Louisville lost 89-86 to Pitt in overtime Wednesday night, breaking a stretch of a wins against the Panthers. What happened? Here are three things you need to know.

Louisville has had a bad habit in recent weeks of starting slow. They came from behind to beat Robert Morris, they came from 15 points down to beat Miami the other night and they got down by double-digits to Pitt Wednesday night as well.

“Bad night for our team," Louisville coach Chris Mack said. "I thought Jeff (Capel)'s guys were a lot harder-playing than our team. I thought that maybe the whooping they took over the weekend [against North Carolina] fueled them. They came out and played a lot harder than we did. The backcourt for Pitt was phenomenal. [The freshmen] had their way with us. Whether we switch, whether we hard-hedge, whether we played zone—our defense was deplorable. Until our team plays with a little more dirt under its fingernails instead of playing the way we did tonight defensively, then we’ll get more (butt)-kicking’s in this league.”

One major issue in the first 10 minutes was Louisville turning the ball over. The Cardinals had seven turnovers in the first 10 minutes and ended the game with 18 turnovers, a staggering 22 percent turnover rate.

“We haven’t been a high-turnover team," Mack said. "I would also say we haven’t played a ton of true road games that teams pressure a lot. Seton Hall did a little bit; Indiana’s not an out-in-the-passing-lane, pressure-the-ball type of team. Pitt was; we talked about it. But talking isn’t teaching. We turned the ball over way too much. We have some guys that are inexperienced and hopefully they learned a hard lesson here tonight.”

While Louisville's three-point percentage (7 of 28) contributed to the loss, Louisville lost this game on the defensive end. The Cardinals couldn't stay in front of their men and gave up WAY too many easy lay-ups.

Pitt ended the game shooting 52.5 percent and had Trey McGowans score 33 and Xavier Johnson score 21.

“Tonight, it’s just keeping the ball in front of us," Mack said. "I mean, we have guys who right now struggle to keep the ball out of the lane and guarding one-on-one individual players. We elected to switch the ball screens in the beginning of the game and McGowens got going. We either play with no hand in those one-on-one situations and let him see the rim a couple of times. Like any good player—when they see the ball go in a few times, they feel really confident. From that time on, I thought he played like the most confident player on the floor. We went to hedge-in ball screens and our guards were going under when they were supposed to go over. Sometimes when you do several different things to combat a team, you do them all poorly, and that’s exactly what happened to us tonight.”

And the butt-kicking could have been worse if Pitt hit its free throws. They ended the game 16 of 33 from the line.

Louisville showed tremendous grit in fighting back into the game twice, erasing huge deficits and pushing it to overtime on a pair of strong, gritty plays by Dwayne Sutton.

Then, in overtime, Louisville got a three from Ryan McMahon and seemed to have a golden opportunity to put the game away by pushing the ball into the post with both of Pitt's big men fouled out and UofL didn't do it.

The lack of situational awareness and killer instinct there was troubling, and it allowed Pitt to ride the momentum of the home crowd to a win. It was Pitt's first ACC win in 21 tries.