No matter what you think of Pitt basketball, it would be unfair — and probably wrong — to label the Panthers the school's worst team in modern history (defined as the era that started when Fitzgerald Field House opened in 1951).

Here are points in the 2017-18 team's favor:

• Yeah, Pitt (8-22, 0-17) set a school record Saturday for the most defeats in a season, losing to top-ranked Virginia, 66-37. But Pitt will play at least 32 games. Some bad Pitt teams from the 1960s played no more than 22.

• Pitt has not lost by 55 points. That occurred last year, 106-51, vs. Louisville.

• Pitt has won eight games. There are six other Pitt teams that won fewer than that.

Assuming misery loves company, here are five Pitt teams that were at least as bad (ranked chronologically).

1965-66 (5-17 record)

In those days, there was little interest in Pitt basketball. In his book “Tales From The Pitt Panther,” author Sam Sciullo Jr., the preeminent Pitt historian, quotes sports information director Beano Cook thusly, “The attitude at Pitt used to be that basketball was something between football seasons.”

But something happened Feb. 23, 1966: Pitt lost to tiny Westminster and coach Buzz Ridl, 102-76. Westminster won again the following year, 78-71.

You know where this is going: If you can't beat him …

Two years later, Ridl was Pitt's coach. Five years after that, Pitt was in the NCAA Elite Eight for the first time.

In 1965-66, three of Pitt's victories were against Carnegie Tech (twice) and Westminster (before Ridl got smart, apparently).

The Panthers also allowed opponents in triple digits three times: Virginia Tech (100-74), West Virginia (103-63) and Westminster.

That doesn't happen often anymore. Before Louisville beat Pitt last year, the Panthers hadn't allowed 100 points in a loss since Dec. 20, 1993 (106-93 to No. 2 North Carolina at Civic Arena).

And no team has scored 100 on this year's team, although North Carolina (96) and Louisville (94) came close.

1966-67 (6-19)

The penultimate season of coach Bob Timmons' 15-year Pitt career was not his worst, only because the Panthers won just five games the year before.

Pitt opened the season by defeating Carnegie Tech (now CMU), 69-58. In fact, Pitt's only victories were against Carnegie Tech (twice), Westminster, Bucknell, Lafayette and Air Force by one point in the consolation game of the N.C. State Tournament. Pitt lost to the host the night before, 80-52.

Bob Caldwell, later a successful high school coach at Northgate and North Allegheny, was a senior on that team. He came to Pitt in 1963 as a walk-on, taking two streetcars every day from his home in Avalon but earning a scholarship at the end of his first semester.

Caldwell's most vivid memory of that season was the Duquesne game in the Steel Bowl at Civic Arena.

“Those games were really physical and tough and almost a little scary,” Caldwell said. “Duquesne was out to win, and we were out to win.”

Pitt lost, 72-65, starting a string of 11 Pitt/Duquesne games when the Dukes won nine.

Pitt's best player that year was James LaValley, who averaged a double-double (11.9 points, 12.2 rebounds).

1967-68 (7-15)

Timmons, who lived in Shaler, resigned after this season with an overall losing record (174-189), but his victory total remains third all-time at Pitt behind Dr. H.C. Carlson and Jamie Dixon.

He took Pitt to three NCAA Tournaments and one NIT.

“He was a very nice person, a gentleman, thoughtful,” Caldwell said.

His last game at Pitt was another victory against Carnegie Tech, 85-74.

The season began with Pitt allowing 100 points in three of the first six games, losses to Rutgers, Duquesne and Miami.

1968-69 (4-20)

With freshmen ineligible, Ridl's first season was dependent on most of the same players who had won seven games the previous season for Timmons. The result was one of only three 20-loss seasons in Pitt history.

Perhaps the low point of the season was a 68-64 loss to Carnegie Mellon (no longer Carnegie Tech) in the last game. Pitt played its Oakland neighbor 124 times over the years — the last one was in 1996 — and CMU won only 18.

The 1969 game was the first CMU victory in 15 years. “That was a fitting end to a losing season,” said guard Billy Downes in “Tales From The Pitt Panthers.”

The most memorable game occurred Jan. 31, 1969, when Pitt met LSU and “Pistol” Pete Maravich.

Downes, another Avalon graduate, was given the task of guarding Maravich. He held Maravich to 40 points — four below his average — in a 120-79 LSU victory.

“I've gotten a lot of mileage out of that over the years,” Downes said, “telling people I held him below his average.”

Downes said Maravich wore “those dirty, floppy socks. The elastic was completely gone.”

“A couple of times he came down — just one or two steps beyond midcourt — and let fly with two-handed set shots. Swish!”

1976-77 (6-21)

Sciullo believes this might be the most intriguing of the bad Pitt teams.

“They had some talent,” he said.

Second-year coach Tim Grgurich, an assistant under Ridl, recruited three players from Schenley's state championship team — Kelvin Smith, Wayne Williams and Sonny Lewis.

Grgurich believed he had a strong recruiting class, including Lewis, Michael Rice, Baldwin's Ed Scheuermann and junior college point guard David Washington. They were expected to complement sophomore Larry Harris, who was on his way to becoming Pitt's third-leading all-time scorer with 1,914 points.

But the team lost 10 games by a single-digit margin.

“Before the season, Gurg was talking about top 20 and this, that and the other, but it turned out to be a major disaster,” Harris said in Sciullo's book.

The highlight was beating No. 12 Cincinnati, 65-64, on Harris' last-second shot from the corner. He scored 31 that night.

But Pitt lost the next five and was bounced from the Eastern Collegiate Basketball League's tournament in the first round by West Virginia, 66-54.

The team does share one peculiarity with the current team: Neither won a game outside Pennsylvania.

Jerry DiPaola is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at jdipaola@tribweb.com or via Twitter @JDiPaola_Trib.

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