Okay, everyone getting a little perspective and breathing just a touch easier. It’s rough, I know. Worst loss ever at the Pete. The worst home loss in 6 years.

“I didn’t recognize that team to start,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “It’s not a good feeling right now.”

…

“It was just a bad day,” senior center Aaron Gray said. “It’s going to happen sometimes. The true test will be how we respond.”

…

“There were multiple reasons we lost this game,” Gray said. “If we play like that, we will lose every game.”

I still can’t believe how abysmal Pitt was in just about every facet, and every individual. Well, Tyrell Biggs went 4-4 from the free throw line for about the only positive surprise.

The Pitt players were frustrated, angry and embarrassed — as you would expect. Aaron Gray was the only player who was willing to talk with the media after the game. You can blame your favorite player to hate or the coach or whatever. In this game, it was the ultimate team loss. A complete team effort.
On the bright side, as bad as the game was, it still only counted as one loss.

The coaching staff will have a little more hard evidence to employ as a teaching tool, particularly as it relates to handling full-court pressure and attacking a zone.

Practices will likely become a little more spirited than they might have been, especially considering the Panthers had been less than themselves in getting out-rebounded by eight but still beating Providence, 74-68, on Saturday.

And the players’ pride has clearly been challenged now that a second conference game has been surrendered at home.

Ron Cook  who had been writing laudatory piece after laudatory piece for the last couple of weeks is now concerned.

But Pitt couldn’t stop Louisville’s offense.

That probably was most depressing.

A program known for its tough man-to-man defense was embarrassed by the more athletic Cardinals.

Again, it was a quickness issue.

If you really want something to worry about Pitt at tournament time, worry about that speed thing.

It wasn’t just Gray, who has been known to struggle with mobile big men. Louisville’s David Padgett and Derrick Caracter ate him up inside, but Gray was hardly the only Pitt player who was a step slow. Caracter blew by Levon Kendall for a layup. Terrence Williams flew past Levance Fields and Keith Benjamin on separate occasions. Brandon Jenkins left Fields and Antonio Graves in the dust on his way to an uncontested layups.

We’ve all known that Pitt is not a team with great quickness. I hardly think that’s a revelation.
There are ways to address this, which Pitt had done in terms of moving the ball, staying in position on defense and just not getting rattled. Even in the Marquette game — which Louisville cited as the template — Pitt adjusted to it and made better decisions and execution. There was none of that last night. They were flustered, and then frustrated. They never got settled. Disjointed doesn’t even begin to describe it.
On the flip side, you have to give credit to Louisville. As I wrote later, they finally got everything together in one game. They played their finest game in two years.

“When the ball goes inside, they’re very smart in finding their shooters,” Pitino said. “Once it went inside, we weren’t going to let them go outside to the shooters.

“We played zone and man, and when the ball went inside the foul line, we were just going to match up. We also used some 3-2 zone that we haven’t played much this year.”

The end of the game featured something Louisville fans hadn’t seen in a couple of years: players smiling and laughing while taking down a ranked team. That might have been the signature moment of this night.

“That’s the best win we’ve had in a couple of years,” Padgett said. “We knew coming in that if we won this game and did well our last four games, it would be pretty hard to overlook us (for the NCAA Tournament). This is the kind of win that can turn our season around.”

It was the big win they needed to get themselves solidly in the discussion for an NCAA Tournament bid.

Now, Pitt needs to respond the rest of the way.