Syracuse (12-6, 1-4 Atlantic Coast) tips off against Pittsburgh (8-10, 0-5) on Tuesday at 9 p.m. in the Carrier Dome. The Orange is riding a season-long four-game losing streak while the Panthers are winless in the ACC and haven’t played a game closer than 14 points. Adding to the already-struggling squad’s worries: They just lost one of its best players for the season in senior forward Ryan Luther. The Daily Orange spoke with the Post-Gazette’s Craig Meyer, and he was not bullish on Pitt’s odds in this game:

The Daily Orange: This team is almost entirely remade from last season. What’s different about this Pitt team than in years past? What’s its identity now?

Craig Meyer: This Pitt team is different from the ones in years past in virtually every way. The first, and most obvious, is that it’s not particularly good, which is a pretty sharp and severe break from most of this century, when Pitt was regularly a top-25 team.

In those years, the Panthers were one of the top developmental programs in college basketball, bringing in players through a system in which they didn’t play all that much as a freshman before seeing their role on the team gradually increase to the point they were regular contributors or even stars by the time they were juniors or seniors. It was like an assembly line and for a program like Pitt that doesn’t often attract five-star talent, it was a perfect model.

That has rapidly changed the past couple of years. Pitt lost four seniors from last season’s team — all of whom started — saw five players transfer and another was dismissed from the program. Replacing them are seven freshmen and two junior-college transfers, as well as a graduate transfer who is averaging about two points per game through 18 games. The identity of this team, if nothing else, is its youth. And, unfortunately for the Panthers, being defined by that youth also means being defined by a lot of what comes with that youth, especially since only one of their seven freshmen was more than a three-star recruit.

The D.O.: The Panthers are 0-5 in ACC play and the team’s closest loss was by 14 points. What has been the biggest liability? What strengths has this team tried to build on?

C.M.: There’s a lot that has plagued them. Their offense has been putrid for almost the entirety of ACC play. They’re 235th of 351 Division I teams in adjusted offensive efficiency, by far the worst mark in the ACC, with only Georgia Tech within 125 spots of them on that ranking.

They’re not particularly good defensively, either, especially down low. That’s probably their biggest liability at this point, as senior forward Ryan Luther is out for the remainder of the season with a foot injury. In the month the team has been without him, it has really struggled to generate any kind of offense from the five position or stop opponents in any meaningful way.

The ease with which some teams get to the basket, even with small guards like Miami’s Chris Lykes (all 5-7 of him), is astonishing. If they have a strength, it’s probably their ability to get to the free-throw line, which is incredibly helpful for a team that has trouble creating offense. And while they’re not a great 3-point shooting team (241st in Division I at 33.4 percent) their offense is built largely around 3s, so if they get hot as they did against Virginia Tech, they could potentially be a problem.

The D.O.: Pitt head coach Kevin Stallings made national headlines when he mocked Louisville’s recruiting scandal on Jan. 2, telling the UofL crowd at the end of a big loss, “At least we didn’t pay our kids $100K.” What has been the fallout of that — if any?

C.M.: There hasn’t been too much fallout from it, aside from the initial furor that surrounded it. Somewhat surprisingly to me, he received a good deal of praise locally in Pittsburgh for doing so (not from the athletic department, which didn’t make any kind of public comment on it). By the time games started the following night, the story had largely faded into the background until it came out about 24 hours later that a Louisville media member got a text from Rick Pitino referring to Stallings as a “jackass.”

I can understand in some ways why Stallings reacted the way he did. It’s been a really difficult season for him, his family was sitting behind the team’s bench as Stallings and his team were being heckled, and his brother, who was the best man at his wedding, was being buried the next day after dying over the holidays.

What he said also wasn’t that reckless, as Louisville, along with Adidas, did offer Brian Bowen and his family $100,000. I don’t think the question is over the accuracy of what he said, though. It’s whether a Division I coach should be saying something like that.

The D.O.: Which team wins and why?

C.M.: I’ll go with Syracuse. I think the experience of going into a 30-something-thousand seat arena that notoriously affects the depth perception of visiting shooters would have been difficult enough for this young team anyway, but without Luther and given the way they have played of late, most recently losing by 15 to what might be the second-worst ACC team in Georgia Tech, they don’t stand much, if any, chance.

Opposing bigs have had a field day against Pitt in Luther’s absence and I don’t see Oshae Brissett being any different. Given his presence and the way Syracuse blocks shots, I don’t see Pitt getting anything offensively near the basket and they’re not nearly good enough of a shooting team to make up for that void in points.

The D.O.: What didn’t we ask that Syracuse fans should be thinking about for the game?

C.M.: If I had to pick one thing, it’s how different Pitt will function offensively against Syracuse without Luther. If they had him, I think they would have been able to do a lot of inside-out action with him, bringing him up to the high post and have him try to dissect the Orange’s defense from there.

As a smart, experienced player with a good outside shot for a 6-foot-9 big, he would have been capable of doing that and I would have given Pitt much more of a chance to win. Without him, Pitt doesn’t have anything close to that, which makes me think they’re mostly going to try to work it around the perimeter and maybe try some dribble penetration with freshman point guard Marcus Carr, who is averaging more than three turnovers per game on the season.

Published on January 15, 2018 at 9:59 pm

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