In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about Pitt's win over Louisville and more heading into the weekend.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

That didn’t take long
I think it was the lingering thought in everyone’s mind entering this season:

When would Pitt finally win an ACC game?

And maybe, among a select few (or not so few), a more ominous question:

Would Pitt win an ACC game?

Both questions were answered rather emphatically Wednesday night with an overtime win against Louisville. You probably know the numbers by now. Pitt hadn’t won a regular-season ACC game since Feb. 18, 2017 - a span of 690 days and 23 games.

The Panthers also hadn’t beaten Louisville in even longer. That losing streak dated back to January 2010; that’s particularly rough since Pitt faced the Cardinals twice in five of those nine seasons, amounting to a 12-game stretch of losses.

So when Pitt finally came out on top in a conference game and finally did it against Louisville, of all teams, I couldn’t help but wonder if Jeff Capel had brought in Janine Melnitz to serve as his new administrative assistant.

(I’m saving that gif for Capel’s first commitment in the 2019 class; feel free to use it when that happens)

Look, I was sure they would win a game in the ACC. I expected - and, obviously still do expect - them to win multiple games in the conference. But there’s something about getting that first win after such a long dry spell.

I mean, 690 days is a long time. You get to that kind of streak and you start wondering when it really will end. In that sense, it was kind of surprising that it finally did end on Wednesday night. I didn’t think Louisville was unbeatable, but the Cardinals are a talented team, even if they’re in the early stages of a rebuild.

When the first ACC win under Capel finally happened, I thought it would be against the likes of Georgia Tech or Wake Forest, maybe Boston College or Miami, who are off to their own slow starts this season.

I didn’t necessarily circle the Louisville game as The One.

And then to do it the way Pitt did it on Wednesday night seems to just make the whole thing stand out even more. The freshmen led the way, of course, but they were somehow even better than they have been all season, with Trey McGowens setting a Pitt freshman scoring record, Xavier Johnson popping a double-double and Au’Diese Toney had six points and four rebounds while handling the game’s toughest defensive assignment: Louisville standout Jordan Nwora.

On top of that, there was a resiliency in the team. They blew a double-digit lead in the second half to go to overtime, but after a pep talk from Capel, they took control and didn’t give it up. They played 45 minutes on Wednesday night - an improvement from games earlier this season and a clear sign of growth, which we all knew was going to be an important goal for such a young team.

So Pitt has one under its belt. The albatross has been shed, the questions about getting the first ACC win are done being asked and if nothing else, the 2018-19 season has already been an improvement over its predecessor in every sense. If we’re looking for progress in Capel’s first season, I’d say there’s some strong evidence.

It’s not just about one win
We’ll try to avoid getting too grandiose here. Wednesday night was, after all, just one win in an 18-game conference schedule that will provide plenty more challenges - like, I don’t know, three out of the next four opponents being ranked and the fourth being Syracuse - and even though it felt like more than one win, it was still just one win.

But while that win broke a streak of 20-plus regular-season losses to conference opponents, it also probably broke something else that goes with that streak:

Comparisons to Kevin Stallings.

At a certain point, the name “Kevin Stallings” will be irrelevant in terms of Pitt basketball, a minor footnote in the history of the program. Now that Capel has broken the ACC losing streak, it feels like he has broken the final tie to Stallings.

Granted, there are players on this roster who were recruited by Stallings, and some of those players will probably suit up for Pitt over the next couple of seasons. But the biggest mark of the futility of the Stallings era was that winless ACC season. If he’s talked about much in future years, Stallings will probably always be mentioned in connection with the 0-18 record.

It’s a mark he will wear and it’s one that Pitt had to wear - until the streak was broken.

Now that the Panthers have grabbed a conference win, it feels like that last connection to the disastrous two post-Dixon seasons has been severed.

There have been some signs of ties being severed since Capel was hired. He brought an immediate air of ACC legitimacy as a former standout player in the conference and a respected member of the Coach K Coaching Tree.

He has also been remaking the roster basically since he was hired, and the impact of his approach was seen pretty early on once the team started playing.

But getting the first ACC win - and getting it against Louisville, who has owned Pitt for the better part of a decade - seems like something more tangible. It’s an on-court result, the first real on-court result that separates the current season from the previous two.

I’m never a fan of media people - TV talking heads, radio stars, ink-stained columnists, reporters with a “Press” sign on their fedoras - saying things like, ‘It’s time to stop talking about Kevin Stallings.’ But in the aftermath of that first ACC win, it kind of feels appropriate - not because we’re forcing it or declaring it, but because that natural separation has occurred, so it feels only natural.

So, again, without getting too bold in our proclamations here, I think there’s at least some validity in looking at last night as a distinct point where Capel took the team to a different place. It has the potential to be the first landmark in an extended series of successes, but for now, it’s a big one that seems to say, things are different now.

Toughness is not an issue
I hope you got a chance to check out Craig Meyer’s article in the Post-Gazette earlier this week. It was really good and focused on something that we probably all noticed but might not have realized we were noticing.

Meyer: How taking charges has become a key facet of rapidly improved Pitt defense

Pitt is taking a lot of charges this season. More than the team took last year. More than the team took in the last two years. And while Jeff Capel thinks there is an overall change in the approach to defense - succinctly, this team wants to play defense, last year’s team didn’t - I think there’s more to it.

And, as with so many things this season, it comes back to the freshmen.

Because Xavier Johnson, Trey McGowens and Au’Diese Toney are positively fearless. Those guys really haven’t shown a single sign of backing down to anyone in any situation through 15 games. Whether it was Johnson going hard at West Virginia big man Sagaba Konate or McGowens drawing more than a dozen charges, those three have shown a lot of talents, but chief among them is toughness.

This isn’t to say that last year’s team wasn’t tough. We probably fall into this trap a lot, praising the current team and, intentionally or otherwise, setting up a comparison with last year’s team. That’s not the goal here. Marcus Carr was tough. I believe he was.

But there’s something different about Johnson and McGowens and Toney. These guys are tough and they’re also talented enough to put their toughness to work. You can be willing to take charges, but if you’re not quick enough to get in front of the man with the ball, it doesn’t help you much.

These freshmen have the willingness to sacrifice and the ability to make it work. That’s a pretty dangerous combination - and just one more reason to be encouraged by their play.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Will the other guys catch up?
Right now, there’s no question that Johnson, McGowens and Toney are doing a whole lot for Pitt. Johnson leads the team in scoring and McGowens is right behind him. Toney is No. 4 in points per game but No. 1 in rebounding.

Johnson leads the team in assists. McGowens is tops in steals. The freshmen are pretty much across-the-board leaders in every stat category other than blocks and personal fouls.

Which begs the question: how much can we expect from the rest of the team? Because it seems like the three freshmen are going to need at least a little bit of help over the next 16 ACC games. On Wednesday night, Terrell Brown stepped up with double-digit scoring but, more importantly, five blocks, and he’s now got 34 on the season.

Brown is a key component, seeing as how this team is lacking considerably in the front court. His blocking is obviously a big help on the defensive end, but he is averaging just 5.5 points and 4.7 rebounds per game. Pitt can live with that first number, but the rebounds have to come up; if the boards increase and the blocks keep up, Brown can really help.

Jared Wilson-Frame is the other one they really need. He is “the shooter” on the team, but he’s not doing a great job with that so far. He’s hitting 37.8% from three on the season and he has made just 2-of-14 from deep in two conference games. Johnson and McGowens can drive, but they need someone to kick the ball out to when teams play zone (which is going to keep happening).

If Wilson-Frame can convert when one of those two gets penetration, then the offense can become that much more effective.

The freshmen have been great, but they need help around them, particularly on the glass and outside the arc. This isn’t ground-breaking stuff, I know, but sometimes the distinction between the three freshmen and everybody else is pretty stark.

Maybe that’s because those three freshmen are the ones doing the work. McGowens, Johnson and Toney scored 60 of Pitt’s 89 points against Louisville, and they are clearly the core of what Capel is building. We all know it will take time to build around that core, but it wouldn’t hurt to have one or two of the returning players step up a bit in the meantime.

Brown and Wilson-Frame seem like great options.

How much mileage can Capel get out of the 2018 class?
I’m not talking about what happens on the court, of course; Jeff Capel is going to get a ton of mileage out of Xavier Johnson, Trey McGowens and Au’Diese Toney on the court over the next three years and those guys are going to win quite a few games for Pitt.

Rather, I’m talking about what happens off the court. Specifically, I’m talking about Capel’s recruiting reputation. He came to Pitt with a monster reputation, with terms like “elite-level recruiter” being thrown around from all corners of the college basketball world.

And he delivered on that right quick by landing Johnson, McGowens and Toney. With Johnson, Capel swooped in after he decommitted from Nebraska. With the other two, Capel performed some magic and convinced them both to reclassify from the 2019 class to 2018, allowing them to join the team this season as freshmen.

(As an aside, have you thought about what this team would be like without McGowens and Toney? I mean, Johnson is pretty great, but take the other two out of the mix and it would be a rough go out there for Johnson by himself.)

Getting McGowens and Toney to not just come to Pitt but come to Pitt a year early was probably Capel’s biggest recruiting win so far; landing Johnson was right up there, too, but getting those two to reclassify stands as a double win (or a quadruple win, since there were two of them).

That was last year, though, and now Capel is on the clock for this year. He still doesn’t have anyone committed for the 2019 class, and everyone knows how crucial it is for the first-year Pitt coach to land a quality big man. Five-star target Kofi Cockburn went off the board to Illinois last week. Capel was also involved with five-star center Aidan Igiehon, but he committed to Louisville in October.

Those were high-end shoot-the-moon options for Capel, but he tried. Now he has to find the guys he can actually land. Four-star Qudus Wahab is probably No. 1 on the board right now and he has the Panthers among his top three or four schools. Karim Coulibaly is another option, but Wahab is the one they need to get.

So while I think most Pitt fans still have a lot of faith in Capel - and rightfully so, both for his resume and his recruiting heroics last spring - there is a definite need for results in the very near future. I’m always the first one to say that a school’s recruiting isn’t really in trouble until all the top targets are off the board, and Pitt certainly hasn’t reached that point yet.

But the clock is ticking.

ONE PREDICTION

Narduzzi isn’t doing a 180 on the offense
This should seem like a no-brainer, but as we enter the second week of Pitt’s search for a new offensive coordinator, I figured I should mention it anyway:

Whoever Pat Narduzzi hires to be the next O.C., it isn’t going to be a coach who brings some crazy new style to the Panthers’ offense.

The reality is, Narduzzi is a coach who believes in playing a certain way. He believes in winning with defense and ball-control offense, and while it’s probably in that order, he knows that the two are intertwined. With the way Narduzzi wants to play defense, he needs his offense to eat up time of possession, run the ball, hit the occasional big passing play and be efficiently productive.

I suspect that the most exotic a Pat Narduzzi offense will ever get is something along the lines of what Pitt did in 2016, and that wasn’t really exotic as much as it was based on quick-hitting plays called at the right time and executed with a high level of precision.

Sweeps and shovel passes aren’t necessarily revolutionary; they’re just really effective if you hit them at the right time and execute them well.

I think what Narduzzi is looking for to replace Shawn Watson isn’t an overhaul of the offense. I think he’s looking for someone who wants to run the ball, who can design pass plays that use the talent Pitt has on the outside and who can call plays well in the course of a game.

That was probably the biggest issue with Watson: not necessarily his play design or game-planning, but his in-game decisions and calls. I don’t think Narduzzi had an issue with philosophy as much as he had an issue with execution.

So looking for Narduzzi to find something completely different with this next hire is, depending on your personal bent, either misguided or simply wishful thinking. Narduzzi knows what he wants - he just has to find the right person to do it.

Jim Chaney did a decent job. Matt Canada did pretty well. Shawn Watson struggled. The next hire, whoever he is, has to be a good one, because Narduzzi has a lot riding on it.