The 3-2-1 Column: Football offseason, hoops thoughts, and more

The football team is preparing for a bowl game, while also focusing a lot of time racking the transfer portal to get a roster put together for next season. It’s a hectic and confusing time of year, but par for the course in modern college football.

The Pitt basketball team is 9-2 following a 40-point beatdown over Eastern Kentucky, but the Panthers also just got through a difficult stretch recently and there are plenty of takeaways there.

Finally, the volleyball team is very much in contention to win a national title and we take a look into their path towards making that happen. Sit back and enjoy a few thousand words about Pitt on this Friday morning.

Three things we know

Bowl chatter

The Pitt Panthers are going bowling! Now don’t you get too excited about that…

On Sunday, Pitt, a 7-5 football team, accepted a bid to play in the GameAbove Sports Bowl in Detroit against Toledo out of the Mid-American Conference. The game is set for December 26th at 2:00 at Ford Field.

Spending Christmas in the state of Michigan was hardly the postseason destination anyone had in mind two months ago, but a five-game losing streak to close the regular season does not give you the pick of the liter when it comes to bowl games. Pitt played well enough to earn a bowl this season, and also poor enough to play in one that does not necessarily move the needle either.

Sure, Pitt had a four-game turnaround which was important to erase the three-win campaign from 2023, but when you start a season with seven consecutive wins, ending up in Detroit playing a MAC team is just…blah.

Should Pitt come out victorious in this game, I don’t think having eight total wins will make people forget about the five-game skid that happened. Plus, beating a team like Toledo should be the expectation anyway. And on the flip side, a loss to a MAC team, even a decent one at that, drops your record to 7-6 with six straight losses to close the year, a less than desired outcome.

It almost feels like a lose-lose situation, but that’s the bed this team made this season. I think there is value in not losing this game from an optics standpoint, but I can’t say much will change about this season or the pending offseason with whatever outcome occurs against Toledo.

Obviously, Pitt has a fair share of season-ending injuries to contend with going into the game like Branson Taylor, Daniel Carter, and CJ Lee to name a few. A senior captain, Konata Mumpfield, is seemingly forgoing the game to get ready for the draft. Plus a lot of the depth, most notably backup quarterback Nate Yarnell, has already hit the transfer portal.

The Panthers will be going into this game with a skeleton crew of sorts, but they aren’t alone in that regard. The college football calendar sort of forces players into the portal before the bowl games, so everyone is going to be down some depth at this stage of the year.

There are obviously benefits to getting that extra practice time and also the added experience one more game setting. This should be a game where some true freshmen who had middling roles this season get a chance to go out there and play no holds barred. I think getting a longer look at guys like Juelz Goff, Jeremiah Marcelin, and Tyreek Robinson certainly makes the game worthwhile from that point of view.

In the end, this will be an exhibition game, with short-staffed roster, played in a half-empty stadium in Detroit the day after Christmas. It just is what it is. There’s no real way to sell it any better than that.

Pitt has lost some depth to the transfer portal

Once the college football season ends, players leave via the transfer portal. Schools replace those vacated roster spots with other players via the transfer portal. It’s a never ending cycle, and the NCAA created this monster, so it’s just part of the routine now.

Pitt is experiencing both sides of the portal madness right now, along with the other 133 Division-1 FBS teams. Nobody is immune to it. We get some hyper-fixated on Pitt because that’s just what we do at Panther-Lair.com, and it might seem like they are getting decimated or something like, but not really, this epidemic is everywhere.

As it stands today here on Friday December 13th, Pitt has lost 12 scholarship players to the transfer portal, and yes I did check one more time before hitting publish. The current window goes from December 9th through December 28th. After that, you are bound to your team for the second semester before smaller transfer portal window occurs from April 16-25 right after spring ball.

Pitt lost 19 players to the transfer portal off of last year’s team, so the number 12 seems pretty normal at this stage. I think when looking at the guys who have entered, some stick out more than others, but for the most part, Pitt has not lost a major contributor yet, which is important to note.

Nate Yarnell started multiple games at quarterback this season and is probably the most prominent name to leave thus far. Nahki Johnson was in the regular rotation at defensive tackle. Rodney Hammond had some big moments in his career, but none of those occurred this season. Daejon Reynolds was a fringe member of the wide receiver rotation, but shoutout to him for the touchdown catch against West Virginia. Terrence Moore was a regular starter in 2023, but fell behind this year.

That’s still all kind of the point.

Pitt hasn’t lost a notable starter of one of its younger promising players to the portal yet, which is a good sign. I don’t know if anything like that will happen, but you can never say never in this climate. However, Pitt’s NIL collective, Alliance 412, may have gotten the job done in the retention department. At least, it sure seems that way, and there are rumbles behind the scenes that most, if not all of Pitt’s top underclassmen talent will be back with the team in 2025.

There have been announcements trickling out of players who are staying for next season, since I guess these things need to be stated publicly anymore. Players like Rashad Battle, Sean FitzSimmons, Jake Overman, and BJ Williams have all posted on social media declarations of ‘I’m Back’ and I’m sure more of those announcements are on the way.

I think the 12 departures hurt Pitt the most when it comes to having reliable depth and options for the bowl game, more so than for next season. At a certain point, the writing is on the wall for select players, and you almost expect roster attrition because of it.

Pitt has several needs to address in the portal

When you take into account the losses Pitt will have to graduation, plus the transfer portal departures, and also consider some of the shortcoming this 2024 team had this past season, then there stands to reason this program has a lot of work to do in the player acquisition side of the transfer portal.

The transfer portal can be a great equalizer in this sport, and it’s a great avenue to add talent. When sizing up Pitt’s current team, you don’t have to look very hard to see the positive impacts the portal additions have made, as some of the best players on the roster first arrived in Oakland as a transfer.

Desmond Reid is collecting All-American honors, Donovan McMillon was named an all-conference safety, and of course Holstein, Mumpfield, Lyndon Cooper, and many more have had significant impacts on Pitt. With that in mind, that shows the importance of the next couple of weeks. Pitt has a chance to really add some quality, but what exactly are those needs?

Most seem fairly obvious.

I think when taking into account the five-game losing streak, you can pinpoint a lot of issues to the play of the offensive line. When you look at when this group started to decline this year, it was because the depth got tested. Because of that, the line appears to be a priority in the portal. Pitt has been linked to several offensive linemen and the coaches have seemingly spent more time there than any other spot. It looks like 4-5 transfer offensive linemen additions is not out of the question.

Given the activity of the coaching staff, it also seems like adding a couple of wide receivers is up there towards the top of the priority list. The Panthers added three receivers in their high school recruiting efforts, but they also need some veterans to shore up the top of the depth chart. Pitt has offered several portal wide receivers, and are linked to a few more.

I think losing two underclassmen quarterbacks to the portal in Yarnell and Ty Diffenbach suggests to me Pitt is in need of a backup quarterback for next season. Pitt will have a pair of freshman in Julian Dugger and Mason Heintschel, but there probably needs to be a bridge between those two and Holstein.

Defensively, Pitt will likely be looking for another defensive end, but so is every other team in the country. They’ll add some help there, but I bet they can turn talented freshman Sincere Edwards loose for a full year and pick up production that way.

I can’t see Pitt adding a linebacker given the impressive depth the team has there, and it looks like the top three cornerbacks are returning, so there is not a ton of playing time to sell there at the moment. Although, I could see Pitt going for a safety. Assuming Javon McIntyre and Cruce Brookins will take on the starting jobs, there is not much proven depth behind that top pairing after losing McMillon and PJ O’Brien to graduation.

Needless to say there are plenty of spots where Pitt needs help, and it’ll be an up and down few weeks seeing that all play out for the program.

Two questions we have

What did we learn about Pitt since Feast Week?

The Pitt basketball team collected a sound 96-56 victory over Eastern Kentucky on Wednesday night. It was the team’s first home game since November 18th, and during the time in between, the Panthers played five games on the road.

That stretch was talked about at length, and now that they got through it, what did we learn about this team? I think there are some positives, negatives, and perhaps still some unknowns.

I think the major takeaway in that stretch of games, where the Panthers went 3-2, is that Jaland Lowe is every bit as good as we all thought he would be in the preseason. Lowe was a force at the end of last year, and there figured to be a ‘next step’ coming in his game, and it is showing up on the stat sheet.

In Pitt’s 91-90 win over Ohio State, he scored a career-high 28 points. He also took over the final four minutes in the team’s victory over Virginia Tech last weekend. Even in the blowout loss to Mississippi State, Lowe was getting hounded and still got to 19 points. Obviously, he needs to start shooting more than 27% from three, but if and when that happens, that’ll just make him more dangerous.

Pitt’s two returning seniors, Zack Austin and Ishmael Leggett, have been steady as expected. The third senior, transfer Damian Dunn, looks to have blended into that same wavelength before getting injured. I think Austin has even taken his game a step forward, which has been a pleasant boost for Jeff Capel.

I think that group on the perimeter may have to carry things, because one of not-so-hot things we learned about this team through 11 games is their lack of interior play. Perhaps this group is in a cold spell and will get it together, but I think these past five games raised some eyebrows for sure.

Guillermo Diaz Graham is in a bad way right now and it’s showing up primarily in a shooting slump. He also looks a bit uncomfortable in his power forward cameo with several turnovers plaguing his recent performances. He has been inconsistent throughout his time at Pitt, but I don’t think the lows from the previous two years ever looked like this. Perhaps it’s confidence related, or maybe it’s playing out of position, but he could use a bounce back game more than anyone right now.

It also seems Cam Corhen cooled off a bit of late after a strong start to the season. Is it because the competition picked up, or just a general slump? Either way, his lack of rebounding is starting to raise some alarms. In Pitt’s two losses this season, Corhen has grabbed a total of four rebounds in 53 combined minutes against the likes of Mississippi State and Wisconsin.

Again, there’s still a lot of basketball to be played and the ebbs and flows of a season can change, but those are the main things standing out from an individual standpoint based off the ever-important five-game stretch the team just played.

Can Brandin Cummings be a breakout candidate?

Pitt beating Eastern Kentucky by 40 on Wednesday was not a huge surprise. However, doing it behind a 30-point performance from freshman shooting guard Brandin Cummings certainly came from out of left field.

That was a very intriguing storyline from Wednesday and it could prove to be a major boost for this team down the stretch. Once Damian Dunn went down with an injury in the Wisconsin game, my initial reaction was that Cummings would have a chance to benefit from that substantially.

It did not happen at first, but Wednesday’s outing certainly lets the imagination run wild a bit. Cummings can bring something to the table this team desperately needs: three-point shooting.

The freshman buried 6-of-8 attempts from deep against the Colonels, and by the end of that game, he was running back on defense before the shot even fell through the hoop.

I don’t know if Pitt has the next Steph Curry on its hands, but hey, when you’re hot, you’re hot, and Cummings was certainly on fire this past Wednesday. Pitt needs some confident shots coming from long range and I think that may be the type of game that can spark a run of sorts.

Cummings is the closest thing resembling a knockdown outside shooter on this roster. Pitt has some streaky shooters, some guys capable of hitting 1-2 a game, but nobody is truly that lethal threat from three-point range. This team doesn’t have a Blake Hinson, or a Greg Elliott, Jared Wilson-Frame, Ashton Gibbs etc.

Or maybe they do?

Looking back to last year, Jaland Lowe needed a month or so until he truly found his footing in college basketball. Once the light clicked for Lowe, it clicked for good. Cummings and Lowe were similarly ranked prospects coming out of high school in different classes. They both checked in as four-stars, but just outside the Rivals Top 100 rankings.

I don’t want to compare Cummings to Pitt’s best player aka one of the best guards in college basketball, but I did want to point out that sometimes a freshman can hit their stride eventually in their first season, even if it does not happen right off the bat.

Cummings is in a tough spot because it’s hard for Pitt to ever really pull Lowe or Leggett off the court, but on Wednesday, he got his chance via foul trouble, and he also ran with the opportunity as best as possible.

I think he bought himself some more minutes from the coaching staff moving forward, but I also believe he may have gotten the internal confidence to start being more of a regular scoring threat for this team just the same, which again, will be a nice asset to have once the team gets back to full strength after Dunn’s return.

One Prediction

Volleyball punches ticket to Louisville

‘Survive and advance’ is the old adage in postseason play. The No. 1 Pitt volleyball team had to survive on Wednesday with a five-set thriller over Oregon at the Petersen Events Center, and advanced to their fourth straight Elite 8 in doing so.

Pitt going five sets with Oregon is not so much a wakeup call, but it should also remind everyone that this brilliant run the program is having is not easy. Oregon is a quality team and every match from this point forward will also be a similar dog fight. Dan Fisher’s club is vying to go to its fourth consecutive Final Four. It’s unprecedented stuff for this school, and no other program in the country has been able to match that level of consistency in recent years.

The Panthers have won three NCAA Tournament matches, and need to win three more to win a national championship. That’s still big picture, but it’s also nothing this team has shied away from all year. That has been the stated goal all along and they are inching closer to making it happen.

For now, it’s about focusing on the next challenge at hand. The Panthers (32-1) host No. 11 Kentucky tomorrow at 5:00 at the Petersen Events Center for the right to make it to next week’s Final Four in Louisville.

I think Pitt gets it done and will advance to the national semifinal round. The Panthers needed to dig deep against Oregon, but gutted out a win after not playing their best.

That’s the sign of a good team…or a Final Four team.