PITTSBURGH — Jeff Capel’s Pitt Panthers handed Notre Dame its sixth-straight loss on Saturday night behind big performances from Bub Carrington, Blake Hinson, and Ishmael Leggett.
The game started slowly, with Pitt struggling to make shots and Notre Dame failing to pull away. While Notre Dame sent double teams towards Blake Hinson, the rest of the Panthers couldn’t catch fire offensively. Pitt started the game just 4-17 from the field, missed each of its first nine three-point attempts, and only scored ten points in the first 15 minutes of the game.
That cold streak wouldn’t last for long.
The Panthers snapped out of their ice-cold shooting ways in the final five minutes, taking an 18-5 run into the halftime break. The run included buckets from Ishmael Leggett, Hinson, and Bub Carrington. Carrington hit two threes in a row to give Pitt the 21-19 lead with more than three minutes to go in the half, and shortly after, Hinson capped off the half for the Panthers with back-to-back threes of his own to extend the Panther lead to six heading into the break.
In the second half, Notre Dame’s Markus Burton tied the game at 30 less than two minutes into the frame. However, the Panthers never let that happen again.
Pitt quickly built its lead as high as nine points with early buckets from Carrington, Hinson, and a three from Zack Austin. After four more Notre Dame points, the Panthers amassed their strongest lead of the night with a 7-0 run, extending the margin to 12 points with two buckets from Leggett and a three from freshman Jaland Lowe.
Minutes later, Guillermo Diaz-Graham joined in on the three-point barrage with a triple of his own, building Pitt’s lead to a game-high 15.
Throughout the rest of the half, the Panthers earned loud buckets from Federiko Federiko and Hinson to keep the lead over the Irish comfortable. Pitt closed out the win with a layup from Lowe and a slam from Will Jeffress in the final two minutes. Lowe dribbled out the clock as Pitt won 70-60.
Hinson finished as Pitt’s leading scorer with 17 points on 4-for-6 shooting from three-point range. Carrington followed with 16 points on 5-for-10 shooting overall. The Baltimore native played just 20 minutes and fouled out in the win. Leggett added 12 points for the Panthers, and Lowe finished with a team-high five assists to go along with 11 points.
With the win, Pitt advanced to 14-8 overall and 5-6 in ACC play, while the Fighting Irish dropped to 7-15 overall and 2-9 in league play.
Pitt now travels to Raleigh, North Carolina to take on NC State on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
They won. But, they dropped from 66 to 69 in Kenpom.
Can’t start poorly against good teams and expect to win but I’ll take a win anyway. H2P!
Another win. 4 out of 5 now. They played a really good second half. All 3 guards played well. Nice to see Bub and Jaland Lowe clicking together. Another win means no posts from the doomsday man Radich and his sidekick Jane that always has a complaint, too.
Agreed, lot of new players this year…probably took a few games to get adjusted to ACC level play. Not a perfect game last night, but the team did what was needed to get the win.
I KNOW that they are BOTH watching. Tough to troll when there is NOTHING to troll about.
It’s pretty funny that I’m residing in your collective feeble minds……..LOL
You really aren’t. Speaking for myself I just think it is funny that you only post a comment on a loss or something bad, but never a win or anything good.
NOT!!! Enjoyed your absence. Its GREAT to hear from people who actually KNOW something about basketball
LOL……….