In hindsight, the only real shock from the Syracuse game on Saturday was how overwhelming that barrage was in the first half. That Pitt would go out and not shoot as well. That their defensive effort was lacking (to say the least). That they would be disjointed and appear to come unglued.

Well, all of that we saw a little over a month ago. Right after a big road win over Maryland. Pitt followed it up with a complete falling apart against Duquesne. Producing their worst offensive output of the season and a defense that barely tried. Something we could kind of sort of paper over with Jamel Artis’ suspension (at least as far as the scoring goes).

Guess what? After the big win over Virginia, Pitt repeated history and had their second worst offensive output of the season.

The bright side, I guess was that since Pitt was destroyed so early in the game, you could turn the TV off or go to another game without worry. No, waiting for the last minute with this crushing defeat.

Syracuse came out with a lot more energy from the opening tip. They may have played one of their best games of the season. Certainly, that first half was their best 20 minutes of the season. They were aggressive, not passive in their 2-3 zone. Not conceding anything within 23 feet of the basket. They swiped at the ball, collapsed inside. Then there was the offense.They were taking and making shots from everywhere. And in that respect, you can chalk it up to “just one of those games.”

A review of the film from Saturday’s loss showed that seven of Syracuse’s 14 made 3s were open. Two of those five open looks, though, came largely because of how far beyond the arc an Orange player was. Three of its 3s were somewhat contested, with a Pitt defender lunging at them and getting a hand in their face, and four were closely contested.

Six of those 3s came in a nearly nine-minute span in the first half in which Syracuse went on a 22-0 run to turn a 14-8 game into a 36-8 laugher. It was, in the moment and with the benefit of hindsight, the moment the game was over.

There was little Pitt’s defense, for all of its problems, could do about it.

Don’t think, you needed hindsight to realize the game was over at that point.

At the same time, this performance by Pitt was just an almost comical exaggeration of their defensive issues. The disinterest in defense, in general. The sloppy play that increased as shots didn’t fall in the first half.

“Our defensive play and defensive pride has to go up a few notches if we’re going to be the kind of team we want to be,” the Panthers’ first-year coach said after the game Saturday. “We work on defense enough and we’ve practiced defense just like everybody else has. We haven’t yet developed the amount of defensive pride we need. We have pride in our offense and we have pride in scoring points, but we don’t have a collective pride in our defense yet.”

As of Sunday afternoon, Pitt was 141st among 351 Division I teams in adjusted defensive efficiency, which measures a team’s defensive play separate from the pace at which it plays (teams that play faster give up more possessions to their opponent and, because of that, more points). That mark is last among ACC teams, with lowly Boston College the next-closest squad at 116.

Some of those struggles, at least to Stallings, come down not to skill, but desire.

“We like offense,” he said. “We’ve got guys who like offense. Until we like defense enough, we’re going to have days where we struggle to stop people because there are some really good players in this league and we saw several of them today.”

For all the work Stallings and the staff has been doing at trying to keep Pitt players engaged on defense and give them any advantage against opponents — such as the regularly shifting of defenses between zone, man and match-up — the effort has not matched. This, of course, has been the situation with this group for a few years.