Despite leading for nearly 31 minutes, Virginia Tech couldn’t hold off No. 18 Pitt in a 64-59 loss on Saturday in Cassell Coliseum.
It marked the sixth straight defeat for the Hokies (3-6, 0-1 ACC), who had a seven-point lead with 5:19 to play but allowed the Panthers (8-2, 1-0) to close the game out on a 15-3 run.
“Our team played a good ball game. We led for 30 minutes of that thing, they led for two and we lose the game,” Tech head coach Mike Young said after the loss. “Need an uptick. Played better now; play a little bit better and win and start stringing some things together.”
Tech defended well for the majority of the game but couldn’t corral Pitt point guard Jaland Lowe in the final minutes. The sophomore knocked down a 3-pointer from the top of the key with 3:04 remaining to cap off a possession with good ball movement. Then he got downhill with his favorable left hand a few times, making two layups. He also knocked down four free throws in the final 25 seconds.
Lowe entered Saturday with seven straight 15-point games, but the Hokies did a good job on him early, limiting him to just four first-half points. However, he found a groove in the second half, and his on-ball pressure on the defensive side helped Pitt get back in the game.
“He’s really good, he can go both ways,” Young said of Lowe. “He’s a left-handed player and he wants to get left, he’s more explosive out of his left hand. We had done such a great job. We call it ‘six eyes.’ The primary ball defender and those two guys in those two gaps to be looking at the ball to give the illusion, if you will, to the ballhandler that there’s not a lot of space and he can get rid of it and give it to somebody else.
“But again, when it got tight, at that juncture, they put it in his hand, found a matchup that they liked with a ball screen and drove it [with his] left hand, got to the basket.”
From the Hokies’ perspective, it was a win that got away. They were stingy and disruptive defensively, holding the Panthers to 41 percent shooting for the game (23-of-56). They really got to Pitt, particularly early.
“I thought we were physical,” Young said. “I was a little surprised, to be frank, that they shot 46 percent [in the first half], but I thought we played really, really hard, I thought we were very physical. … The physicality piece of it is a big, big deal and hasn’t always been evident in our first nine games, and you better be physical against Pittsburgh because they’re tough hombres.”
“Their physicality and how hard they played early kind of knocked us back,” Pitt head coach Jeff Capel said. “… I thought [they] played … with desperation.”
The problem for the Hokies, though, was their inconsistent offense in the second half. They shot an impressive 52 percent in the first (15-of-29) and knocked down four of their 15 treys, but they were just 8-of-24 (33%) in the latter 20 minutes and 2-of-10 from behind the arc.
“[Capel] changed some coverages,” Young said of the offensive struggled late. “Thought we didn’t handle a couple things, couldn’t get to an action and they’re good, so he stoned us a little bit, and that’s on me, I own that.”
Once again, turnovers were their biggest issue, a recurring theme this year. After recording 17 miscues against the Panthers — eight in the first half to nine in the second — Tech’s now averaging 15.1 per game. Many of those came in important situations vs. Pitt, including three in a row at one point.
Jaydon Young had a lackadaisical pass that got picked off and taken the other way before Brandon Rechsteiner was stonewalled and pickpocketed at halfcourt, leading to another easy Pitt basket. A five-point lead quickly shrunk to one, and Tech’s only saving grace after Tyler Johnson stepped out of bounds was that it signaled the under-eight media timeout.
Rechsteiner finished with five giveaways while Johnson had four. Mylyjael Poteat, Ben Burnham and Patrick Wessler had two turnovers each while Ben Hammond and Young had one apiece.
“I think a lot of the time we’re not on the same page,” Tech forward Tobi Lawal said. “Sometimes we try to go for the one-hit wonder … and coach always tells us, ‘Just one pass at a time. One easy pass and another good pass and the defense will collapse, like they’ll give us the open shot. We don’t need to try to force anything or do anything flashy.
“But at the same time, we’ve got to take care of the ball because a lot of those turnovers were unforced. They weren’t really forced, like it wasn’t because of their pressure; we just threw it away.”
Still, the most egregious ones came from Rechsteiner, who struggled to bring the ball across the timeline on a few occasions, which Young said can’t happen. Lowe’s on-ball pressure played a role, but Rechsteiner didn’t necessarily do himself any favors.
Mike Young said Tech might handle those situations differently going forward and provide Rechsteiner with an ‘escort’ — similar to how Justyn Mutts used to inbound the ball and walk up the floor with Sean Pedulla, available to set a screen if needed. That could help the Hokies stay away from that pressure and ease Rechsteiner into it, but it would also mean the offense might take longer to get going in the frontcourt.
“We’ve had to do it with a couple others that we’ve had here, not [Wabissa] Bede — Bede was a big, sturdy person,” Young said. “But we call it an escort with a post player, we’ll turn and hook it and come into the frontcourt, which gets us into pace, and here comes the trail four, who we take the ball out of bounds with, and now we get it out of his hands. We’ve got to initiate it.
“When we go into our quick actions, we’re coming out of the lane in the frontcourt and you’ve got to be sound enough to get by that contact, to get by that pressure and make the right play.”
Even so, the Hokies still had a few chances to score with time winding down and couldn’t convert. After Jaden Schutt’s 3-pointer with 5:19 remaining, they missed their final six field goal attempts and scored just three points — all from Lawal at the foul line.
They led by four with 2:44 to play before Lowe cut it to two and an offensive foul on Lawal sent Guillermo Diaz Graham to the line — who tied the game with two free throws. Lawal drained one foul shot with 1:09 left, giving Tech a 59-58 lead, but Lowe scored too easily at the other end with :50 to go — Pitt’s first lead since the 5:31 mark of the first half — and the Hokies’ next two possessions were empty trips.
Burnham missed a layup in traffic with 30 seconds on the clock, which Pitt rebounded (and led to two Lowe free throws), and Young hoisted an off-balance three with seven seconds left — a last-gasp chance that didn’t fall.
“At the end of the day, you’ve got to finish, you’ve got to get stops, you’ve got to execute,” Schutt said. “Feel like we tried to run some stuff and they just started to deny some stuff and couldn’t really get to it, ended up having to make some one-on-one plays and at the end of the day, their one-on-one kind of beat us.”
Lawal was Tech’s leading scorer with 16 points and added four boards, two assists and two steals. Schutt finished with 14 points, four rebounds and three assists. They were the only two in double figures. Johnson (six rebounds) and Rechsteiner (four assists) chipped in eight points each while Burnham had five points and five boards.
Poteat, who Mike Young said was sick, had three points, four rebounds and a steal in 18 minutes. Jaydon Young and Wessler rounded things out with three and two points, respectively.
On the other side, Lowe paced Pitt with 19 points, five rebounds and four steals. Ishmael Leggett contributed 17 points, five boards and four dimes. Diaz Graham had a near double-double with nine points and seven rebounds.
It was just the second time the Hokies lost an ACC opener under Young, the first since Dec. 4, 2021, vs. Wake Forest. Tech is back in action on Thursday vs. North Carolina A&T (3-6) at 7 p.m. ET in Blacksburg. After that, it hosts Navy on Sunday before a road trip to Saint Joseph’s in Philadelphia before Christmas.
“[It’s of] critical importance,” Young said of the upcoming stretch. “We certainly proved today what we’re capable of — not that it was great; it was very good in a number of areas, competed really, really hard. Transition defense was much better today, that’s been a real sore spot. We rebounded the ball well again. … But these next three, treat them all like the Super Bowl. League play is going to be upon us here real soon.”
Box Score: No. 18 Pitt 64, Virginia Tech 59
Thoughts from #Hokies' 64-59 loss to No. 18 Pitt: pic.twitter.com/vIiyMWVMFb
— David Cunningham (@therealdcunna) December 7, 2024