Justin Champagnie didn’t mince words after Pitt’s 79-73 win over Duke on Tuesday night. The Pitt sophomore forward went into the game with something to prove, and he did just that. Champagnie scored 31 points on 12-15 shooting. He grabbed 14 rebounds, and blocked five shots.

Champagnie notched his fifth double-double of the season, and his second one in as many games since returning from a knee injury. The Brooklyn native entered Tuesday’s contest as the ACC’s second leading scorer at 18.7 points per game, and also the league’s top rebounder at 12.7 per contest.

Duke sophomore forward Matthew Hurt came into Tuesday at the top scorer in the ACC at 19.6 points per game. Champagnie saw this game as an opportunity to prove himself in the league’s hierarchy and he feels like he did.

“Before the game I said to myself that I don’t think he’s better than me and I went out there and I kind of proved it,” Champagnie told reporters after the game.

Hurt finished with 13 points on 5-of-13 shooting as the Pitt defense neutralized the star player for the Blue Devils throughout much of the night. Hurt had some key moments in this game, but it was Champagnie that got the best of the individual matchup, and also the game.

Champagnie is now averaging 20.2 points and 13 rebounds a game following his performance against Duke. He is putting up numbers this program has not seen in a while, and this team is enjoying success for the first time in years.

Pitt looked like it belonged out on the court against Duke. Maybe not just belong, but simply just a better team. The Blue Devils are now just 5-4 on the year and are out of the top-25 for the first time since 2016. It does not feel like a vintage Duke team, but t the end of the day, it is still Duke. The Blue Devils have a roster filled with top recruits and as Jeff Capel put it, ‘the gold standard’ of college basketball.

Champagnie has been the driving force behind Pitt’s success this season and is playing like a legitimate candidate for ACC Player of the Year. He played well as a freshman, but did not earn any postseason accolades after averaging 12.7 points a season ago. Champagnie was not on any preseason All-ACC teams this year, and Pitt was picked to finish 13th in the conference.

It is still early with a lot of basketball to be played, but Champagnie is now the top scorer and rebounder in the ACC, and the Panthers find themselves a game out of first place. The sophomore forward has been taking all of that as motivation, and is hoping to continue that as the season progresses.

“It means Pitt is back,” Champagnie said about his team’s win on Tuesday. "I think that we are going to continue to keep this up, and try our best and work hard and just take everything that that's not given to us. Like we feel like we’re not given a lot of credit in this league and we want to go out there and show why we deserve the credit that we earned.”