Pitt’s formulaic play barely topples FSU, 74-72

Nineteen games into the season, the Pitt men’s basketball team is a team that wins with offense and trips up when it can’t find rhythm on that end.

On Saturday, the Panthers lived up to that reputation again with a wobbly win over Florida State on the road. The 74-72 win wasn’t pretty — a better-executed Pitt offense would have consistently found open shots off passes. 

Instead, the latter half of the game was the gut-it-out performance that head coach Jamie Dixon had been waiting for.

“We’ve won a lot of games, but we needed to win a game like this,” Dixon said. “We’ve battled back, but then we haven’t finished it at the end. This was good for us to come back. We haven’t had a lot of those.”

Dixon is right: His team hadn’t been previously successful in overcoming halftime deficits. Against Purdue, Louisville and North Carolina State, Pitt’s offense didn’t execute early, which led to losses.

Pitt appeared to be on a similar path Saturday when it trailed 43-33 at halftime. On paper, 33 points doesn’t seem like a struggling offense — but in person, it was clear that the Panthers couldn’t execute at a level to match the Seminoles.

Its star forwards and two leading scorers — Michael Young and Jamel Artis — struggled, so the team had to rely on 3-pointers. Pitt guard Sterling Smith finished with 16 points and four threes.

Pitt couldn’t contain Florida State’s offense, which repeatedly ran up and down on the Panthers’ defense, finding easy shots at the rim. If the team’s previous 18 games were any indication, Pitt seemed headed for a loss.

It fit the formula, after all, where lack of success offensively leads to a domino effect on the defensive end. When this team can’t score, it seems to get frustrated, which forces poor defense.

So often, games hinge on a team’s confidence, and Pitt’s self-worth lies in its ability to score.

After the half, though, Pitt went off the script. The team regrouped and started executing offensively. The Panthers outscored Florida State 41-29 in the second half.

A large part of its success came from behind the arc, as Pitt finished 10 of 23 from three on the game. Artis and James Robinson were both big parts of that success, as the two combined with Smith racked up nine threes.

With 33 seconds left in the half, Artis hit arguably the most important shot of the game to give Pitt a 70-67 lead, its first lead of the second half.

The defense wasn’t stellar in the second half — many of Florida State’s 16 turnovers were unforced — but it did enough to keep the Seminoles at bay until Pitt’s last-ditch offensive efforts came through for the win.

Pitt is now 16-0 when it scores 70 points — a fitting statistic for a team that depends on its offensive success to maintain any semblance of a defense.

But this observation might not go over well with Dixon, who consistently preaches defense and rebounding as the keys to winning.

After the game, Dixon proclaimed that Pitt is a “team in the making.” Whether that means the Panthers are going to eventually come out with a solid defense is yet to be seen.

For now, the Panthers will likely stick to their blueprint gameplay again on Wednesday against Clemson.