Pitt bombs UVA’s ‘Pack-Line,’ which has no answers in loss

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Pittsburgh knew exactly what it was getting into long before it arrived at John Paul Jones Arena on Tuesday night.

Coach Jeff Capel had talked to his team for days about Virginia’s home winning streak, about the Cavaliers’ 8-game run through the ACC, what a tough place JPJ would be to play. He warned them about UVA’s 3-point snipers and the damage they were capable of causing.

When the going got tough in a rowdy, sold-out arena and host Virginia showed signs of coming back, Pitt didn’t blink. The Panthers went on to finish the job, undaunted by the Cavaliers’ lofty accomplishments, and took great delight in delivering the coup de grace.

UVA’s reappearance in the Top 25, after crafting an unexpected eight-game winning streak, was short-lived as the No. 21 Cavaliers fell victim to another red-hot ACC team in a 74-63 loss to Pitt, winners of four in a row and six of the last seven (for a blow-by-blow account of the game, notebook and full box score, see related story on this site).

The difference was clearly Pitt’s 3-point shooting proficiency and Virginia’s inability to keep pace. The Panthers made as many 3-pointers (14) as UVA attempted, the most triples the Cavaliers have given up since Carsen Edwards and Purdue in that unforgettable Elite Eight shootout en route to Virginia’s national championship in 2019.

In fact, Pitt tossed up 32 shots from beyond the arc, led by Blake Hinson’s 5 of 13 (27 total points) in pulling off the road upset and keeping the Panthers in the postseason conversation.

“It’s hard to beat a team that makes 14 3s,” said UVA sharpshooter Isaac McKneely, the nation’s leading 3-point shooter coming into the game.

McKneely, who had 15 points for the Cavaliers, was 2 of 6 from Bonusphere. Virginia finished 4 of 14, a stark contrast from its 10 triples in a road win at Florida State last Saturday.

Instead, UVA was caught flat-footed by an aggressive Pitt team from the get-go, and found itself trying to keep pace with the Panthers for most of the game. After trailing 35-31 at the break, the Cavaliers owned the first four minutes of the second half with a 9-0 run and reclaimed the lead at 40-38.

Capel called a strategic timeout to slow Virginia’s momentum, to calm the JPJ crowd, and to make sure his team wasn’t rattled.

As he said afterward, “and we didn’t blink.”

Instead, the teams leapfrogged one another for the next several minutes until Reece Beekman, who led UVA with 19 points, picked up his third foul and left the game. By the time he returned, hot-shooting Pitt had taken command and never looked back.

Pitt (16-8, 7-6) led for nearly 27 minutes and used a strong, three-guard lineup to torpedo Virginia’s “Pack-Line” defense, which faltered for the second game in a row.

“We’re not necessarily a team that plays well from behind because we’re not the fastest team,” McKneely said. “We don’t try and like push it in transition too much, so it’s hard whenever we get behind like that and they’re hitting tough shots. When they hit a tough shot like that, it deflates us. Like, man, we played good defense for 29 seconds and then a tough one at the end of the shot clock.”

Virginia’s defense had an off-night in Tallahassee over the weekend, but the offense more than made up for it with a rare points blitzkrieg, putting up 80. No such luck against the Panthers.

Capel was well aware of what happened at FSU, and believed it was crucial to get to UVA’s 3-point shooters.

“We talked about that for four days,” Capel revealed.

Clearly, his team got the message.

Meanwhile, Bennett’s barking about a less-than-pleasing defensive performance down South fell upon deaf ears. Give Pitt some credit, though. The Panthers are kind of like Virginia was a few weeks ago, when some of the newcomers are just now “getting it,” and the improvements are showing.

“They’re a hard guard,” Bennett said of Pitt. “They were prepared. They were physical.”

Virginia’s defense struggled all night against the Panthers ball screens and it showed, with Pitt shooters getting wide-open looks.

Beekman said the Cavaliers (19-6, 10-4) need to regroup.

“I think we were a little separated today,” Beekman said. “We’ve got to play more as a team and stay together. I feel like during some stretches we kind of drifted apart on both sides of the ball, and that hurt us. I think we had a lot of lapses on the defensive end.”

For Virginia, the pressure of all those streaks are gone and the Cavaliers can focus on a new start down the homestretch. One of the ACC’s upper-echelon teams comes knocking at JPJ on Saturday when Wake Forest, a team that hammered UVA a few weeks ago, a team that in some ways resembles Pitt, will be looking to enhance its postseason resume.