A Patriot League standout.

A Big East backup.

A major-conference forward who hadn’t played organized basketball in two years.

A junior-college center looking for a home late in the recruiting cycle.

A couple of lanky twins from the Canary Islands.

Two returning starters (one of whom would see minimal playing time).

One top returning backup.

Those were the ingredients, and it was anyone’s guess how the soup would taste.

Turns out, Jeff Capel the chef found a recipe that worked so well, Pitt basketball is now having its best season in seven years, sitting in second place in the ACC with one week of regular-season games left to play.

The Panthers are 20-8 overall and 13-4 in conference play with a clear shot at a double-bye in the ACC Tournament and a near-lock for a return to the NCAA Tournament.

It’s an unbelievable turnaround from the futility of recent years, and the unlikely results are made even more improbable by the combination of players that has driven them.

For Capel and his team, though, the way this group of players came together is no longer a surprise, because it’s based on something sincere.

“I think the biggest thing for us is that it was genuine,” senior point guard Nelly Cummings, who transferred from Colgate, said this week. “It wasn’t fake and we didn’t have to try to fake-like each other; we all actually do enjoy each other, and I think when you actually have that real, genuine love, then it’s going to show on the basketball court. The times when the ball is loose, we’re all going to dive for it, we all have each other’s backs and we’re going to ride for each other.”

It wasn’t all roses, of course. Pitt’s 20-8 overall record includes a 19-5 run over the last 24 games. That stretch has clearly been very good, but the 1-3 mark in the first four games seemed sure to doom the Panthers’ season before it really got started.

Pitt opened the 2022-23 season with a convincing home win over UT-Martin before falling in spectacular fashion - spectacularly bad fashion - at home to West Virginia, a 25-point loss that was somehow dwarfed by the 31-point defeat Michigan handed the Panthers five days later in the opening game of the Legends Classic.

The next night, Pitt lost its third game in a row with a four-point fall to VCU, and if the wheels weren’t completely off at that point, the Panthers certainly had some very loose lug nuts.

But they bounced back. They took care of business against Alabama State, Fairleigh Dickinson and William & Mary but making their first statement of the season with a 29-point win at Northwestern in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.

Pitt followed that win with a road victory at N.C. State in an early-December conference game, and while the Panthers fell at Vanderbilt by one point five days later, they have gone 14-4 since then.

“I think, really, we bonded on adversity,” Cummings said. “When we hit adversity early in the season, 1-3, we all had to come back and take a look in the mirror, and I think we all did that together and we really grew from that moment.”

Forward Blake Hinson, who transferred from Iowa State, said the players’ ability to share common goals went a long way in establishing the chemistry that has gotten Pitt to this point.

“The will to win and do something special, something different,” Hinson said Thursday. “I don’t want to say ‘different’. ‘Different’ is a bad word. But just do something special pertaining to winning, and I think everybody has been on the same exact wavelength as far as that feeling. I think that’s what’s made us mesh, even though we’re new.”

Having common goals may seem like an obvious quality to look for in a team, but the Pitt squads of the last four years have shown that it’s not necessarily a given. Individual goals and priorities have been put ahead of the team’s goals and priorities, and the result often led to negative outcomes on the court.

This year’s team seems to have much more cohesion in that regard, and Hinson thinks there’s a direct correlation to the success Pitt has had.

“It’s unique - I wouldn’t say it’s unique, but what it is, it’s something that’s in common with all teams in college basketball that win,” he said. “All teams in college basketball that win, 90% of those teams are on the same wavelength and on the same page all the time. That’s what that is.”