance to win with 6 seconds left.

“Blake (Hinson) should have shot the ball in that situation,” coach Jeff Capel said. “Next time, he’ll shoot it. We have to know the clock in that situation.”

Forbes said his plan in that situation was to foul Federiko, who hadn’t been to the line all night. But Capel double-crossed Forbes by calling timeout and taking Federiko out of the game.

Forbes was unhappy with his team’s defensive effort for most of the game, but the Demon Deacons were solid in that moment.

“It’s crazy,” he said. “As poorly as we probably defended, we got a shot-clock violation on the last possession of the game.”

Said Capel: “That was a mistake, but we didn’t allow it to carry over to the next thing and we got a stop at the end.”

After the turnover, Pitt forced Tyree Appleby to miss a long 3-pointer at the buzzer. Forbes said he had no problem with the shot by his best player, but he might get a jolt of unfortunate reality when he looks at video of the play Thursday.

The play was a high screen and roll with forward Andrew Carr and Appleby. But Appleby never looked close enough at Carr to consider throwing him a pass. He was in a hurry because Pitt’s indecision left only 6 seconds on the clock.

“Andrew pops, and he has a wide-open shot to win the game,” Forbes said. “I thought Andrew was open. I don’t know if he was or not.”

Call it Pitt’s good fortune, if you must, but it’s much more than luck when a team hits a school-record 18 3-pointers.

The victory was important for Pitt because it comes before the Panthers must play Miami on Saturday at Petersen Events Center and North Carolina next Wednesday in Chapel Hill.

With its 7-3 conference record, Pitt is tied for third place with those teams, only a half-game from second-place Virginia and two behind conference leader Clemson.