Thursday was Pitt Women’s Basketball Coach Tory Verdi’s birthday, but a 56-39 victory over Le Moyne did not make it a happy one, rather it appeared he was ready to explode as he readied for the press conference.
Verdi is never one to sugarcoat anything, and a lackluster effort in which his team not only struggled to figure out Le Moyne, but trailed after a quarter meant there was no postgame celebration in the locker room.
A lot frustrated Verdi, but he felt his team had played to the level of their opponents.
The normally excited ceremony of the championship was more of a “give Aaryn Battle the belt” before talking to his team in a quiet locker room.
“It was more than the lack of execution,” Verdi determined. “We just didn’t have that pride, that want to. We’re playing on our home court in front of our fans. It’s disappointing and starts with me. It’s going to be a work in progress, but it’s not okay. I expect us to go out there and work hard. If you play and respect it the right way and we didn’t do that for 40 minutes.”
Battle had a good offensive game as the freshman guard had a season-high 17 points on 6-of-9 shooting and six rebounds, scoring 10 of those points by taking advantage of the transition game.
The entire press conference she stared straight ahead, occasionally nodding at Verdi’s critiques but agreed that the effort was far from good enough.
“It all starts with practice, all of us being there, locked in,” opined Battle. “It starts there and having that consistency. Once we get back at it, we have to have that same mindset.”
Indeed, Pitt has had a consistency problem and despite allowing 12 points in the second half and one field goal in the final quarter, Verdi feels that defensively there remains a lot of work to be done.
His belief on this is that the team is trying different things but that if someone does not go hard or play hard none of it matters. He explained that when three players play extremely hard and execute the gameplan and scout but two do not that it is not going to be good, but collectively how wins and losses are determined is by the group effort.
In this game, Bella Perkins dressed and participated in pregame and halftime warmups, but did not play. Perkins sat at the bench of the bench and engaged with those on the floor but never was her name called. Raeven Boswell on the other hand had her name called as she played a minute.
“No matter who we play I expect us to hit the floor with a sense of urgency, pride and a want to off the charts,” Verdi determined. “For whatever reason we were flat tonight, we were disinterested, and you can’t be that way. I’m searching for players to step up, to show me they’re ready to take somebody else’s minutes. There’s no guarantees here. The fact I have to coach effort is concerning and we have to figure that out as a team.”
Some of Verdi’s searching has been making changes to the starting lineup as Battle and Gabby Hutcherson heard their names called with the starting five Thursday night.
Verdi desires to reward the players who show up to practice and work hard, stating if the so-called best players are not practicing that they will sit and that the true best players should be those who are the hardest working.
A lot of the habits witnessed in practice are the same things that have been seen on the floor.
“Great teams show up the same way each and every single day and great players do the same thing,” explained Verdi. “Once you figure out how to be consistent, that’s when you start changing the program, you start winning games. That’s the part we have to figure out as a team.”
ACC play starts Sunday afternoon against #14 Virginia Tech and the understanding as the calendar turns is that play such as Thursday cannot happen.
“It definitely starts tomorrow, everyone has to be there,” Battle concluded. “We can’t be one foot in, one foot out, so we have to just lock in and be prideful have the want to and effort every single day. It can’t be one day we’re doing this, the next day we’re off and keep going back and forth. We definitely have to lock in, and it starts tomorrow.”
