Jackets' struggles continue with tough showing in home loss to Pitt

Georgia Tech’s tough times on the hardwood continued on Tuesday night as the Jackets got behind big in the first half and could never truly fight back into the game in an 89-66 loss to Pittsburgh, who was previously winless in ACC play.

Jackets’ head coach Damon Stoudamire said it was really simple to him as far as what he saw in the game and that was a Pitt team that played harder and more desperate than his.

“Give Pitt credit. They came out, and they were the way more desperate team,” said Stoudamire after the loss. “They played hard. They played really hard. They played aggressive. And I just didn’t think from the jump we matched their energy. Why is a great question. We’ve had some good practices. We had good shootaround, but sometimes it happens that way.

“There’s not a whole lot we can take from this game in terms of what we did well, but we’ve got just got to do better and we’ve got to respond. The one thing that we can take from this game is what Pitt was, and we’ve got to be a desperate team. From that standpoint, I didn’t think we played hard enough to beat them. That wasn’t the team I’ve seen all year out there this evening.”

Pitt grabbed control early in the first half, jumping out to a 10-2 lead and steadily increased it throughout the first 20 minutes. The Panthers (8-9, 1-3 ACC) led 18-8 at the Under 12 timeout, 27-15 at the Under 8, 37-22 at the Under 4 and held their biggest lead of the half as the teams went to the break with a 45-26 advantage. Stoudamire said it continued a trend of his team not getting off to a strong start, and he will look to figure out what to change to turn that around.

“You’ve got to look at some different things, but the group of five (starters) collectively hasn’t played with a lot of energy so you’ve got to evaluate everything at this point from the standpoint of what’s going to help us,” said Stoudamire. “The crazy thing about it is we’ve gotten off to bad starts but we’ve been able to come back, and I think the last four minutes of the half has killed us just as much as the first four minutes of the game in certain respects. But tonight we weren’t good in between so the game gets away from you, and you can’t keep playing from a deficit like that. That’s no way to play. We’ve got to start games better. It comes with the energy that we have. It comes with the pace you play with offensively, and you’ve got to play hard. That’s the one thing we didn’t do. We didn’t match their energy. Again, watching them standing there, they played harder than us. They did.”

The second half had much of the same with Pitt extending the lead to as many as 26. Georgia Tech (10-8, 1-4 ACC) never got the deficit under 16 points with that coming at 68-52 with 8:30 left on the clock.

Pitt was led by Brandin Cummings who scored 23 points off the bench for the game high. Barry Dunning Jr. added 17 points and 17 rebounds, and Nojus Indrusaitis scored 16, including four 3-pointers.

Also finishing in double figures for the Panthers were Cameron Corhen with 15 and Roman Siulepa with 11. Siulepa added eight rebounds, and Damarco Minor dished out seven assists.

Kam Craft had one of his better games as a Jacket, leading the team in scoring with 14 points, including four makes from beyond the arc. Baye Ndongo added 12 points and eight rebounds, and Kowacie Reeves Jr. and Chas Kelley III rounded out the double figure scorers for the Jackets with 11 apiece.

Tech shot 40 percent from the field as a team but were hurt by 15 turnovers while Pitt shot 53.1 percent overall and made 11 3-pointers while holding their own in the rebounding department as the Jackets had just one more than the visitors at 35-34.

Georgia Tech will look to get back on track on Saturday, but another tough challenge awaits as the Jackets head to Raleigh to take on ACC foe NC State for a noon tip-off. Tech then finishes off the month of January with a home matchup vs. Clemson on Jan. 24 at noon, a trip to Virginia Tech on Jan. 27 for an 8 p.m. tip and a home date with North Carolina on Jan. 31 at 2 p.m.

“I can’t pinpoint it (what is going wrong right now), but I do there is a lot of season and so there’s optimism my way,” said Stoudamire. “It doesn’t feel like that right now, but you’ve got to keep pushing. The one thing that we’ll do is we’ll keep fighting. The first thing in times you’ve got to do and it’s so cliche I don’t want to say it like that, but you’ve got to find guys that just want to play hard. Tonight I just didn’t think we played hard enough. Standing on the sideline and watching the game, they just played harder than us. They played really desperate. We’ve got to become that team. We can’t be a group that makes excuses. We’ve got to be coachable when we don’t want to be coached.

“Tough times are times when you see what people are made of. So I think we do have a lot left in the tank, and I think it’s too early to look at it any other way but we’ve got work to do.”

Mouhamed Sylla missed the game for the Jackets with a lower leg injury as he was in a medical boot on the bench. He had missed several games in a row before playing briefly at Miami this past Saturday. No timeline for his return was available after the game on Tuesday.

Pitt returns home to host Louisville at 8 p.m. looking for a second straight ACC win.