The 3-2-1 Column: Energy, legends, spring football and more

Talent isn’t the issue with Pitt basketball
Well, talent kind of is the issue with Pitt basketball. Shooting talent - that’s a big issue. Maybe the biggest issue.

But that’s not the issue I’m thinking about at the end of this week as Pitt gets ready for a two-game stretch on the road to (finally, mercifully) end the 2019-20 regular season. And talent wasn’t the issue on Jeff Capel’s mind in the wake of a disappointing and disheartening 23-point loss to Syracuse on Wednesday night.

Capel got right to the point in his post-game press conference. After thanking the fans (it was the home finale) and congratulating Syracuse, Capel hit the nail on the head:

“I didn’t think we had the required and necessary energy to start the game and throughout the game that’s necessary to win, especially for a team that’s lost four games in a row.”

I bet that last part really gets Capel going. His team went into Wednesday’s game on a four-game losing streak, reeling from a valiant comeback that fell short against Virginia last Saturday and not-really-that-close losses against Florida State, Virginia Tech and Clemson.

Capel had to be thinking, ‘How could they come out flat in their final home game, their last chance to give the fans something positive for showing up in fairly respectable numbers all season? How could they walk into the building on a four-game losing streak and not be fired up to play? How could energy, of all things, be the issue?’

Poor shooting - I think Capel can accept that. Getting out-rebounded due to size - that’s natural. Turnovers because a zone defense is too packed in to penetrate - those things happen.

But not showing up with energy? That’s inexcusable.

Yet, there were the Panthers on Wednesday night, sleep-walking through the first half (and much of the second half), just like they did against Virginia and in so many other games this season.

It had to have driven Capel crazy.

We’ve talked before in this column about Capel’s mindset and how it probably confounds him that his players oftentimes just don’t seem to have the same passion for the game that he does. That’s not to say they don’t care or they don’t want to win; they most certainly do care and they most certainly do want to win.

But there’s a level beyond caring and wanting to win. There’s a level where it pains you to lose. And when you are playing with that level of passion, you couldn’t conceive of not showing up for a game.

That’s Capel’s level. But as he has made clear - and as the on-court performance has made clear - that’s not the level his players are on. Not yet.

I don’t know why that is. I’m not sure if anyone does. Capel probably has some ideas, but he’s not sharing them publicly.

What we do know is this: the issue isn’t new. One can turn the clock all the way back to Nov. 6 when Pitt lost to Nicholls State in the second game of the season. Guess what Capel was talking about after that one?

“I’m incredibly disappointed in us, and when I say us, that’s our staff - obviously it starts with me - and our team. We didn’t have the energy that was worthy of winning throughout the game.”

There it is: the same sentiment in Game Two and Game 29, not to mention plenty of times in between.

I’m not sure how you fix that in an offseason. Increasing the talent level will help, and the 2020-21 team should have more talent than this year’s squad. But the players on the current roster - the ones who plan to return for next season, at least - need to take a long, hard look at themselves and decide what they want to dedicate, what they’re willing to commit to turning a corner with this program.

They didn’t have it this year, and some of that is talent.

But not all of it.

The legend of Ithiel Horton
Someday many years from now, we will all sit back in our recliners, pull a grandchild up on our knees and tell him or her the Legend of Ithiel Horton.

From his humble beginnings in Vauxhall, New Jersey, to his year of CAA play at Delaware, we will tell the little tyke how Horton did unbelievable things in practice, how he gave Pitt’s players more of a challenge than they saw in games, how he carried with him the promise of a better tomorrow.

And eventually, God willing, we might actually be able to regale the young people with tales of actually seeing Horton play in a game.

Eventually.

For now, we’ll have to live on the words of Capel and Horton’s teammates, who have lavished such praise on Horton that expectations have inevitably risen to an impressive level.

First, we heard Capel say he told his players that if they could guard Horton in practice, they could guard anyone in the ACC - effectively saying that Horton was as good as any guard in the conference. Then on Wednesday night, after calling Syracuse forward Elijah Hughes “the best scorer in our league,” Capel said that Pitt prepared for Hughes by having Horton fill that role.

“We feel like we have a guy that can simulate it in practice with Ithiel.”

So we’ve been presented with Horton as potentially the best guard in the ACC and on par with the best scorer in the conference.

Not that expectations are being set too high or anything.

Look, it seems like Horton will be a good player for Pitt. As a freshman at Delaware, he was a top-20 scorer in the CAA and averaged 13.2 points per game. He shot 40.9% from three and made 79 three-pointers. Nobody on Pitt’s current team is shooting better than 33.3%, and Ryan Murphy has a team-leading 40 three-pointers.

So yeah, Horton should help quite a bit. His shooting alone will be a boost to a team that desperately needs help in that regard (Pitt is the worst shooting team in the ACC and is 14th out of 15 in three-point shooting, edging UNC by .001% in that category). Horton will also help with depth in the back court; Pitt was really thin there this season, and having another guard in the mix should ease some of the pressure on the players the Panthers will return.

I’m not saying Horton won’t be a good addition to the active roster next season. But some of this stuff seems to be over the top. Capel doesn’t strike me as someone who exaggerates, so I’m inclined to take his comments on Horton as sincere. But he is heaping a whole lot of praise on a guy who has never played a minute in the ACC.

Maybe it all works. Maybe Horton really is a missing piece for Pitt’s lineup. And maybe he isn’t. We’ll find out in nine or 10 months. For now, those expectations sure are rocketing higher and higher.

All the questions will still linger
We’re still in the “observations/things we know” portion of the column, but I’m going to talk about questions for a second.

Because when it comes to Pitt football, which starts spring camp on Monday, there are questions to answer. Plenty of questions. Most of them are on offense, but there are a couple questions on defense, too. There are even questions on special teams and questions about the coaching staff. Questions about everything.

Most of all, though, whether they are questions about the offense or the defense or whatever it may be, one thing is true:

Not one of the questions will be answered this spring.

I mean, barring a player leaving the team or something like that, we really won’t have any definitive answers about anything when we all walk out of Heinz Field after the spring game on April 11.

In some ways, that’s the standard for spring camp. Every coach takes all 15 spring practices very seriously and demands that his players have the same focus and effort, but every coach can also tell you dozens, if not hundreds, of stories of players who had great spring camps and never did anything beyond that.

Conversely, every coach has plenty of stories of guys whose futures looked dim after spring camp, only to see them turn a good August into a great season.

The grand conclusion, then, is this:

Spring camp kind of doesn’t matter.

It does matter because it’s 15 days of practice, 15 days of reps and drills and opportunities to get better. But when the season finally starts six months later, it really won't matter what happened back in March.

Which means the next month and a half is going to be ultimately unsatisfying. We’ll write about players who are standing out and we’ll write about players who are slipping down the depth chart. But none of the big questions about the team - Like, ‘Will the offense improve?’ That’s a big one - will actually be answered in spring camp.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Is backup quarterback the most interesting position battle?
Okay, the simple answer to that question is, ‘Probably not.’ The battle for the job at middle linebacker has, as far as we know, far more pressing and immediate consequences for the coming season. The same goes for the battle - or battles - at offensive tackle.

Those spots are much more significant because they really are wide open entering spring camp after losing starters last season and not having obvious and proven options to step in.

But I have to admit: the competition for the backup quarterback job is really, really interesting.

It isn’t - or at least it shouldn’t be - all that interesting for 2020. Barring any unfortunate circumstances, Pitt shouldn’t need the backup quarterback this season because Kenny Pickett is and likely will continue to be the best option for the offense.

Rather, the biggest intrigue of the backup quarterback competition is the implication it has for the future. Because whoever wins the backup job this year would seem to have the inside track on the competition for the starting job next year.

And that’s the big one.

Say what you will about Pickett, but he is an experienced senior who has often been pretty good. Given a little better protection and some more reliable hands on his receiving targets and Pickett’s 2019 season would probably look better than it did. Pitt’s offense should be just fine with him.

But 2021 is a whole new ballgame. Pickett will be gone (unless Pitt finds a way to get a waiver from the NCAA to apply a redshirt to his short 2017 season) and the Panthers will need a new starting quarterback. No one will be handed the job, of course, but you’d have to think that whoever wins the backup spot this year will enter next year as the preliminary No. 1.

The competitors in this particular race, as we all know, are Nick Patti, Davis Beville and Joey Yellen. Patti is a redshirt sophomore this season; he played in four games last year, including a start against Delaware, and threw for 301 yards, three touchdowns and one interception on 26-of-43 passing (60.5%).

Beville and Yellen will be redshirt freshmen this year. Beville sat out last season for Pitt but Yellen saw action at Arizona State, where he made one start. That game was a loss to USC, but Yellen played well, throwing for 292 yards, four touchdowns and two picks.

While Patti showed some potential on the field last season, Beville and Yellen are the wild cards. Beville was a four-star prospect and has earned a lot of praise from the coaching staff for his performance on the scout team last season, while Yellen was a priority transfer target for Mark Whipple in the offseason, which makes his presence on the roster really interesting.

Think of it this way: Yellen is the only quarterback on the roster who was recruited to Pitt by Whipple. That’s got to be worth something.

So there’s plenty of intrigue there. Of course, we won’t actually see the bulk of what those guys do in practice; instead, we’ll have to rely on things we hear and what we see in the spring game - and spring game observations are never misleading or inaccurate, right? - but the storyline of the No. 2 quarterback is going to be an interesting one this season because of what it will mean for the No. 1 next season.

Will the early enrollees play?
I can’t remember the last time Pitt had eight newcomers in spring camp, but here we are.

Six high school recruits and two transfers joined the team in January, adding some really interesting parts to the roster and creating opportunities for those guys to get a bunch of extra reps that they wouldn’t have gotten if they enrolled in June.

But what will that ultimately translate to? We’ve seen plenty of guys enroll early before and still redshirt, particularly linemen like Jake Kradel in 2018 or Jerry Drake in 2017. But the only early enrollees from the past few years who got on the field were Shocky Jacques-Louis in 2018 and Kenny Pickett a year earlier, and you can make the case that both guys could have redshirted.

Last year, Davis Beville and Liam Dick both enrolled in January and took a redshirt.

So what do we expect out of this year’s January arrivals? Specifically, we’re talking about the freshmen, since we know Lucas Krull is going to play and the jury is still out on whether Yellen will be eligible to play.

We’re talking about the six freshmen who will participate in spring camp: receivers Jordan Addison and Aydin Henningham, running back Israel Abanikanda, linebackers AJ Roberts and Solomon DeShields and safety Buddy Mack.

How many of those guys will play in the fall?

The first name I circle - and if you’ve been reading Panther-Lair.com at all over the last six months, you know who I’m going to say - is Addison. He’s a big-time receiver prospect who was underrated as a three-star recruit and will be in the rotation at receiver this season. Honestly, I think the expectation right now is for him to be no lower than No. 4 in that rotation, and I would look for his name to be on the official two-deep every week.

The next one I would point to is Abanikanda. Pitt has three running backs returning in A.J. Davis, Vincent Davis and Todd Sibley, plus Daniel Carter who might be a tailback and might be a fullback, but none of those guys really separated himself last season, and if Abanikanda shows he can play, he’ll get on the field.

I think there’s a good chance one or both linebackers play this season, too, if only on special teams. The coaches do need to restock the depth chart at linebacker heading into 2020, so there’s a chance for Roberts and DeShields, but I’m guessing the staff will find upperclassmen to fill those roles. Still, Brandon George and SirVocea Dennis both burned their redshirts playing almost exclusively on special teams last season, and I wouldn’t rule out a similar fate for Roberts and DeShields.

And, of course, we have to mention that the NCAA’s redshirt rule, which allows players to appear in as many as four games and still preserve their redshirts, is a factor as well. All six of those guys could get on the field in 2020, even if three or four of them end up redshirting.

They’ll all be on the field on April 11 for the spring game, too, and I think those six freshmen plus Krull and Yellen will be among the most-watched players that night.

ONE PREDICTION

The award winners
One of the annual rites of spring is the presentation of the Ed Conway Award(s). This happens at the end of spring camp and the coaches present the award to the most improved players. There’s always at least one from offense and at least one from defense, although the numbers are flexible.

We’ve seen four players get the award with a two-offense/two-defense split. We’ve seen four players get the award with one on offense and three on defense (1993). We’ve seen special teams get in the mix, too (there was one each from offense, defense and special teams in 2006 and 2014).

We’ve also seen a bunch of players get their names called more than once. T.J. Clemmings won it back-to-back in 2013 and 2014. Mike McGlynn won back-to-back, also, but he has the unique distinction of getting the award from two different coaching staffs: Walt Harris gave it to him in 2004 and he got it from Dave Wannstedt in 2005.

There are guys like Tim Murphy, Clint Session and Tyrone Ezell; those three won it twice each - but they did it over three years. Murphy was the most improved player in 2002 and 2004; Session was got the award in 2004 and 2006; and Ezell got it in 2011 and 2013. I don’t know what Murphy was doing in 2003 or Session was doing in 2005 or Ezell was doing in 2012. I guess they weren't improving as much as Chris Curd (the 2003 winner), Chris McKillop (the 2005 winner) or Shayne Hale (the 2012 winner).

The best Ed Conway Award winner, in my opinion, is Pat Bostick. He won it in 2009 and then redshirted that season. Bostick improved so much that he didn’t even play the following season.

That’s a classic.

Of course, there are plenty of Ed Conway Award winners who had really good careers at Pitt. Mark Ponko, Bryan Knight, Kris Wilson, Torrie Cox, Lewis Moore, Brandon Miree, Vince Crochunis, McGlynn, Session, C.J. Davis, Kennard Cox, Jeff Otah, Dorin Dickerson, Mick Williams, Antwuan Reed, Anthony Gonzalez, Ezell, Ryan Turnley, Clemmings, Jester Weah, Elijah Zeise and Connor Dintino were among the winners in the last 20 years who went on to play well for the Panthers.

And last year’s crew was pretty solid: Carter Warren and Tre Tipton won for offense while Phil Campell and Paris Ford won for defense. Warren started every game in 2019 and Tipton was playing well before he got hurt. Campbell and Ford were among the stars of a very strong defense, so I’d say the coaching staff hit the right choices there.

Moving to this year, then, who are the top candidates to win the Ed Conway Award in 2020? As we sit here a few days before spring camp starts, there’s no obvious position-move candidate like Campbell; that’s an easy option and I think Campbell was my mid-spring prediction. But right now, we don’t know of any position moves so there aren’t easy and obvious candidates.

That means I have to use my own creativity.

I’ll start with defense because I think there actually is a kind-of easy option. I think it’s Chase Pine. He really checks a lot of boxes: a redshirt senior who has spent his career as a reserve and now will likely step in as the starter at a key position. That position would be middle linebacker, which is really the spot on defense that is most up for grabs, and I expect Pine to be the front-runner.

If he is and if he holds onto the job throughout spring camp, I think he’ll be the Ed Conway Award Winner for defense.

The offense is a little trickier. It would be a good storyline to give it to Kenny Pickett, but I don’t see that happening. Todd Sibley would seem to fit the bill, but I don’t know what his participation will be like after he got hurt last season Maybe a receiver like Taysir Mack, but I’m guessing not.

If I had to bet on the Ed Conway Award winner from the offense, I would probably say it will be a lineman. I’m not sure which one, though. Warren won it last year and Jimmy Morrissey is the rock of the unit, so I would count those two out. That leaves guys like Bryce Hargrove, Jake Kradel, Carson Van Lynn, Gabe Houy, Jerry Drake, Matt Goncalves, Blake Zubovic and Owen Drexel.

I’m going to give it to Hargrove. He’ll be a redshirt senior entering his second season as a starter, and that seems like a natural storyline for a Conway Award winner.

So there you have it: the 2020 Ed Conway Award winners. Place your bets accordingly.