By Hunt Palmer
THE STORY: My eyes tell me LSU was beaten by a better team on Friday afternoon. That Pittsburgh team has smoked every opponent in its path early on, and LSU was next.
It felt like Pittsburgh controlled the action in the first half, but a late 8-2 run actually gave LSU the lead at halftime. LSU promptly came out and missed 12 consecutive shots to allow the Panthers to build a 12-point lead.
Ultimately, Jordan Sears and Cam Carter shot the ball poorly. When that happens, LSU may struggle to score. Sears compounded his poor shooting with six turnovers. Add all of that together, and the Tigers don’t have much of a chance.
I love Vyctorius Miller’s poise and confidence to bury back-to-back threes that cut the lead to five with six minutes to go. He’s growing into a scoring role, and that’s a welcome sight. If there are going to be days where Carter and Sears struggle, another backcourt scoring threat needs to emerge, and that is not going to be Dji Bailey. That’s not his game.
LSU’s three-point shooting continues to struggle, and that’s a bit of a surprise to me. It’s hard to win in this era of basketball without shooting it well from deep. Perhaps LSU misses Tyrell Ward in that capacity, but what Miller has given the last two weeks offsets that to a degree. And there’s certainly more versatility in Miller’s scoring ability than Ward’s.
I’ve said and written this a bunch. LSU doesn’t need to win them all in November and December. They just need to pick a few off. They got one at Kansas State. They got beat in this one. I’m confident this will be a Quadrant 1 loss, because I really do think Jeff Capel has an excellent Pitt team.
Now LSU gets a UCF squad that already beat Texas A&M. The Knights lost 86-70 to Wisconsin on Friday. That game will be on Sunday at 2:00 central time.
At this point we do not have any information on Daimion Collins’s injury. He left the game after a missed dunk attempt midway through the first half. He was favoring his right shoulder. He was really playing good basketball early in the season. His loss would be disappointing.
THE STATS: Cam Carter and Jordan Sears combined to go 5-for-20 from the floor and 1-for-9 from three. They scored 16 points and turned the ball over eight times, six by Sears.
LSU shot 5-for-21 from three-point range.
Pitt shot 64% from the floor and made 16-of-18 free throws. That resulted in 47 points after the break.
Jaland Lowe scored 19 of his 22 in the second half.
After missing 13 straight shots from the final shot of the first half through the 13:17 mark of the second half, LSU made 10-of-12 over the next nine minutes.
Corey Chest led LSU in rebounding with eight in 20 minutes.
Pitt played Lowe and Ishmael Leggett all 40 minutes.
LSU only led the game for 42 seconds total.
