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In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about Blake Hinson's struggles, the improvement of the freshmen, the three-guard lineups, another football transfer and a lot more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

The biggest problem
Yeah, I’m carrying this over from my post-game reaction piece after Pitt lost to North Carolina on Tuesday night.

No, I don’t have any shame about repeating topics. There’s always going to be some redundancy when you talk about one sports team or program or organization all week long, and when it’s the biggest story around, well, you’ll probably come back to it a few times.

So I wrote about it after that game on Tuesday night. And talked about it on the Morning Pitt the next day. And discussed it again with Jim on the live Panther-Lair Show Wednesday night.

And I’m writing about it again in today’s column.

It’s Blake Hinson and his scoring slump, and it’s more or less directly responsible for the Panthers’ current two-game losing streak.

Now, Hinson’s shooting isn’t the only reason Pitt lost at Syracuse last Saturday and lost to North Carolina on Tuesday night. Free throws were a big part of the problem at the Dome, and rebounding was an issue against the Tar Heels.

But Hinson…there’s just no two ways around it. He’s struggling right now, and Pitt is struggling right along with him.

In the last three games he has shot 9-of-38 from the field (23.7%), 3-of-22 from three (13.6%) and 6-of-12 from the free throw line (50%). He has scored a total of 27 points and he has grabbed 18 rebounds in those three games.

For a lot of players, posting a 9 and 6 stat line would be pretty good.

For Hinson, who was expected to be Pitt’s leading scorer and one of the top producers in the ACC, it’s well below the bar.

Hinson was supposed to average 20 per game this season, and he was well on his way, averaging 21.6 through the first 11 contests. But the recent lag has dropped his average below 19 on the season.

That just can’t happen.

I mean, if he averages 18 or 19 points per game, that’s still pretty good. Really good. But he can’t have a stretch like he’s having right now, because if he does…well, you see the result.

The crazy thing is, Pitt did some things pretty well against UNC. The Panthers held the Tar Heels to their lowest scoring output of the season, committed less than 10 turnovers and blocked eight shots.

That’s pretty good.

They also got a career-high 20 points from Bub Carrington and 10 each from Jaland Lowe and Guillermo Diaz Graham.

That’s good, too.

They didn’t rebound well, but otherwise, they did enough good things to win.

They just didn’t get much from Hinson.

They didn’t get what they needed from Hinson.

What they need - present tense - from Hinson.

There’s no need to be cute or clever or thought-provoking here. We’ll say it as simply as we can:

Hinson has to be Pitt’s best player and top producer.

It really does boil down to that.

The freshmen are showing positive signs
If there was something positive to come from the North Carolina game (and the Syracuse game, to some extent), then it was actually two things.

Two players.

It was the freshmen: Bub Carrington and Jaland Lowe.

They were both pretty good in the last two games, and while they weren’t perfect, I think you could make the case that they were the bright spots in each of those losses.

Actually, I think I will make that case (although I imagine most people reading this column already agree).

Here are the numbers.

Of the 130 points Pitt scored in those two games, Carrington and Lowe accounted for nearly half with 56. Carrington set a career high with 20 points against UNC and Lowe had 10 for his second career double-digit game and first since mid-November.

In the UNC game, Carrington and Lowe scored or assisted on 14 of Pitt’s 21 made field goals. At Syracuse, Pitt made 26 baskets, and Carrington and Lowe scored or assisted on 18 of them.

Remarkably, none of the 13 assists Carrington and Lowe have posted in the last two games led to a basket for the other freshman guard. Put another way, none of Carrington’s 12 field goals against UNC and Syracuse were assisted by Lowe, and ditto for Lowe’s seven baskets.

Put it all together then, and Carrington and Lowe have 32 combined field goals and assists in the last two games. Pitt has made 47 field goals total, meaning the two freshmen have contributed to 68.1% of the baskets the Panthers have made in those games.

All of which is to say that Carrington and Lowe should be playing together more than they are. Not necessarily because they set each other up - they haven’t done that in the last two games - but rather because they are legitimately two of Pitt’s best offensive players right now.

And with the way Hinson is slumping, they might actually be Pitt’s top two offensive players right now.

Guillermo Diaz Graham is in that conversation, too, as he has scored 24 points in the last two games. But for my money, I think the two freshman guards have been about as good as anybody lately.

So let’s see them on the court together more.

Carrington and Lowe have played together throughout the season; Lowe was the first sub in Pitt’s exhibition game against UPJ, and they have logged plenty of minutes on the court at the same time since then.

But it feels like Jeff Capel and his staff could do it even more. Carrington and Lowe played together for about 16 and a half minutes on Tuesday night; Lowe scored all 10 of his points in those stretches, and Carrington had 10 of his 20 with Lowe on the court (which represented half of his points in less than half of his minutes).

We’ll see how these two evolve over the rest of their freshman seasons; they’re not even to the halfway point yet. But as we sit here in the first week of January, they’re playing as well as anybody, and they should be on the floor together as much as possible.

An understandable year that’s not so understandable
In a different era, a season on the trajectory that this one appears to be on would be okay.

That was a bit of a clunky sentence, but let’s go with it.

I think if you look at a few elements of how 2023-24 is going for Pitt, it falls into a certain type of season. A bunch of departed seniors and only one top scorer returning from the previous year. Promising freshmen growing one game at a time. Raw but developing sophomores finding their roles.

It’s a transition year. A bridge year. The kind of year that comes after you have a senior-laden team. The kind of year you’re going to have every now and then with the way personnel turns over in college sports.

It’s normal to have this kind of year.

Or, at least, it used to be.

Or maybe it just used to be normal to understand and accept this kind of season.

Nowadays…not so much.

Part of it is the state of college sports. The transfer portal has made it so that these kinds of seasons, these transition years, feel more like a wasted opportunity than a bridge to something better. Because you just don’t know if all of those young players who are developing will be back next season.

It might be a transition year, but can you call it a bridge year if you don’t know what you’re bridging toward?

Maybe Carrington and Lowe will keep growing and developing this year and then come back next season ready to lead the team to glory.

Maybe.

Or maybe neither one will be on the team next year.

That’s not me speculating based on anything concrete. That’s me speculating based on the entirety of college sports right now.

To paraphrase Marlo from The Wire, tomorrow’s roster isn’t promised to anyone.

There’s another problem with the bridge year, though, beyond being perhaps a relic of a time past.

The other problem is how it fits into the current timeline of Pitt hoops. Pitt fans had to wait a long time for last season’s success. A long time.

And when it finally came, it was celebrated and enjoyed. Only the most dour and humorless among us could find issue with what was, without exaggeration, the best season of Pitt hoops in a decade.

But as a former Pitt athletic director once said, the reward for a job well done is the opportunity to do an even better job (or some such), and that very good season didn’t exactly buy the necessary goodwill for a bridge year.

Last season was supposed to be a springboard. The current trajectory of this season doesn’t exactly look like this team is springing into anything (although continued development of the freshmen and a return to form for Hinson could change that perspective quickly).

Ten years ago, this would have been fine. Build with the young guys. Let them grow. Maybe you only win 17 or 18 games, but you’re building for next season, so it’s okay (mostly).

But this isn’t ten years ago. It’s 2024, and you have to win now.

Especially if last year was the first time in a long time that you won.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

How much can Pitt use the guards together?
Let’s go back to the guards for a second, because here’s one problem with playing Carrington and Lowe together for a lot of minutes:

Depth.

Specifically, guard depth.

Pitt just doesn’t have much of it.

The Panthers have five scholarship guards: Carrington, Lowe and Ishmael Leggett, plus Michael Hueitt Jr., who has played in five games this season - four of which were in November - so he doesn’t seem to be part of the conversation, and KJ Marshall, a walk-on who went on scholarship this week.

So five scholarship guards, but only three of them actually play, which means Capel and company are pretty limited in what they can do.

And that limitation is unfortunate, because I can understand if the coaching staff wants to use three-guard sets more often since they are currently getting next to nothing out of the three position, where Zack Austin and Will Jeffress are really struggling on the offensive end.

That’s probably why Capel went with Carrington, Lowe and Leggett together for the final 1:41 of the first half against North Carolina and the final 8:36 of the second half. Pitt needed offense, and putting all three guards on the court gave the Panthers the best chance to put up points.

But there’s a limit to how many minutes you can deploy that three-guard attack, because at some point, those guys will need to rest. And since there are no other playable guards available, the ceiling on three-guard sets is pretty firm.

Pitt’s best offensive lineup right now is the three guards plus Hinson and Guillermo Diaz Graham. Due to the guard depth, though, Capel can’t go with three guards for very long. Even starting the trio together would create issues, because it wouldn’t be long into the game before one of them would have to come out for Jeffress or Austin, simply because you would need one guard resting for a few minutes in order to come in and relieve another guard.

There’s probably some version of the junior Panther shuffle that Capel could do with the three guards - would it be a three-guard monte? - but I’m not sure how much actual on-court time they would get together. It seems like the ceiling is less than 20 minutes and probably right around what we saw in Tuesday night’s game, when I tracked the Lowe/Carrington/Leggett trio playing together for about 13 and a half minutes. And that was with Capel throwing caution to the wind and putting all of them together for a huge chunk of nearly nine minutes to end the game.

I highly doubt we’ll see the three guards playing together for a stretch that long again.

Of course, it’s impossible to have this conversation without mentioning Dior Johnson. His presence and role in the rotation would give Capel enough bodies to ride with a three-guard lineup a lot more. But we all know how that went: a suspension appeal was denied and Johnson was dismissed from Pitt - the University, not just athletics - shortly before the start of the fall semester.

So Capel was left with just a handful of scholarship guards and, due to the timing of Johnson’s dismissal, no opportunity to add any additional guards from the portal who could have helped. And the situation was only compounded by the fact that Capel’s efforts to get a transfer guard were derailed, in some cases, by Johnson’s presence on the roster; if he wasn’t there, Pitt probably would have had a better chance of landing some help from the portal.

But that’s all in the past. In the present, Pitt has three guards. And when you only have three guards entering the real grind of the season, your options for playing all of them at the same time are limited.

How does Keye Thompson fit?
Pitt got another transfer this week - the first transfer to commit to the Panthers since they landed nine heading into Signing Day - and it came from not too far away.

Keye Thompson, an Akron native who committed to Ohio University in the class of 2018, announced on Thursday that he will be transferring to Pitt for his seventh and final year of college.

Thompson looks like a nice addition: he was an All-MAC performer the last two seasons (third team in 2022, first team in 2023) after piling up 190 tackles, 16.5 tackles for loss, three sacks, two interceptions, two forced fumbles and five fumble recoveries.

Pitt was on him pretty soon after he entered the portal, and he committed after taking a visit this week.

That’s the preamble. The history. The present. The future is about how Thompson will fit in with Pitt’s defense. To that end, he’s a 6’1” 225-pound middle linebacker who could also play on the boundary side (the Money linebacker) and even worked in space at Ohio, where he occasionally doubled as a nickel-back despite playing middle linebacker.

So he’s got some versatility, he’s got a lot of experience and he has produced at the FBS level.

Seems like a good package to me.

I don’t know if Thompson will land a starting job at middle linebacker or Money linebacker. There are certainly opportunities available at those spots. Solomon DeShields is the top returning linebacker, and he can play either outside spot, so his flexibility gives the coaches more opportunities to get the three best linebackers on the field.

Maybe that’s Thompson in the middle, Kyle Louis at Star and DeShields at Money. Maybe it’s Thompson at Money, Brandon George in the middle and DeShields at Star. Maybe the three best are DeShields, George and Louis and Pitt ends up using an all-conference player with 190 tackles over the last two seasons as a top backup.

That’s not the worst possible outcome.

Really, there’s no negative outcome here (unless somebody like Louis or one of the younger linebackers decides to get so bent out of shape about a veteran transfer that they decide to bolt for the portal, which I don’t see happening).

What the Pitt coaches did by landing Thompson is, they added an experienced, productive veteran at a position that could use a little more experience and production.

Maybe Thompson starts and maybe he comes off the bench. Either way, they upgraded the room.

And that’s one of the things the portal allows you to do:

You can fill holes or you can upgrade. Pitt’s linebacker room is better with Keye Thompson in it.

I’m in the camp that thinks Pitt’s linebacker room looks pretty promising for 2024 and beyond as it is, what with Louis having a few years left and the guys who were freshmen last year - Jordan Bass, Rasheem Biles and Braylan Lovelace - all looking really good. I like the three incoming freshmen a lot, too.

But adding a one-year player to fill out the room, like Tylar Wiltz in 2022 or Kylan Johnson in 2019, is never a bad idea, and I think Pitt is better for it.

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt will be in the 80’s this spring
In 2023, I saw one movie in the theater.

It was Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads concert film directed by Jonathan Demme and originally released in 1984. A new restoration of the film was released in the fall, and on one Friday morning, during that in-season sweet spot between Pat Narduzzi’s Thursday afternoon sit-down and Saturday’s football game, I went to the theater.

For a glorious 88 minutes, I was in the 80’s.

For a few months this spring, Pitt will also be in the 80’s.

No, Narduzzi won’t be wearing David Byrne’s classic “big suit.” There will be no Tom Tom Club, no dancing with floor lamps and, although I have my fingers crossed on this one, no Bernie Worrell.

Because the 80’s Pitt will be in this spring is the 80’s with scholarships.

As it currently stands, we’ve got Pitt projected to go to spring camp with exactly 80 scholarship players.

That’s a ton. Typically, we’ve seen Pitt hold spring camp with 60 or 65 scholarship players. Maybe 70, but not that’s not the norm. The norm is graduating a class of 17-23 guys and replacing them, for the spring at least, with maybe a handful of early enrollees.

As a result, spring camp can feel a little light in terms of bodies. There just aren’t as many players available (especially when you throw in guys who are recovering from offseason surgeries and the like).

But this year…this year is different.

This year, nine of the recruits in Pitt’s 19-man class are planning to enroll in January. And now that Thompson has committed, the Panthers are sitting with 10 transfers set to join them shortly as well.

Of course, we don’t think they’re going to stop at 10. By the time you read this column, Pitt might have already added another transfer or two or three. Which means the Panthers could legitimately be at or close to the 85-man scholarship limit in spring camp. That’s virtually unheard of.

I’ve never seen Pitt even come close to 85 scholarships in the spring. It’s crazy.

But with all the early enrollees and the transfers - especially the transfers - that’s where things are headed. Pitt had 16 seniors depart the roster this offseason in addition to eight underclassmen who also went to the transfer portal, and the Panthers needed every one of those departures to squeeze in the 19 - and counting - players they’re adding this spring.

The upside is that the coaches will have a lot of players to work with in camp. They’ll have the depth to run full two-deeps - and more - of scholarship players, which means more competition and maybe even more improvement based on the old “iron sharpens iron” principle.

Maybe we’ll even get a bit better of a product at the spring game.

Maybe.

Either way, the numbers are stacked this spring. We’re going to see Pitt field what amounts to a nearly-full scholarship roster in March.

That’s pretty unique. About as unique as watching a concert film from the 80’s in a South Hills movie theater on a Friday morning in the fall.