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By Adam Lucas
1. Well that was painful in every way as Pitt wins 65-64.
2. One of the biggest problems Carolina has against Pitt is that the Panthers scouted the Tar Heels very well. After leading 65-64, Pitt did very well what Carolina wanted to do, which was to throw in the middle and call a timeout. Instead, RJ Davis had to dribble into midfield, leaving just 0.6 seconds for the final game. That’s one reason Pitt has infuriatingly won five of six in the series and three straight at the Smith Center, becoming just the third team alongside Duke and Wake to do so.
3. A hot run from Nelly Cummings essentially provided enough offense for Pitt to win the game. Cummings caught fire from three to push Pitt to a seven-point lead and Carolina just couldn’t fire enough shots to come back. Before the foul, Cummings went off the field 8 for 11 for his 21 points.
4. The heels didn’t shoot it well at all. The Tar Heels converted 34.8 percent from the field, 18.5 percent from the three, and 59.1 percent from the free throw line. None of these scores are good enough to win this type of game.
5. That shooting featured an even better performance from Caleb Love, who went 8-for-18 and 4-for-11 from three for his 22 points. That means the rest of the team combined went 1-16 from three as RJ Davis was pretty obviously plagued by the finger injury sustained before the break.
6. Pitt was successful in pushing Armando Bacot off the basket in the first half. Playing physically with an unpredictable officiating crew, they limited him to 1-for-5 from the field. They put him on the line seven times in the first 20 minutes but he only made four, which is probably a ratio they can live with compared to him converting two-pointers at a high rate. Bacot pulled a whopping 11 fouls, but had “only” 15 points to go with his 11 rebounds.
7. Both teams went into the dressing room at half time feeling that their stars almost certainly needed to do better in the second half. Bacot and RJ Davis went 2-on-12 together, while Pitt’s Jamarius Burton and Blake Hinson went 2-on-9. Leaky Black did a solid job at Burton, who did most of his damage while Black was out. Burton finished 6-for-18 from the floor after going 14-for-17 in Pittsburgh.
8. That first half was probably the ongoing scouting report on how to beat Carolina. Let them play one-on-one (three assists on 11 shots), limit Armando Bacot’s touches (Bacot’s five shots were fourth most on the team) and hope they don’t catch fire from the outside (Carolina was 4-on-13 from three and 30.6 percent from the field as a whole). The Tar Heels weren’t very good at dividing the ball every 40 minutes — they had six assists in 23 baskets.
9. Carolina wasn’t very efficient with offensive rebounding. The Tar Heels got 13 offensive boards on 25 misses, meaning they caught more than half of their misses. But they converted that into just six points. For the game, the Heels had a very good 19 offensive rebounds but only managed 13 points ahead of them.
10. Some really good defensive minutes from Seth Trimble in the first half. Against a difficult-to-defend team, Trimble came on and collected a blocked shot (which he seems to have a knack for) and also pulled an offensive foul.
11. Carolina was again without Puff Johnson, who is recovering from a sore knee.
12. Carolina included an acknowledgment in the pre-game lineups from Jason Capel, who then for the second straight year returned the favor by taking the field after the game and providing some colorful comments.
13. Big crowd on Wednesday night at the Smith Center. Pitt earned that road win in front of a raucous crowd.