The 3-2-1 Column: Breaking down Pitt's recruiting efforts in June

On the final day in the month in June of 2023, we take some time to reflect what just happened over the last 30 days for the Pitt football program. Once again, June proved to be an excited month for Pitt on the recruiting trail, and we recap all the twists and turns that popped up along the way.

The Pitt basketball team will not be playing any games until November, but the Panthers added a marquee non-conference game to the schedule this week. We now have a better understanding of what type of schedule faces Jeff Capel’s team heading into the 2023-24 season.

All that and more in this week’s 3-2-1 Column.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Another June in the books
The Pitt football program is coming off of a month in which it hosted 38 official visitors in the class of 2024. During that time, the Panthers added eight recruits to the commitment list, they are still awaiting on two announcements, and there were even a pair of de-commitments along the way.

Got all that?

It was a hectic month, but it was hardly unexpected either. Ever since the NCAA allowed schools to start hosting visits back in 2018, Pat Narduzzi shifted his entire recruiting philosophy. The Panthers have routinely hosted upwards of 30 to 40 players each June and the bulk of their recruiting classes every year have come from those added efforts during this month and it was no different in 2023.

Pitt brought in 14 four-star recruits in the month of June, as this can be argued as the most star-studded set of official visitors the program has ever had since June opened up on the recruiting calendar. It’s not too big of a surprise, however, because Pitt has had more success on the field lately. Recruits have noticed that, too. Pitt won the ACC in 2021, they finished in the top 25 in consecutive years, and Kenny Pickett and Calijah Kancey gave Pitt back-to-back first round draft picks. All of that is relative and it certainly has given the program a boost and better prospects are starting to think about Pitt maybe than they would have four or five years ago.

The Panthers landed eight known commitments this month, highlighted by Aliquippa four-star linebacker Cameron Lindsey. Pitt also had some big recruiting wins with three-star linemen Caleb Holmes, Florida linebacker prospect Jeremiah Marcellin, and Tennessee-based defensive back Nigel Maynard.

Those are just the known commitments, because we are still expecting two more players to formally announce their decisions in the coming days or weeks. While those were all the positives from this month, there were also a few bumps along the way, par for the course in ever changing landscape of college football recruiting.

Pitt lost a commitment from cornerback Chasen Johnson who flipped to UCF two weeks after committing and four-star defensive back, Koy Beasley, an assumed heavy Pitt lean, picked Purdue over the Panthers earlier this week. Aside from that, Pitt did not win a couple of battles that seemed to be trending in their favor like in the case of four-star linebacker Gabriel Williams, who spurned the Panthers for ACC rival Virginia Tech.

Perhaps the most concerning storyline coming out of this month is that the Panthers are still without a quarterback for the 2024 recruiting class. Pitt’s search seemed to be coming down to Henry Hasselbeck and Trever Jackson, but the water is a bit murky in terms of quarterback recruiting.

Hasselbeck cancelled his visit and appears trending towards Michigan State. Jackson’s case is curious because he is admittedly very high on Pitt, but after blowing up at the prestigious Elite-11 passing camp, he has seen some new opportunities. Pitt is still pushing for Jackson, and perhaps they land him down the line, but he does not appear to be deciding soon, which is a but tenuous as we inch closer towards the season.

June of 2023 provided a lot of excitement for those who follow Pitt football recruiting. The Panthers currently have a top 20 recruiting class, they hosted some big-time talent, landed a few big names, but still hold some question marks.

This 2024 recruiting class still has a ways to go before it is completed, and we’ll get into what the coaches still need to address in a bit. We also know signing day in December is a long ways off, and the coaches will have to continue to fight for their own commitments, but overall it was a fruitful month. There are still question marks, but we got a lot more clarity on Pitt’s 2024 class over the last 30 days.

Pitt loses a ‘pair’ of commitments
Chasen Johnson announced he committed to Pitt back on June 11th and then 12 days later he flipped his decision to UCF following an official visit. Johnson is a talented three-star defensive back out of Florida, but a visit to a program in his home state changed his commitment.

Did Pitt do anything wrong here? Probably not. Johnson seemingly made a rushed decision before really weighing all of his options. He said he was inspired by some of the other prospects committing around him and admitted it played a role in his decision.

"Really, it was the coaching staff and how they have momentum going, and I want to be a part of that,” Johnson told Panther-Lair.com. “I saw all the commits and I wanted to be a part of it, to be honest.”

These official visits certainly can create an organic sense of momentum and once on domino falls, it only feels like a matter of time until the next ‘Pat Signal’ tweet is sent. Pitt got on a roll a few times in June and we saw them get commitments in bunches.

For the most part, recruits know what they are doing and we don’t see tons of de-commitments, but each year there tends to be a rushed decision or two, and I think that was the case here with Chasen Johnson. I think Pitt’s heavy June approach has been more positive than anything else, but there are drawbacks to this style, and we saw a few instances of just that.

The other lost ‘commitment’ here is Koy Beasley. The four-star defensive back from Cincinnati never was publicly part of Pitt’s commitment list, but I do think that was one of the commitment tweets sent from Pat Narduzzi’s twitter account was likely for Beasley. Technically there are three unclaimed Pat Signals on Twitter, but I am guessing we will only see two of those ever to come to fruition.

The Panthers made a big push for Beasley, as he was one of the top defensive backs on their board and he walked away impressed with the program following his visit to Pittsburgh June 8th visit.

“I love Pitt,” Beasley told Panther-Lair.com after his visit. “I’ve been there four times - I’m always up there - and I like the culture, the staff, all the coaches and their scheme, and they’re winning, they’re sending guys to the NFL. They’ve got everything.”

It was a pretty glowing review, but Beasley’s intention all along was to announce his commitment on June 28th, which he held up to earlier this week. The problem on Pitt’s end is that he still took official visits to Wisconsin and Purdue, and they survived the Wisconsin visit, but he was apparently really drawn to Purdue. It was an unfortunate turn of events for Pitt, because I think he would have been one of their better recruits in this class.

College football recruiting is weird. Let’s just state it plainly for anyone who was unaware. Just when you think you have one thing figured out, some new bit of information emerges.

Pitt now sits with three defensive backs committed, some pretty good ones at that with a trio of three-stars in Allen Bryant, Nigel Maynard, and Davion Pritchard. The Panthers also have a great track record with developing players in the secondary as well. It’s not a position I think people should be overly concerned with here as the coaching staff looks to finish the class.

We saw a lot of recent moving and shaking in the recruiting class, even behind the scenes, and in the case with Johnson and Beasley, Pitt came up on the wrong end of things, but it can work both ways. The Panthers have won some battles, too.

June recruiting, it is what it is. Or as Omar Little said in season one of the HBO hit show The Wire, ‘It's all In the game, yo’.

The basketball schedule is starting to take shape
The landscape of college athletics and conference realignment has trickled down to the far reaches of all of these sports. The ACC-Big Ten Challenge was a made-for-TV event on ESPN that pitted the two leagues against one another in early December from 1999 up through 2022.

Well, chalk the challenge up as another casualty of everything that has happened. ESPN no longer carries the Big Ten, so now we have an ACC-SEC Challenge…alrighty then.

The formal announcement for the matchups of the inaugural challenge were announced earlier this week and the Panthers added a pretty difficult game to their schedule for the upcoming season. Pitt will play host to the Missouri Tigers at the Petersen Events Center, which will be the highlight of the Panthers’ home non-conference slate.

Missouri produced a 25-10 record last season. Like Pitt, the Tigers were bounced in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Missouri was upset by tournament darling Princeton, but despite that, it was a successful first season for head coach Dennis Gates. The Tigers lost a good bit of production off of that 2023 team, but with some talented recruits and transfers coming in, they should be a formidable squad yet again.

Pitt’s ACC-Big Ten Challenge games weren’t always met with much anticipation. In the first few years the Panthers were in the ACC, they had some intriguing matchups with Purdue and Indiana, but as the program fell off, Pitt wasn’t exactly given a featured game in the event. Pitt squared off with the likes of Minnesota, Northwestern and Rutgers in recent years. Not that those teams were necessarily bad, but it’s not exactly like playing Michigan or Purdue If nothing else, the Missouri game adds a little more juice to the non-conference schedule.

The Tigers join an already daunting slate of games for Pitt this upcoming season. Of course Pitt has 20 ACC games to navigate, but now Missouri is part of a non-conference schedule which also includes a road game against West Virginia, and a two-day event in Brooklyn where they will face two of three among Baylor, Florida, and Oregon State.

Pitt is looking to make the NCAA Tournament in consecutive years for the first time since 2013-2014. It has been a productive offseason for the program and there is optimism it can happen. Capel signed a top-25 recruiting class, he brought in some impact transfers, and returns a core highlighted by leading scorer and rebounder Blake Hinson. The Panthers probably have a more talented roster than this past season, but the inexperience is a question mark. Given the quality of games early on in the season, we should get an early sense of where this team is right away.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Who were the three biggest commitments in June?
Pitt has netted eight known commitments in the month of June, with two more players waiting to publicly announce their respective decisions. The eight recruits who committed during June span seven different states with five defensive recruits and three on offense. They joined an already impressive core group of recruits in place to make up a class which currently ranks in the top-20 nationally.

So who were the biggest wins in the month of June? Here are my top three.

Jeremiah Marcellin is the rare high school recruit who really deflected all the attention that comes with being a major college prospect to the side. He rarely gave interviews, kept his official visits a secret, but Marcellin eventually pledged to the Panthers, and he is arguably as good as anyone they have in this class.

Marcellin is a playmaker as evidence by his stat line of 62 tackles, 12.5 tackles for loss, and 9.5 sacks as a junior. He held offers from the likes of Auburn, Florida State, Louisville, Maryland, Miami, Ole Miss, Stanford, Tennessee, Texas A&M, and many more. It was a good recruiting win for Pitt overall by plucking a talented player out of Florida and he adds to emerging linebacker room being built by Ryan Manalac.

Pitt has had mixed results with its backyard recruiting under Pat Narduzzi. Some years have been more successful than others, and while Pitt missed out on a few 2024 big names from the WPIAL, they locked down a pretty good one in Cameron Lindsey from Aliquippa. Lindsey is a four-star linebacker and his recruitment seemingly came down to Pitt, West Virginia, Penn State, and Cincinnati, so it’s always a positive to land a talented local prospect over some regional recruiting rivals as well.

Caleb Holmes is a really good-looking offensive line prospect. Holmes, a three-star on Rivals, is rated by some scouting services as a four-star, and it’s easy to see why. He is big, powerful and has a strong offer sheet to back up his lofty status as a recruit. Holmes scheduled official visits to Pitt and Auburn, but the visit to Pittsburgh led him to committing on the spot and cancelling that visit. It should be mentioned that Pitt freshman linemen, BJ Williams, is a close friend of Holmes and really played a role in this commitment. Pitt’s offensive line recruiting has been up and down lately, but Holmes ranks up their with one of the better line prospects Pitt has landed under Narduzzi.

What else does this class still need?
Pitt has 19 (or 21) commitments as it stands today and given the way the roster is set for this season with a heavy senior class, the coaches should still have room to add some additional players to the class. So what I am saying is that this recruiting class is far from over and plenty more storylines can and will unfold before signing day. Pitt has addressed a lot of needs so far, but there are still some noticable holes in this recruiting class.

Let’s take a better look at some of the spots that need filled.

Quarterback: We touched on this some, but it’s notable Pitt still does not have a quarterback commitment. I don't think they are in panic territory just yet, but it’s concerning they do not have a signal caller in the class, especially because quarterbacks generally decide early so options are dwindling a bit. Right now Pitt is pursuing and waiting to see what Trever Jackson decides, but if that one does not go in their favor, they may have to circle back to some other prospects or identify and offer some new ones.

Wide Receiver: I think Pitt is in a good spot with Ric’Darious Farmer and Cameron Monteiro, but they should still be in the mix for more receivers for several reasons. I think Tiquan Underwood needs to build this position back up and landing four prospects last year was a good start in that regard, but you could still make a case Pitt should probably take four again in 2024 just to continue to replenish the position. While Farmer, one of Pitt’s highest rated recruits, maintains his commitment other schools haven’t stopped recruiting him and he still seems inclined to listen. Pitt is awaiting the word on some visitors from this past month like Nick Marsh and Zy’Marion Lang. Obviously landing either of those two would be huge, but there may be some efforts to reach out to some new prospects.

Offensive Line: Pitt currently has four offensive line commitments in this class and I think they plan to take one more. There is a chance it could get wrapped up today actually. Moritz Schmoranzer, who visited Pitt last weekend, will chose between the Panthers, Miami, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia later today. If that one goes in Pitt’s favor, that should put a wrap on things, buy four-star Ryan Howerton is also a name to watch and he is not deciding for a few more weeks.

Defensive End: Pitt has four defensive linemen committed, and it is likely three of them are going to play defensive tackle in college. That leaves Zachary Crothers as the lone defensive end in the class, and the Panthers will likely be adding one or two more here. Sincere Edwards is a name to keep in mind, though he does not have a commitment date announced. Some four-star visitors like Dominic Kirks and Elias Rudolph are coming off the board and Pitt is a finalist for each player. So there should be some dominoes to fall here starting today.

I think those four spots are the main ones, but I could see Pitt going after a second running back and tight end as well. The defensive back recruiting may not be as urgent with three commitments in place, but I suspect Pitt will pursue an additional player or two at that spot as well, especially with the Koy Bealey and Chasen Johnson news of late.

ONE PREDICTION

Derrick Davis makes an impact in year one
We are now slowing starting to transition from June recruiting to preparing for the 2023 regular season. July can be a quiet month for college athletics and generally this is the only extended break the players and coaches really have throughout the year. As we look to fill in the gaps leading up to the season, we are breaking down every position on the roster each week leading up towards the season.

This week on Panther-Lair.com we broke down the running back position from all angles. I have a bold prediction about Rodney Hammond for this upcoming season which will publish later this afternoon. But in the spirit of running back week, I’ll make one more bold prediction.

Derrick Davis is just intriguing to me for some reason and I think he has a chance to make an impact this season carrying the ball for the Panthers. It might not be to the point where he is taking carries away from Rodney Hammond, but given the length of the season and the demand of the position, he’ll have his spots to make some plays.

Davis probably could have told colleges back during his recruiting days that he wanted to play running back in college and he still would have landed plenty of power-five offers to play that position. He may not have achieved that four-star, top-100 status like he did as a defensive prospect, but schools would have probably been OK with him offense. After all, Davis rushed for 3,898 yards and posted nearly 1,500 receiving yards combined with 77 touchdowns in four seasons starring for nearby Gateway High School. So while he is changing positions at the college level, Davis should have a pretty good feel for running back and won’t look out of place, at least physically, playing a new position.

I think there are a lot of unknowns about Pitt’s offense for this upcoming season. They return some experience on the line and have a few skilled players returning, but the coaches are still looking for guys to step up and make plays and I think Davis could potentially provide an answer.