A ruler is a measuring stick. The Pitt basketball team is not. The Panthers certainly could have been viewed that way on their Wednesday night visit to Allstate Arena, where DePaul got a chance to see how it matched up against one of the nation’s best.
But the better way to regard them is as an example, as a stark testament to how you go about running off with an affair that was hardly a lock. For make no mistake about it, this was a game the Blue Demons could have won. It was also a game that would have glistened on its tournament resume come March, which means they should have gone after it with all the avidity of a politician on the stump.
They didn’t. They instead spit in the eye of a grand opportunity, treated it as if it were little more than a summer outing at the playground and moseyed carelessly through much of their 59-49 loss to the seventh-ranked Panthers.
“Lazy.” That is the word guard Sammy Mejia used to describe their offense, and that was not the only revelatory utterance he made.
“We played to their game,” he also said.
“We didn’t pick up our intensity,” he further said.
“For some reason we weren’t the team we were the last month,” he finally said.
Minutes later, sitting on the platform Mejia just exited, Panthers coach Jamie Dixon offered words of a different tone and they screamed out all the difference in the game just ended.
“It was,” he said speaking of his team, “a very efficient and solid, smart game all the way through. We just came out and did what we wanted to do from the jump offensively and defensively. It was a testament to our guys and our focus.”
Does that define how you go about your business, I asked him later in a hallway.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “And I guess never being satisfied might be thrown in there too. We were smart today, but I think we can get smarter.”
How do you get a team to play with that sense of urgency, I asked.
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“It’s practice,” Dixon said. “You don’t do it in a day. You don’t do it for a play. It has to be a constant battle and when [a player’s] not ready to perform, ready to practice, you can’t allow it. A sense of urgency is not a one-day thing.”
It is also not a virtue fully embraced yet by these Blue Demons, which goes a long way in explaining both their inconsistency and their tepid performance against Pitt.
With urgency a team is driven to be, in Dixon’s words, efficient and solid, smart and focused. Without it a team forgets the simple truth that every possession is important and produces these snapshots that show the way to defeat:
Forward Wilson Chandler, with no one harassing him, simply loses the ball while dribbling near midcourt, a turnover that leads to a dunk by Panthers guard Keith Benjamin. Center Wesley Green, after grabbing an offensive rebound, misses a layup even though no one is defending against him. Guard Jabari Currie, handling on a 3-on-2 break, makes a bad pass and turns the ball over. Mejia, after posting his smaller defender, collects a pass and misses a layup.
All of those miscues happened in the maelstrom of the game, which means they were ignored by many and hardly got the attention given a missed shot at the buzzer. But each symbolized the Blue Demons’ lack of attention, which is married to lack of urgency, and each contributed to their loss in a game they certainly could have won.
“The worst thing about it is knowing if we played the way we normally play, we would have had a chance to win,” Mejia admitted. “That’s what’s heartbreaking about all this. We know our group of guys and the talent we have and the way we’ve been playing, we can compete against any team. Our biggest struggle right now is bringing the same mentality and the same attitude and the same commitment each and every day. You can’t take any time off.”
I couldn’t have said it any better myself.
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