Really sloppy tonight
- Thread starter ratking17
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I can't say anything because I didn't go but its definitely a disadvantage to play in such an empty lifeless building. Its depressing to have to play in that. And maybe it's just me but I feel like Capel has been taking subtle jabs at our crowds. I hope he isn't disgusted with the lack of support but there's just no interest in these games. I can't sell my tickets for the StubHub minimum of $6
Sure there is. Do you remember how Brad, Lamar, Gibbs, krauser all looked like as freshmen? They had moments of being good, and bad. We have too many freshmen starting at the same time. We aren't able to ease them in. It is what it is because of stallings. But if you didn't expect some speed bumps along the way, that's more on you than on the players.
It looked fairly empty and the zoo is not what it once was. The Stallings era wasnt just bad records and recruiting, it killed the enthusiasm around Pitt basketball. It is going to take some time to recover unfortunately. Going to probably need a solid ACC season or 2 to get the crowds back up.
This was possibly the second most embarrassing day in Pitt history, only topped by chryst’s dazzling debut vs. YSU. Niagara is an absolute joke of a basketball team and they didn’t even have their best player. There is absolutely no excuse for Pitt not completely blowing this team out of the water.
JWF was putrid tonight and Chukwuka played too many crunch time minutes and made too many dumb mistakes. Ellison is out of control at times, not a major problem but frustrating at times. McGowens is a freak athlete but he had a stretch of time where he was just a mess.
Niagara seemed to get the benefit of every call but there is still no way that should’ve affected the game at all. They literally tried a dozen or more times to hand us the game and we kept giving it right back. Then they literally did hand us the game, and I still have no idea how xavier’s shot didn’t go in. Just a sick, cruel prank by the hoop.
JWF was putrid tonight and Chukwuka played too many crunch time minutes and made too many dumb mistakes. Ellison is out of control at times, not a major problem but frustrating at times. McGowens is a freak athlete but he had a stretch of time where he was just a mess.
Niagara seemed to get the benefit of every call but there is still no way that should’ve affected the game at all. They literally tried a dozen or more times to hand us the game and we kept giving it right back. Then they literally did hand us the game, and I still have no idea how xavier’s shot didn’t go in. Just a sick, cruel prank by the hoop.
Ain’t that the truth
It certainly was a disappoing loss but more from the standpoint that they could t get the breaks needed to pull it out at the end.
However it’s not unexpected. Especially considering how dead the environment was after playing two emotional games in pretty good atmospheres
This team is still fun to watch and will provide a lot of enjoyable basketball this year
I’m good, still love Capel, the talent we have, and the future of this program. Just can’t say I see any reason to have hope this year’s squad can compete.
Then we’re watching different teams
We’re going to lose games
We’ll also win some games
The wins will be precisely because we compete hard- we defend and drive to the rim.
That travels and wins
I agree with all that. And up until tonight I was impressed, while still knowing we’d lose some games we shouldn’t. But cmon now, this team without their only good player, they’re an absolute joke. Pitt on a bad night should’ve murdered them just because the talent differential is on two different planets.
Maybe stumble vs. Duquesne, or Colgate who we still have to play, maybe there will be a bad ACC foe who steps up against us and gets a win. I’m not saying Capel can’t coach, it’s his fault, or anything like that. I’m just saying this wasn’t a young team stumbling against a lesser team that is still fairly decent. Niagara is an absolutely horrid basketball team.
It’s a tough loss for some of the reasons you mention, Niagara really is a bad basketball team. They were coming off losses to both St Francis teams and were 13-1 underdogs tonight for a reason. Not quite the same as losing to a very good Montana team last year.
It still doesn’t take away from what this team has accomplished this year though. Pitt is at least respectable again, and it happened pretty quickly. Maybe we can just chalk it up as a lesson that they aren’t good enough to overlook anybody, not even Niagara.
It’s not like this was going to be a bubble team carrying this bad game on their resume anyway. If it’s something these players and coaches can learn from then this single result isn’t going to hurt anything in the long run. I would be surprised if they didn’t play much better against WVU.
Pitt should have beat Niagara tonight, but believe it or not there are a decent amount of teams that end up making the tournament that have embarrassing losses at the beginning of the year. I remember that year Syracuse lost to a division 2 team in an exhibition game (and I think they had another bad loss in ooc) and still did fine in the regular season. If you look at the teams in the middle of power conference there are defintely some losses that you think "huh? How could they lost to them". Teams have bad shooting nights, get sloppy, or like pitt are inexperienced. It happens. It's one game, move on. Season isn't over.
I was going to say, Syracuse loses these games every year. We’ll bounce back.
Spot on, you probably described it better than I did. I’m just disgusted with the sloppy play and the actual loss to such a lousy team. I still love the way our kids play though, lotta fight, lotta energy, much more athleticism than we’ve seen in a while. Some mistakes tonight were really dumb, some were just what you get with young players.
I mean we’ve seen some really, really good pitt teams lose to teams that were well below them. But those teams have generally been at least respectable within the smaller conference ranks. Not saying to stop supporting our team, just that we lost to a team that in no way came close to matching up with us athletically.
Honestly, what does it matter this season? This season is not about wins and losses, it's about recovering from the disaster we were last year. It's like you want to raise the Titanic and have a grand ball on it a week later. We're still scraping the barnacles off.
This is the key!
The ball isn't always going to roll the right way but if a team is giving 100% the odds of things going PITT's way is good!
This year is going to be up and down night by night , but I am convinced since joining the ACC, we will build a program that can compete year in and out.
I’ll take whatever amount you want to wager that next year won’t be a 12 win acc season- to surpass Dixon ‘s best year.
Part of recovering and improving would include beating a team that had no business being in the same gym as you. This is a team that lost to st. Francis. A team without it’s best player. It’s not like the freshmen lost us the game, they all played well for the most part. JWF on the other hand was probably the worst player on the floor.
We can obviously recover from this loss. But as a singular event it was a really, really bad loss.
I believe we'll get to the point you're describing eventually. We're just not there yet.
I still believe we’ll go way beyond that. It’s not gonna happen overnight, but I believe Capel will do big things here one day.
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