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The 3-2-1 Column: Toney's return, over/under win totals and more

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In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re talking about hoops non-transfers, coaching changes, alternative seasons, over/unders and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

A good return
In today’s example of “that happened this week?” Au’Diese Toney announced that he’s going to be sticking with Pitt for another year.

(Seriously. That was this week. Like only four days ago. Seems like years. I know we all have those moments every day.)

I’m not exactly going out on a limb in declaring that Toney’s return is good news for the Panthers. I think the announcement was met with consensus approval by Pitt fans, particularly since there was some genuine concern about where he would be playing next season.

To me, there are a few notable things about Toney’s decision to remain a Panther.

One, Toney improved as much as any other player on the team last season. My biggest concern with Xavier Johnson and Trey McGowens was not so much that they regressed as sophomores but rather that they didn’t really seem to improve all that much. So much of this team’s outlook for the 2019-20 season was based on expected progress and development from those two, and it just didn’t happen, at least as it looked from the outside.

Toney, on the other hand, did improve. He got better, and he did it right in front of our eyes. Early in the season, it didn’t look like he was very far ahead of where he had been as a freshman, but after he returned from an injury at midseason, something seemed to change. His scoring jumped from 6.4 points per game in the first 13 contests to 11.7 over the final 18. He had a nice 16-point game in a win over Boston College and then exploded for 27 points in a loss at Duke. The next game, he helped Pitt get revenge on Miami with a double-double in a home win over the Hurricanes, and he finished the season by hitting double figures in six of the final nine games.

So it’s good for Pitt to get Toney back because he seems to be trending up.

Second, it’s good to have him return because he really is part of the core. We don’t have to always draw comparisons to the Jamie Dixon years, but one of the truths about that era is that Dixon’s teams had linkage. That’s what Jim Calhoun called it: linkage, and he said it with the utmost respect because he saw how young players came into the program, were led by the older players and then grew into leaders themselves with those older players setting the example.

Pitt hasn’t had that kind of linkage for a few years. Toney and Johnson and McGowens didn’t have it when they arrived; they had to be the leaders right away, and that’s not an easy task for a freshman. But in the coming season, Toney and Johnson will be juniors and they’ll be the upperclassmen setting the tone and the culture. Toney, Johnson and Justin Champagnie are the core of the team right now; other pieces may join that group, but that’s the core and it looks like a good foundation to build from.

Finally, the biggest part of Toney’s return is that he’s a pretty good player. He was kind of the third wheel in Pitt’s freshman class last season after Johnson and McGowens had breakout performances and keyed the Panthers’ mini-resurgence under Jeff Capel. But this season, he came into his own and showed how he could function:

As a tough, physical player who battles on both ends of the court, a defender who can handle some of the best scorers in the ACC and an offensive weapon with enough of a skill set that he’s a threat to score 15-20 on any given night. That’s a good weapon to have on the court, and Pitt’s better for having him back.

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Players announcing a return
The other sort of side story to Toney’s announcement was, well, the announcement itself.

I don’t know. Call me old-fashioned, but it’s interesting that this offseason was spent watching social media for guys to announce whether or not they would transfer. Transfer announcements - okay, I understand those. You should announce when you are planning to leave a school.

But announcing that you aren’t transferring? Something just seems…off…about that to me.

Again, maybe I’m old-fashioned, although I shouldn’t be old enough to qualify. And I realize that we’re in a period where people love to make announcements. You’ve got enough on Twitter who start tweets with “some personal news” that the phrase itself has become a running joke.

And you’ve got recruits who seem to be taking the pandemic especially hard, since the bar for what counts as cutting your list of offers is pretty low now. I think kids might be tweeting out top-15’s or top-10’s or top-22’s simply because they’re bored rather than actually having made decisions about their recruitment.

But announcing the decision to not transfer…again, I don’t know. It seems like that should be the default, the non-announcement. Like, a player shouldn’t need to tweet anything to let people know he is staying with the team; that should be assumed until otherwise notified.

I suppose it’s not just a reflection of the times, though. It actually kind of reminds me of Pat Narduzzi on Signing Day in February when he ruminated at length about decisions after he was asked about the Michigan State opening.

There was part of me that went into that press conference thinking that there was nothing happening between Narduzzi and MSU. But after he talked so much about decisions, it became clear:

He had a decision to make. Which means he was considering leaving.

Maybe that’s what we should take from this situation. Maybe we should see Toney’s tweet this week and Justin Champagnie’s tweet earlier in the week as an indication that those two did consider transferring. I know that was speculated and rumored, but if you have to say you’re returning, it’s kind of implicit in there that you were considering the alternative.

I should say that I don’t think Xavier Johnson’s non-transfer announcement was the same. He seemed to be saying, “Stop asking me and my friends and family if I’m transferring because I’m not.” That’s not the same to me, and I imagine that if he hadn’t felt like he was getting badgered, he wouldn’t have tweeted that.

Either way, it is what it is. And there certainly was interest in whether Toney and Champagnie are returning, since they’re such crucial parts of the core. Maybe next season Pitt will be at a point where guys don’t have to announce that they’re staying.

Damage of a coaching change
Hopefully you saw our series of articles this week reflecting on Pitt’s coaching changes from the early part of the decade. We’re talking football here, so there aren’t going to be any references to the Dixon->Stallings saga or the Stallings->Capel change.

No, our focus was on Wannstedt->Haywood->Graham->Chryst->Narduzzi.

It’s exhausting just typing that.

With spring camp canceled, I thought we could find some different uses for our time, and one idea that came to me was to reach out to some former players who lived through those coaching changes - five in five years, if you’re keeping track at home - and see what their experiences were like.

We all know how we reacted to the coaching carousel and the instability, and we’ve certainly seen the product on the field. But what was it like in the locker room? How did those guys react when they heard their coach was leaving? Did they follow the coaching search closely? And what did they think when their new coach was hired?

We tried to get answers to all of those questions and more, and I think the results were pretty interesting, so if you haven’t seen those articles, you should check them out today.

But overall, what were the lasting impacts of the coaching changes? We all talk about the damage they did, but what specific impact did they have on the program?

Where you really see it is in the roster. Because of those coaching changes, the recruiting classes of 2011 and 2012 were almost complete washouts. That’s not to say those classes didn’t produce any good players; the class of 2011 had Lafayette Pitts and Khaynin Mosley-Smith and Artie Rowell plus Nicholas Grigsby and Isaac Bennett. And 2012 brought Adam Bisnowaty and JP Holtz as well as Ryan Lewis, Mike Caprara, Bam Bradley and Darryl Render.

But that’s it. Out of 37 guys who signed with Pitt in those two classes, the players I just listed - 11 of them, to be exact - finished their eligibility with the Panthers.

If you only get 11 full-term players out of 37 recruits in two classes, you’re going to pay for it down the road. And those classes turned out the way they did because of the coaching changes. Dave Wannstedt had what looked to be a pretty good group assembled in the class of 2011; that whole thing started crumbling when he got fired and then fell apart completely when Michael Haywood got canned.

And Todd Graham’s class-in-progress for 2012 was such a mess that Paul Chryst disassembled most of it and cobbled together whatever he could in two months.

That’s how you get two lost recruiting classes. And that’s how you end up with a bunch of six-win seasons. I mean, that’s not the only reason Pitt won six regular-season games four years in a row, but it had something to do with it.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

What alternative seasons are there?
It kind of feels like we’re living in an alternate universe right now, but what about this fall? What if football needs to operate on something other than its standard schedule? What options exist?

I asked Pitt Director of Athletics Heather Lyke that question Thursday on a Zoom teleconference or videoconference or whatever we’re calling those things.

“I think you have to be willing to consider all things right now. You know, just conference games is a possibility if it would get to that point. But I really think it is so hard to predict, it’s so hard to tell, at this point in time…I would be remiss, I think, by projecting what was going to happen in the fall and exactly how many games we feel would be a worthwhile football season.”

She’s right, of course. No one knows what tomorrow will bring, let alone next week or next month and certainly not five months from now when the 2020 football season is supposed to be in full bloom.

And she’s also right that everyone needs to consider just about everything right now. There’s the perfect option, which is the 2020 season proceeding exactly as it should. And there’s the nuclear option, where the 2020 season follows the fate of the 2020 NCAA Tournament and gets canceled outright.

In between those two options, there are about a million different possibilities for what could happen this fall.

Okay, not a million. Probably not even a hundred. But a dozen or so, and they cover the gamut of possibilities.

The season could have a later start date and be shortened, potentially to just conference games. Or it could have a later start date and go the same length, extending the regular season into late December or January. Or it could have a really later start date and begin in January or February.

All of those have serious logistic implications. Really, anything other than playing the season as scheduled will mean considerable logistic adjustments and probably financial losses. But that’s our world right now, isn’t it? Everything is a considerable logistic adjustment and a probable financial loss.

College football will be no different.

Probably.

Really, nobody knows what it will be. But just as we’ve all adjusted to a different sense of normalcy in everyday lives, it’s hard to imagine a college football season that won’t also require some level of adjustment.

Lyke seemed to shut the door on games being played with no fans. I kind of think she’s right, but I also know that games will be on TV regardless of whether or not there are fans present. So if worse comes to worst, I have to think that option would be on the table.

At some point, we’ll get some clarity on things like this. I just don’t know when that point will be.

Why low expectations?
Someone shared an over/under on Pitt’s win total this week, and I couldn’t help but discuss it here.

On Wednesday, DraftKings put out some updated numbers for college football. For Pitt, the over/under is set at 6.5, and upon its initial release that morning, the favorite was the under at -121 (+100 on the over).

Quite frankly, I was shocked about that. 6.5 seems like a really low number for an eight-win team with a ton of personnel returning, particularly on the defensive side of the ball where a lot of talented, experienced players are back on a unit that was really good last season.

Surely, the expectation should be higher than 6.5, shouldn’t it? I mean, I know fan expectations are usually going to be on the higher side, but I would think the people who set these numbers should expect more, too. Wouldn’t you?

Then again, maybe I get it. This was a team with a terribly ineffective offense, an offense that blew at least two wins and possibly more, an offense that kept the team from winning 10 games for the first time in 10 years.

This was a team that was responsible for two subpar teams getting into the postseason, a team that squeaked past Delaware, a team that flailed about for the better part of 58 minutes before getting its act together to beat Eastern Michigan in a bowl game.

This was a team that had its strengths but didn’t exactly cross the finish line with a lot of momentum.

This is a team that returns a lot of players, but new blood might be what they need, at least on offense.

And this is a team that has won at least two games less than it should have each of the last two seasons.

That part might be important. Pitt should have won nine games in 2018 and 10 games in 2019. But that didn’t happen. For one reason or another, the Panthers blew some very winnable games. And I’m not saying they should have upset Notre Dame on the road two years ago; I’m talking about the loss at two-win North Carolina and against shorthanded Stanford. And last year, I’m not saying Pitt should have gone to State College and won; I’m saying there’s no reason the Panthers should have lost to Miami and Boston College at home.

So I guess there’s a bit of precedent for expecting Pitt to underperform. The 2020 team on a 12-game schedule should win nine; that should be the expectation. But maybe the two-wins-worse rule from the last two seasons applies this year as well; that would explain setting the number at 6.5.

ONE PREDICTION

The over will hit
Yeah, I understand where skepticism about Pitt comes from.

But I’m also awfully bullish on that over-6.5 number.

Truthfully, only winning seven games is not something I’m even considering for this team in 2020, not when the real debate about Pitt this season is centered around whether an eight-win performance would be a disappointment.

I mean, that’s where I think the debate should be, and I think as the season gets closer, that’s where it will be. We’ll talk about how many games this team should win and we’ll talk about how many wins are acceptable, and of course all of that will be subject to change based on which games they win or lose.

But what about that number? What about the 6.5? Despite what I said in that last section, it still seems kind of low to me. Assuming they play 12 games in the regular season this year, I have a hard time seeing anything less than seven wins.

Yes, I know it can happen. I know how it can happen. They can lose to Miami, Notre Dame, Florida State and North Carolina - the four toughest games on the schedule - and blow it in two others (like they did with Miami and Boston College last year) to finish with six wins. It’s conceivable and, unfortunately, not without precedent.

But I don’t see it happening, largely because I think a few things are working in Pitt’s favor.

There’s the defense, of course. That unit returns a lot of players, and while there are a few holes to fill, I think they’re mostly in depth roles; a few key injuries could be a problem, but that’s the case for just about every team. If Pitt’s defense stays healthy, they’ll be one of the best in the ACC and beyond.

The big questions are on offense. Can that unit show some improvement in 2020? Really, it won’t take much. Just get a little bit better, finish just a few more red zone drives, score just a few more points and the season can look drastically different than 2019 did.

The defense will do its job; the offense, though, that’s what the season will hinge on. I’m willing to bet on Year Two under Mark Whipple going better than Year One did. I’m willing to assume that the offensive line gets a little bit better just through the benefit of experience. I think Kenny Pickett is good enough to effectively lead the offense. I think there are some talented playmakers. And I think Lucas Krull should provide an upgrade at tight end, which was a weakness last season.

Again, the offense doesn’t have to improve a ton; it just has to be a little better, a little more effective, and things can get a lot better across the board.

I think that modest improvement can happen, and that’s why I would push the over on 6.5 wins. Get it now before the number goes up.

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