Women’s basketball: Panthers get rolled by No. 4 UConn

The outcome of the Pitt women’s basketball game against No. 4 Connecticut was never in… The outcome of the Pitt women’s basketball game against No. 4 Connecticut was never in question.

Pitt fell easily, 86-37.

How Pitt would respond to the adversity made for the story.

In the first four minutes of play, Pitt had five turnovers, allowing the Huskies to build their advantage early.

The Huskies (25-3, 12-3) were sharp early on, despite coming off an upset loss at the hands of St. John’s.

“Obviously there is a reason they’re [in] the top three in the country,” head coach Agnus Berenato said. “Probably the worst time to play them is after an upset win.”

The score was tied once at 2-2 after Marquel Davis made a jumper with 17:46 to go in the first half. From there, the Panthers (8-19, 0-14) played catch up.

Brianna Kiesel weaved left and weaved right as she desperately tried to lose her defender, who seemed attached at the hip. The scene was emblematic of UConn’s suffocation of Pitt in the first half.

“They jumped on us quickly,” Kiesel said. “We didn’t handle the press as well as I thought we could, but we did alright.”

The loss was Pitt’s 13th straight, making the current stretch the worst in the program’s history.

Previously, the worst league finish the Pitt women’s team has had in the Big East era was a 1-5 record during the ’85-’86 season.

The 10 points the Panthers managed in the first half were the fewest a team has scored in a half during Berenato’s tenure.

“Our confidence was so blown away, there was no saying we were going to score 10 points in the second half,” Berenato said.

Sophomore Asia Logan, after playing just one minute in Pitt’s last game, played four minutes and scored two points as she continues to work her way back from a shoulder injury.

Freshman Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis had a game-high 23 points for UConn, while Tiffany Hayes and Bria Hartley also finished in double figures, scoring 13 and 10 points, respectively.

The Panthers broke double digits on a basket by Logan with 3:15 left to go before the break.

They wouldn’t score the rest of the half, which ended 48-10.

Pitt struggled to score for the entirety of the game, shooting just 24 percent from the field, barely managing to eclipse the team’s season low of 23.7 percent.

The Panthers tied their season low for points scored with 37, which was also their final tally against Hampton in their first game of the season.

Despite the game moving out of reach early, freshman walk-on Brianna Brizzi failed to see the court.

In the second half, Kiesel took exception to UConn’s continued efforts offensively. After a 3-pointer that made the score 61-16, Kiesel looked over at the UConn bench and, with a few words, let them know how she felt about it.

“He really took it easy on us,” Kiesel said.

“I thought Bri was tremendous in the second half,” Berenato said. “She took on leadership responsibility.”

When UConn let up on the scoring in the second half, Kiesel visibly disagreed with the notion, shaking her head.

“We could’ve been like Notre Dame and come out here and run the score up, shot threes the whole game and try to get 120,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “But that’s not the point.”

After evening the score at 2-2, Pitt went nearly 11 and a half minutes without scoring its next field goal. By that point, UConn had taken a stranglehold on the game, 31-8. To keep the team from imploding further, Berenato implemented a technique that the team used after the Notre Dame loss: Just forget about it. The half was broken up into four-minute quarters, with Berenato updating the team on how it was doing during timeouts.

“Coach B. saying don’t look at the score, it really helped,” Kiesel said. “It may not have changed the outcome of the game, but it helped our morale.”

The approach seemed to have an effect, as the score in the second half was not as lopsided as in the first — 38-27 UConn.

“Second half we responded better than the first half,” Berenato said. “First half we were shell shocked, we were docile. I don’t even know who that was.”

The play of freshman point guard Kiesel was one of the few positives Pitt can take away from Tuesday night’s drubbing. She led the team with 15 points, all of which came in the second half. Redshirt sophomore Ashlee Anderson had 10 points.

“Obviously, they beat us by a hefty amount,” Kiesel said. “But we still played hard in the second half.”

The ever-present issue of turnovers reared its ugly head once again, as Pitt committed 21. But on a positive note, the team settled down in the second half, giving the ball away just 7 times after turning it over 14 times in the first.

The pressure is now on the Panthers to avoid the distinction of being the first Berenato team to fail to win at least two games in Big East play.

Eager to put the UConn game behind them, the Panthers look toward their next game against fellow cellar dweller Seton Hall — who also hasn’t won a game in the Big East — on Saturday. It is the team’s last home game of the season.