Clearly, I underestimated the ability of this young Pitt basketball team to play down to the level of its competition.

Pitt may have won four in a row, but there is an inconsistency even in these wins, as this one and making it past High Point illustrated. Whether it is effort, coaching, youth and/or talent.

Mount St. Mary’s was as close to assuming a gimmee even for Pitt this year. The Mountaineers are the worst team on Pitt’s schedule to this point. Yet, Pitt gave them a huge opportunity to get the win.

Coach Kevin Stallings took the bullet mostly for this one.

“I guess I’m a little bit disappointed in our performance, but I’m really more disappointed in my coaching,” he said. “I could tell before the game I didn’t have (players) where they needed to be.”

Stallings said his young team must play with an edge — a sharpness, an air of confidence — to survive this season.

“It wasn’t that we didn’t play hard. We played hard,” he said. “We just weren’t on edge. We had an edge Friday night (in a a victory against Duquesne), and it didn’t let up for 40 minutes.”

Tuesday night, after scoring the game’s first seven points and taking a 31-24 lead into intermission, Pitt’s defense fell apart in the second half.

“I thought we did do well defensively in stretches, but I thought the second half was abysmal,” he said.
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“We just weren’t locked in defensively in the second half, and I take responsibility for that,” Stallings said.

Mount St. Mary’s came into the game shooting just over 31% on 3s. Against Pitt, they were close to 50% (13-27) as Pitt’s defense was slow to react to ball movement and shooters were consistently getting wide open looks from outside.

Some of that was by virtue of their jitterbug of a guard, Junior Robinson. Despite being only 5-5, he was all over the court and constantly driving to the basket with great success. Marcus Carr has many positive qualities but defense at this point is not one of them, as he was unable to keep Robinson in front of him most of the game.

Carr is a wonderful talent at point guard. He has a strong offensive game, and has already embraced a leadership role. That said, his defense and disturbing sloppiness with the ball are areas of concern — and where he desperately needs to improve.

Ryan Luther had a bad offensive game, but did do the one thing he should in that situation. Get after the ball. He grabbed 16 rebounds including 8 on the offensive side.

There was, as we have seen, lots to like on the offensive side of things. Shamiel Stevenson was right there with Carr for offensive production. Kham Davis is rounding into form with shooting to match the excitement coaches and even beat writers expressed about him.

But the defensive lapses. Oh, those were hard to watch as Pitt frittered away a 15 point lead with 9 minutes left in the second half.

Their defense, like their team as a whole, stepped up when it needed to, helping it avoid what would have been a crushing loss for a team that seemingly had figured out some of its woes.

Still, that edge that Stallings believed his team lacked was interpreted differently by some of his players, namely junior wing Jared Wilson-Frame, who believed the defensive struggles in the second half were due to a lack of effort.

“I think we just have to mentally tell ourselves to keep it consistent,” Wilson-Frame said. “When we’re trying and we’re actually locked in and mentally focused, there’s no turning back from it. Nobody really gets out of it. But when a couple of people do, it’s a whole team thing. It’s really all of us staying in it together.”

Overconfidence should never be an issue with this team.