Jeff Capel: "We're Not Taking This Win For Granted"
Pitt head coach Jeff Capel met with the media following the Panthers’ 67-64 win over NC State Wednesday evening.
NOTE: Click on the video in the player above to watch Capel’s interview.
Opening Statement
First and foremost, we’re not taking this win for granted. We beat a really good team, a team that's very good in this building, and we did it with toughness, grit, and all of those things. We got off to a really good start offensively and defensively. We had a stretch there in the first half where we went minutes without scoring, and I think we did a really great job closing the half, a really good job starting the second half. Then, their defensive intensity, pressure, and all those things picked up. They have a really good team, man. [D.J.] Burns is a load down low. [D.J.] Horne can really, really score, but our guys made so many tough plays down the stretch. When there’s an under-four timeout, and it’s a tie game, we talked about getting three stops. Blake [Hinson] stepped up and made free throws, and Federiko [Federiko] did an unbelievable job on Burns when we got a stop. We got an under out-of-bounds, and we got some great looks, but we missed them, but the fact that we kept the play alive and then ended with Ish [Leggett] in the offensive rebounds and scoring. So many guys stepped up and made plays. It was a big time performance by us.
On the first half strategy...
We wanted to put them in ball-screen. We wanted to put Burns in ball screen. We wanted to attack. We wanted to wear him out. We tried to run him as much as we possibly could and just put him into as many ball screens as we could, hopefully to get into his legs a little bit because he's a very difficult guy to guard when they’ve got the ball offensively. I thought Jaland [Lowe] and Blake made some really great reads off the ball screen. We were able to attack and to get downhill, so that was part of the game plan.
On the second half and feeling like the game got away from them...
No. I thought their pressure picked up. They made some adjustments defensively. They started blitzing our ball screens and being a little more aggressive, but I don’t think it was anything we did. We got some good looks. We didn’t make some shots.