In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're putting a final wrap on the 2021 football season and looking at what the next two months hold for Pitt hoops.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Success by any measure
To start, I apologize for not having a 3-2-1 Column last week. Jim and I were both at Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the Chick Fil-A Peach Bowl (so many sponsors to mention; I feel like a NASCAR driver), and with travel and game coverage and whatnot, neither of us was able to put together a New Year’s Eve column.

I did a live stream instead, so you got at least 75 minutes or so of Panther-Lair state commentary.

But with the conclusion of last Thursday’s game, so too did the 2021 season come to a close, and now, with a full week to process what we’ve seen since that first Saturday in September, I can fully and confidently say that Pitt’s 2021 season was a damn success.

Total, complete and uninhibited by caveats or disclaimers.

A success.

The likes of which many of us have never seen in our lives. The likes of which many of you haven’t seen in nearly 50 years.

Success.

It’s a strange thing to consider, really, and from time to time I’ve had to pull myself back and ask if I’m overreacting to the moment, failing to see the larger context and thinking what’s happening right now is bigger or more important.

We do that a lot. We want to make everything that happens the best that has ever happened. We want to make grand declarations and turn something that is Good into something that is Great.

We fail to properly stack up the current against the past. We don’t put everything in the context it deserves (or the context that makes a comparison true).

But when it comes to Pitt’s 2021 season, the hyperbole really is the reality. What we just witnessed really does stack up. And when we put it in context, when we place it on the timeline of Pitt football seasons since 1976, it really is one of the best performances the Panthers have managed.

Maybe the best performance the Panthers have managed.

Just work your way back from here, through Pat Narduzzi’s 8-5 seasons and Paul Chryst’s 6-6 seasons; back through Dave Wannstedt and Walt Harris having some of the best players in school history and never really breaking a certain ceiling; back through the Johnny Majors II debacle; back through the decade of struggle in the 1980’s after Jackie Sherrill left.

One long timeline, sometimes mediocre, sometimes worse, occasionally better but never achieving at the highest level, never legitimately being one of the best in the nation.

This year’s team legitimately was one of the best in the nation.

Pitt had the best receiver in college football. Pitt had arguably the best quarterback in college football. Pitt clinched its division in the penultimate week of the season and then won its conference with a 24-point win in front of a tremendous traveling circus of Pitt fans who took over Bank of America Stadium, showing once and for all that, yes, the Panther faithful will travel.

And while the finale wasn’t what anyone hoped for, there were enough yeah-buts built into the Peach Bowl that a valiant effort falling just short of victory was inspiring enough and didn’t tarnish what had been accomplished.

11-3 overall.

ACC champs.

The ultimate goal is always the national championship, but man, it sure feels like Pitt reached the summit on this one.

The MVPs
Okay, so the season’s over. Let’s talk MVPs.

Who were they for Pitt?

Well, there’s the obvious. Kenny Pickett was the ACC Player of the Year and a Heisman Trophy finalist, and he achieved those honors because he was the single most important player on Pitt’s roster in 2021.

I don’t feel like I need to elaborate on that one too much, but it’s kind of boring to name Pickett the MVP. After all, I try to get 500 or so words into each section of the column, and it doesn’t seem like much discussion of Pickett as MVP is necessary.

I know it. You know it. The team knows it. Everybody knows it. Without Kenny Pickett, Pitt doesn’t win 11 games or the ACC title or accomplish just about anything that it accomplished in 2021.

He made it happen. He’s the MVP.

But what about defense? Who was Pitt’s defensive MVP?

To me, it’s the man in the middle.

SirVocea Dennis was Pitt’s defensive leader in 2021. He moved to middle linebacker and started all 13 games that he played (he didn’t play against New Hampshire). Dennis finished the season with a team-leading 87 tackles, the most by a Pitt linebacker since the 2017 season.

According to Pro Football Focus, he played 675 defensive snaps - the most of any player in Pitt’s front seven - and missed a total of 11 tackles. I don’t know if that seems like a big number to you or not, but he only had one missed tackle at Tennessee, one against Clemson and just two over the final five games of the season.

Dennis’ transition to middle linebacker wasn’t always smooth - he looked like he was still finding his way early in the fall - but by midseason, he was rolling and he closed the regular season with second-team All-ACC honors.

Best of all for Pitt, Dennis is back next season. Linebacker is the biggest hole on the roster heading into 2022, with just a few returning experienced players, and Dennis is the only returning starter at any linebacker position.

Fortunately for the Panthers, he’s their best linebacker and he plays the most important position in the group, maybe on the defense overall.

The not-so-obvious MVPs
Pickett is the obvious selection for offensive MVP, and I think Dennis is pretty obvious for defense, too.

But what about the not-so-obvious MVP candidates? Which players are a little more under-the-radar but shouldn’t be after their contributions in 2021?

I’ll start with defense, and for the not-so-obvious MVP, I’ll go with Calijah Kancey.

I’ll be the first to say that it’s weird calling a guy who was a first-team all-conference selection “under the radar.” He’s not under the radar. Pitt fans, who have a finely-cultivated appreciation for playmaking defensive tackles, have seen Kancey wreak havoc for the last two seasons, and they know how good he is.

Kancey is not under the radar for them. But he’s still a defensive tackle, and you’re usually not going to call a defensive tackle the MVP of a defense.

Yet, when that defensive tackle is second on the team in sacks (Kancey had seven) and leads the team in tackles for loss (he had 13), he’s making a case for being among the better players on the defense, and I don’t think he’s any lower than No. 2 on that particular list.

Pro Football Focus loves Kancey. He is No. 3 in pass rush grades among Power Five interior linemen with at least 250 pass rush snaps in 2021, and he is No. 5 in that category in total pressures.

Kancey will be back for another season in 2022, and he’ll enter next year having recorded 20 tackles for loss in the last two seasons (25 total games).

For the not-so-obvious offensive MVP, I’m going a little deeper. Kancey was an easy choice for the less-obvious MVP on defense, but offense is tougher. I can’t say Jordan Addison; he’s way too obvious and probably the only player who is even in the same ballpark as Pickett for his impact on the team. The running backs and tight ends and non-Addison receivers had their moments, but it would be tough to pick one in the MVP conversation.

So that leaves the offensive line, and that’s where I think we find our answer.

It’s Jake Kradel.

The redshirt junior started the first 10 games at right guard before he suffered a leg injury on the second play of the Thursday night showdown with North Carolina at Heinz Field. Kradel played well in those 9 games + 2 snaps, but his value might have been proven even more in his absence. Over the final four games, the coaches tried a variety of options at right guard.

Blake Zubovic started the Coastal-clinching win over Virginia. Then Gabe Houy slid from right tackle, where he was a starter, to right guard, where he has played before, with Matt Goncalves stepping in at right tackle.

No matter the combination, nothing seemed to work as well as it had with Kradel in the lineup. I can’t say what would have happened if Carter Warren or Marcus Minor had to miss time, so maybe those guys had the most value of any lineman. But we saw what it looked like with Kradel on the sidelines, and while it was okay, it wasn’t as good as it had been.

So I’m calling Kradel my not-so-obvious offensive MVP.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

What might have been?
I said I wouldn’t do this.

No joke. I actually said it.

That was tweeted a little before 8 pm on Wednesday night - or right around halftime of Pitt’s 75-72 loss at Louisville. It was the Panthers’ third loss in as many tries against ACC opponents this season, with those three defeats coming by a combined total of five points.

It was also Pitt’s first game with Ithiel Horton back on the floor all season. Horton was suspended right before the season started due to a legal incident in the South Side and was reinstated late last week.

Horton’s return to the lineup was a revelation, at least in the first half, when he shot 5-of-6 from the floor, 3-of-4 from three and scored a game-high (at that point) 13 points. He didn’t carry that success into the second half (0-of-3 shooting after halftime) but he showed in the first half just what he could do - and what Pitt was missing in the first 13 games.

I know it’s a tired refrain. I know Pitt fans got sick of hearing it one game into the season, let alone six or 12 or 13. But that doesn’t make the impact of Horton’s suspension and Nike Sibande’s injury any less true. Those guys were expected to be significant pieces of the Panthers’ rotation this season, both for their minutes played and their points produced.

And in a matter of days, both were put on the shelf indefinitely.

That’s a huge blow - two huge blows - to a team that didn’t have the depth or talent to absorb too many blows. No matter what you think of Horton or Sibande, their presence would have considerably changed the team Pitt puts on the court every night.

But the Panthers didn’t have them for the first 13 games, and while I can’t sit here and say “Pitt would have won this game” or “Pitt would have won that game” with Horton and/or Sibande, it’s tough not to imagine what might have been.

Like I said, the Panthers’ three ACC losses have come by a total of five points. This week’s three-point loss at Louisville was preceded by one-point defeats to Notre Dame and Virginia; having another body, another potential scorer - I mean, it’s not a terrible stretch of the imagination to think that it could have been enough to get the Panthers the two more points they needed for victory against the Irish and the Cavaliers.

And that’s to say nothing of the one-point loss to Minnesota or the four-point loss to Monmouth. Horton and Sibande aren’t necessarily all-conference players, but they’re good enough and their impact would have been significant enough to change those outcomes, I believe.

I think you can, both realistically and reasonably, say those four games - Minnesota, Monmouth, Virginia and Notre Dame - could have been wins with one more competent scorer on the court.

That would mean the current 5-9 record would be flipped to 9-5, which, when combined with a 2-1 record in ACC games, would put the Panthers among the top teams in the conference.

I won’t go so far as to say that I would expect Pitt to stay in that upper echelon, but the Panthers would be there right now, which is better than the current alternative.

And I’m not even going to go so far as to say we should take away the back-to-back 15-point losses to open the season or the embarrassment against UMBC. Pitt earned those losses with some really poor performances, and we can keep those in this hypothetical, because even though Horton and Sibande are big pieces, this team is still flawed and would suffer from some of the issues of inconsistent effort and performance that have marked its worst losses.

But how different would the perception be at 9-5 rather than 5-9? How would we be viewing this season? That’s an impossible guess to make, but I have to imagine things would be at least a little lighter around here.

What’s next?
Pitt is pretty close to the midpoint of the season, at least numerically. The Panthers have played 14 games and they have 16 left (plus the postponed game at Virginia Tech from last Saturday).

Of course, I don’t usually think of a college basketball season like that; it really is two seasons, with the separation between the non-conference and conference schedules serving as the real midpoint, and then the middle of the conference schedule standing as the next notable marker.

But still, Pitt has 14 games down and 16 or 17 to go in the regular season, plus or minus whatever other games get postponed or canceled, so what can we expect from this team?

I mean, I know I tend to be on the more optimistic side of things, or, at the very least, I tend to look for the positives, even in the face of a whole bunch of negatives. Still, I think there are some encouraging elements on this team.

John Hugley is the obvious one. He’s averaging 14.5 points and 7.9 rebounds per game; I only count three players in the ACC with a better points/rebounds combo than that - N.C. State’s Dereon Seabron (19.7 points/10.1 rebounds), Duke’s Paolo Banchero (17.1 points/7.5 rebounds) and Virginia’s Jayden Gardner (15.4 points/7.6 rebounds).

Hugley is objectively one of the best players in the conference this season, even if he’s grinding away on one of the league’s least successful teams.

I think Mo Gueye has been a breakout player, too. He’s averaging 8.3 points and 5.6 rebounds per game while shooting 43.6% from the floor and 35.9% from three. Plus, he’s got 25 blocked shots, the fifth-most of any player in the conference. In the last six games, Gueye is averaging 12.2 points; in the last four, he is averaging 14.8. He’s playing well and making a really positive impact.

And then I think the guards are finding their roles. Femi Odukale hasn’t been quite the player I expected him to be, but the emergence of Jamarius Burton and the return of Ithiel Horton will help him further establish his presence as a point guard, a facilitator and an opportunistic scorer.

There’s not a lot of depth, as we know. And even those guys I mentioned, aside from Hugley, are prone to inconsistency. So I’m not saying they go 17-0, 11-6 or maybe even 9-8 or 8-9; I really don’t know what to expect from these 17 games.

But that comes back to the original point, because this is the “questions” section of the column, not the “prediction.” I’m not predicting Pitt’s record over the final 17 games; I’m wondering what it will be.

To that end, I think they’ve got a chance to win some games. It’s going to take a lot of things going right (for a change) and, on occasion, some good luck. But I think the core can be just good enough and I think the ACC might be just bad enough that this Pitt team, with its flaws and inconsistencies, can win a few.

Maybe a better question is, what record over these 17 games would make you feel even a bit of optimism? Is it a minimum of nine wins or bust? Would 8-9 do the trick? 7-10? They’ve dug themselves quite a hole, but given how close the Panthers have been against ACC competition, I think it’s reasonable to expect a few games to go their way.

But how many? That’s a great question.

ONE PREDICTION

The starting lineup for 2022
We’ll probably do this several dozen times between now and the season opener, but since Pitt added a few transfers in the last week, let’s do a first run through the projected 2022 starting lineup (as I see it).

I doubt there will be many surprises on what I’m about to say, but here it is:

QB - Kedon Slovis
RB - Israel Abanikanda
TE - Gavin Bartholomew
LT - Carter Warren
LG - Marcus Minor
C - Owen Drexel
RG - Jake Kradel
RT - Gabe Houy
WR - Jordan Addison
WR - Konata Mumpfield
WR - Jared Wayne

I think that’s probably the 11 just about everyone would project as we sit here on Jan. 7. I could see a competition for the starting center job, and depending on the offensive coordinator, there could be some formation changes - maybe two backs (which would be a great irony given some of the hand-wringing over Brennan Marion’s departure and non-consideration for the offensive coordinator job) or a fullback, since Daniel Carter will be back and seems like he could have a home in that role.

But that’s the 11 I see taking the field first against West Virginia.

Here's the defense:

DE - Habakkuk Baldonado
DT - Calijah Kancey
DT - Tyler Bentley
DE - John Morgan
Star - Michael Dowell
Middle - SirVocea Dennis
Money - Bangally Kamara
CB - Marquis Williams
CB - A.J. Woods
FS - Erick Hallett
SS - Brandon Hill

So, I’m assuming that Deslin Alexandre will not return, although if he did, he would likely project to the starting lineup. At the same time, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Dayon Hayes work his way into the top 11, so there is some flexibility with those ends and I’m sure Charlie Partridge will continue to rotate them a lot.

I’m also projecting Bangally Kamara into the Money linebacker position, although I think he has mostly played Star this season. But I think he could play either outside spot, and since Michael Dowell fits better into the Star position and since I think Kamara is probably going to be one of the top three linebackers in 2022, I’ve got him pegged to line up at Money.

At the same time, Brandon George could play his way into the top three, either as the middle linebacker or possibly learning the Money spot.

At cornerback, I picked Williams and Woods, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see M.J. Devonshire replace one of those guys. And I think there will be a bunch of rotation there again. Jahvante Royal, Noah Biglow and Khalil Anderson are all promising underclassmen, and I expect those guys to play a decent amount this season.

So that’s what I see for the starting 22 right now. This is all subject to change - and it likely will change again, probably more than a few times.