We analyze black holes in deformations of Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) supergravity by adding a gas of defects, equivalent to changing the dilaton potential. For some range of deformations, the black hole density of states extracted from the gravitational path integral becomes negative, yielding an ill-defined sum over topologies. To solve this problem, we use an equivalent matrix model description and show the negative spectrum is resolved via a phase transition analogous to the Gross-Witten transition. The matrix model contains a rich and novel phase structure that we explore in detail, using both perturbative and non-perturbative techniques.