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In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about Pitt’s new look, a new core, new football offers and a prediction on next week.
THREE THINGS WE KNOW
The new-look Panthers
We’ve got a format for the 3-2-1 Column. It’s baked right into the name: 3. 2. 1. Three observations, two questions and one prediction. That’s how we’ve done it every week for, I don’t know, the last three or four years.
To start this week’s column, though, it seems to me that we have to consider a question. It was the big question last week - or, at least, one of the big questions - in the wake of Xavier Johnson and Au’Diese Toney entering the transfer portal.
Sure, we wondered why those guys left and what it meant for Jeff Capel, but the biggest question, at least in my view, was this:
What will Pitt look like without two of its top three players?
I mean, that was a significant chunk of the team sliced away in the matter of 25 hours. They still had their best player, but this year’s squad was always built around a Big 3, and two of those three walked away last week.
I couldn’t help but wonder, how’s that going to work out?
Turns out, the results were just as interesting we expected them to be.
In some ways, these “new-look Panthers” were a lot like the “old-look Panthers.” They had the requisite slow start followed by a strong second half that fell just short in Sunday’s loss at N.C. State. They played tough defense but gave up a few too many open looks from three. And they relied heavily on Justin Champagnie to be The Man (a role he is well-suited to fill).
But there were some differences, too. Maybe it’s my imagination, maybe it’s just me - and quite a few others - seeing things that might or might not have been there, but the team seemed to have a little extra energy, a little extra something in these two games that it didn’t have before.
I’m not entirely sure what that was or if it was really there, but it makes sense that they might have had a little pep in their step, and not because of anything negative about Johnson or Toney. Rather, I think there was something extra in the team’s energy because a lot of guys were getting opportunities they hadn’t gotten all season - more minutes, more shots, a bigger role and simply a chance to get on the court and play.
That’s naturally going to come with some extra energy, and I think we saw it. I also think it was kind of fun to watch, even if Pitt went 1-1 in those two games. It was fun to see some different faces get time in the spotlight, it was fun to see them play with that extra energy and, of course, it was fun to see a team that has gone through a fair amount of adversity recently break a losing streak with a win in the home finale.
Maybe the newness will eventually wear off: the players will get more accustomed to being on the court and we’ll get more accustomed to seeing them out there. And if they get beat up by Clemson on Saturday in the regular-season finale, the “fun” factor will go down a bit more. But for now, I have to say, the last two games have been entertaining.
Two key elements
We’ll talk more about individual players in a second, but I want to look at something else that stood out - again - in the win over Wake Forest.
If there’s one positive trait about the 2020-21 Pitt men’s basketball team, both with Johnson and Toney on the team and without them, it’s actually two positive traits:
Defense and rebounding.
Pitt fans who have been Pitt fans for more than the last five years have heard those words aplenty. Probably grew tired of hearing them at some point. Maybe even muttered them derisively after a low-scoring loss on occasion.
Defense and rebounding.
The mantra of Jamie Dixon (and more coaches throughout the history of the game, but especially him). And while more than a few people along the way wished the former Pitt coach would have focused a little more on offense during his time in Oakland, I think we can all admit that emphasizing defense and rebounding is not a bad way to play.
This season, perhaps for the first time since Dixon left Pitt in the spring of 2016, we’ve seen the Panthers really emphasize those two elements. It’s one thing to say, “We need to defend and rebound;” it’s another thing altogether to do it, to commit to it, to truly believe in it.
This year’s team believes in it. This year’s team is committed to it. This year’s team is doing it.
They did it with Johnson and Toney, and they have done it in the last two games.
In Sunday’s loss at N.C. State, Pitt held a 44-30 rebounding advantage and allowed the Wolfpack to grab just seven offensive boards while puling in 20 themselves. On Tuesday night, the Panthers were even better, out-rebounding Wake Forest 42-23 and giving up just four offensive rebounds.
That performance on the glass, combined with some really strong play on defense, loomed large in the win. One crucial stretch came early in the second half, when Wake Forest didn’t make a single field goal over a stretch of more than eight minutes.
But Pitt didn’t just prevent the Deacons from getting any buckets; they also made sure that Wake Forest didn’t have any second-chance opportunities. The Deacons missed six field goal attempts - plus one free throw - and the Panthers grabbed a defensive rebound every time.
That’s big.
It was especially big since Pitt scored just nine points over those eight minutes. If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times (and heard it several million times from coaches): your offense will come and go, but if you play good defense and rebound, you’ll have a chance on most nights.
Pitt won on Tuesday night because the Panthers defended and rebounded. They had a chance to win on Sunday because they defended and rebounded. That’s been the case a lot this season, and it’s good to see that the roster shakeup didn’t change much in that regard.
The step-ups
Back to the individuals…
With Johnson and Toney gone, somebody had to step up. That was one of the big questions last week; we discussed it at length on a special live stream podcast Thursday afternoon (you should subscribe to the Panther-Lair.com YouTube channel, if you didn’t already) and we discussed it even more on the message boards from Thursday to Sunday.
Well, after two games, we’ve got some answers, and what’s been interesting to see is that more than one player has stepped up.
On Sunday at N.C. State, it was Femi Odukale. The freshman guard from Brooklyn had already made two starts this season when Johnson was benched due to technical fouls, but Sunday was different. Sunday was his first game as the full-time starter, The Man, so to speak, and I have to think that gave him a slightly different mentality. I have to believe that starting in spot duty with the regular starter waiting to come in off the bench is quite a bit different from when you’re taking the court at the beginning of the game and that “regular starter” is no longer on the team.
Now you’re the regular starter. It’s your team. It’s your show. Go run it.
And that’s exactly what Odukale did. He played more than 38 minutes at N.C. State, attempted 11 field goals, made six of them, scored 18 points, handed out five assists, grabbed four rebounds and committed just one turnover. No player in the game scored more or made more baskets than he did. I
t wasn’t technically Odukale’s debut, but it was his debut as the No. 1 point guard, and he looked great in that role.
Two days later, Odukale took a back seat as another guard stepped into the limelight. This time it was Nike Sibande, the transfer who came to Pitt after high-scoring exploits at Miami (Oh.) that had heretofore not been seen in Oakland.
In fact, by game No. 20 of the 2020-21 season, I had almost completely forgotten that Sibande arrived at Pitt with quite a reputation. He averaged 15 points per game at Miami, scored 20+ in 26 games and hit double figures a whopping 76 times over three seasons.
He was a scorer. That’s what he did. Until he got to Pitt and averaged 3.9 points per game in 11 games, hitting double digits just once (12 points on 4-of-13 shooting against Florida State).
On Tuesday night, though, we saw the Sibande that we had been sold when he transferred. He slashed, he drove, he pulled up for jumpers, he knocked down three’s (even if they were three of the most unlikely three-point baskets you’ll ever see). And he came out of it with 23 points on 7-of-13 shooting in just about 37 minutes.
Two games in a row after the departures of Johnson and Toney, Pitt had two guys not named Justin Champagnie step up and score a game high in points. And they were two guys who really hadn’t flirted with that kind of production previously.
Maybe Odukale and Sibande just needed the opportunity; I can’t say for certain. But it’s hard not to like what they did when the team needed somebody to step up.
TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE
Is this the core?
There’s something else I started wondering about while watching the last two games.
Are we seeing the formation of a new “core” for Pitt basketball?
We saw a core being formed two years ago when Johnson, Toney and Trey McGowens were freshmen, and then we saw a big piece added to it last season when Champagnie joined the team. But with those first three gone and the fourth guy up in the air for next season, there’s a major void looming in the core department.
At least, that’s what I was thinking last Thursday or Friday. A week later, I’ve got some different thoughts.
It starts with Odukale. He’s taller than a typical point guard, but he’s got that position’s feel for the game plus a healthy enough dose of driving ability to be a nuisance to opposing guards. The biggest thing missing from his game is free throw shooting; Odukale is hitting 47.5% of his attempts from the line, and that’s a bad thing when he has taken the fourth-most free throws on the team.
So that needs to improve, and maybe if he shoots several thousand free throws this summer, it will. But otherwise, there’s a lot to like with Odukale.
The other player who is starting to stand out is Will Jeffress. He was one of the guys who saw their playing time go up considerably in the wake of the Johnson and Toney departures. At N.C. State, he looked okay but tentative; against Wake Forest, he looked better and more comfortable. And I think that progression is only going to improve.
Really, Jeffress might be the young Pitt player I am most bullish about. He’s got good size, he’s a smooth athlete, and in those moments when you see him really settle in, he looks like he can be a star.
And you know what else? I haven’t given up on Ithiel Horton either. He’s been really inconsistent this season and, let’s say ,“not good”- that’s polite - in the last two games, but he has had enough moments, fleeting as they may have been, where he has been a real offensive weapon that I am willing to see what he can do after he has a season in the ACC under his belt.
In the short term - meaning next season - Pitt also seemingly will have Sibande back, which makes a really good guard duo with Odukale, and the possibility still exists that Champagnie could return, although I don’t know if anyone really knows what will happen there.
But if Pitt went into 2020-21 with Odukale, Sibande, Horton, Jeffress and Champagnie on the roster, that would be a pretty good start. Abdul Karim Coulibaly is a solid, developing player at center, and if John Hugley could return, that would be a big piece to add as well.
I think there’s a core forming. More pieces are needed, of course. But if Jeff Capel and company can add some of those pieces, either from recruiting or transfers or, most likely, both, then I think you can see something being built.
Will Pitt get any of these guys?
Switching over to football for a moment…
Following recruiting on Twitter is a full-time job.
Seriously, there is a fairly sizable segment of the recruiting industry that subsists almost entirely on Twitter. And that’s not a knock: you can find a lot of info on Twitter, and if you are diligent about it - i.e., if you sit on Twitter all day - you can stay on top of most of the major recruiting news.
And if that is your inclination, then the last couple weeks have been a wild experience in following Pitt recruiting. It’s not that anything major has actually happened; recruits can’t visit campus and coaches can’t visit recruits. But in lieu of tangible recruiting activity, there has been a flurry of “digital” recruiting activity.
What I’m saying is, a lot of kids have been posting Pitt offers. Like, a lot a lot. More than usual for this time of year. And what’s more, a huge percentage of those new offers have gone to underclassmen. Not juniors in the class of 2022 who will be signing their Letters of Intent in December; I’m talking about sophomores in the class of 2023 and freshmen in the class of 2024 (and even one eighth-grader in the class of 2025) - those are the guys who have been posting the bulk of the offers.
It’s been pretty wild to watch, and a whole lot of it traces back to one guy:
Brennan Marion.
Pitt’s new receivers coach has been on a tear, offering more than 20 recruits in the last week since he was officially announced as being part of Pitt’s staff, with almost all of those offers in the 2023 and 2024 classes. He’s casting a wide net, offering prospects from California to Texas to Virginia and just about anywhere in between.
It’s the kind of blanket approach that almost calls into question the nature of the word “offer” and what an offer really means in 2021, but I think we’ve been in that territory for a long time. It’s been years since offers to ninth-graders raised so much as an eyebrow; nowadays, everyone takes them for what they are and what they represent.
And what those offers are, what they represent is a connection. More than a “committable” opportunity, it’s a first step in the recruiting process, a chance to get Pitt’s name attached to a rising prospect who has a bright future.
What is the likelihood of Pitt getting any of those guys? Probably not great. California and Texas aren’t exactly recruiting hotbeds for the Panthers, and I don’t know if we’ll even remember the names of some of these prospects a year or two from now.
But the thing we’ve really seen in all of this activity is Marion’s approach. He came to Pitt with a reputation of being a high-energy, hard-working young coach, and he is definitely pounding the pavement - virtually speaking - in the week that he has officially been on the staff.
ONE PREDICTION
Pitt will get at least a couple games in Greensboro
Here’s the thing about me and predictions:
I’m awful.
That’s not an exaggeration. It’s a proven fact. All season long, we on the staff at Panther-Lair.com have picked the winners in Pitt’s games. That’s 20 games, so it’s certainly an adequate sample size. And after 20 games, there’s only one game separating the leader (Jim Hammett; he is 13-7) and three other guys (Houston Wilson, Matt Steinbrink and Stephen Gertz are all 12-8).
And then there’s me, holding up the rear at 9-11, needing Pitt to win four in a row and make the semifinals of the ACC Tournament if I want to have a chance of winning.
Like I said, I am awful at predictions.
But I’m going to do it. I’m going to make a prediction in this space, which I do every week. This week, I’m going to make a prediction about next week. I’m going to make a prediction about the ACC Tournament. I’m going to make a prediction about Pitt’s participation in the ACC Tournament.
I’m going to predict that the Panthers will play three games in Greensboro.
To do that, they’d have to win their first two games and advance to the quarterfinals. That would be only the second time Pitt has won two games in the ACC Tournament; the Panthers made it to the quarterfinals in 2014, their first time playing in the conference tourney.
I say it’s going to happen this year. We don’t know exactly where Pitt will be seeded; it will be either No. 11 or 12, depending on what happens in Notre Dame’s game against Florida State on Saturday.
If Pitt ends up as the No. 11 seed, the opponent would probably be Wake Forest or Miami. As the 12, it could be one of those teams or Boston College. While the Panthers haven’t been a sure thing against any level of opponent this season, I think any one of those three would be a good draw.
The second round would be trickier, of course, and the scenarios there are pretty varied, as Pitt would face either the No. 5 or the No. 6 seed, which could be Louisville, Georgia Tech, Clemson or North Carolina. Some of those matchups look better than others; I think the Panthers would like another shot at Georgia Tech, and Clemson might be a good one, but we’ll see what happens on Saturday.
Overall, though, I think this team is in a good place. They had a different air about them in the last two games. It didn’t necessarily lead to wins, but it was different. And better. Give them another game or two to gel even more with their new lineup, and I think they can maybe win one they aren’t expected to win in the ACC Tournament.
