The 3-2-1 Column: Hoops issues, Hamlin's return, Victory Heights and more

In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about finishing games, bringing back key players, building big projects and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Gotta finish
That was a tough one on Tuesday night. Really tough.

When you have the No. 11 team in the country on the ropes at home, you have to finish the deal. You can’t let them back into the game. You can’t let the game go to overtime. And you can’t fail to close it out if it does.

Pitt did the exact opposite on Tuesday night against Louisville. The Panthers controlled the game and kept the Cardinals in check all night long. Then, after they took a seven-point lead with three minutes to go, things fell apart. Pitt didn’t hit another field goal in regulation while the Cardinals chipped away at the seven-point lead and forced overtime.

In the extra period, the Panthers weren’t any better. They went 2-of-8 from the floor, turned the ball over three times, fouled five times and suffered another ACC loss. It didn’t help that the refs stole a basket from Pitt when they called a phantom foul on Terrell Brown near the end of overtime, but really, the game never should have gone to overtime in the first place.

Make one basket - one would have been enough - and Pitt sneaks out of the Petersen Events Center with a very nice win. Instead, the Panthers walked home with a 2-4 conference record instead of the 3-3 they should have been.

Or the 4-2 they should have been.

Or the 5-1 they could have been.

Because they should have beaten Louisville on Tuesday night, just like they should have beaten Wake Forest two weeks ago, just like they could have beaten Miami over the weekend.

And in each of those games, there were some similar themes, particularly at the end of the game. Against Wake Forest, Pitt was trailing by one point with three minutes to play; the Panthers proceeded to miss all five of their subsequent field goal attempts and lose by four points.

At Miami, Pitt was down four with three minutes to play; they went 2-of-6 to finish the game but couldn’t get a stop and lost by eight.

And on Tuesday night, they had a seven-point lead with three minutes to play but missed all three of their attempts before regulation time ended.

There are a lot of reasons why they went 2-of-14 from the floor in the final three minutes of those three games, and I don’t think I have to spell them out for you, but it really comes back to those stretches: better play in the clutch moments wins those games.

I guess you put it on the continued development, maturation and growth of this team, this program and, most importantly, these players. It's a process, we know, but it needs to show some forward movement.

The big return
Pitt football continues to get good news this offseason, and on Wednesday, it happened again when Damar Hamlin announced that he’s coming back for a fifth year with the Panthers.

If you’re keeping track, that makes four guys who could have left Pitt’s defense this offseason but chose to return, along with fellow safety Paris Ford and defensive linemen Jaylen Twyman and Patrick Jones. Unlike Ford, Twyman and Jones, Hamlin’s return was a two-part story:

First, the NCAA had to approve a fifth year for him, since he played as a freshman in 2016. Then, once that was done, Hamlin had to decide to return.

Both of those boxes got checked, and now another big piece is coming back to this defense.

It would diminish the significance of Ford, Twyman and Jones to say that Hamlin’s return is the biggest of the group, but…it’s pretty damn big. Hamlin brings a ton of experience - 26 starts over the last two seasons - and is a steadying force in the secondary, a sure tackler who understands his position and the way it fits in the defense. That’s an important quality to have, and the value of it can’t be overstated.

Now Pitt is looking at a defense that will have both starting safeties and both starting defensive ends back, plus a starting defensive tackle, a starting outside linebacker and a starting cornerback. And a linebacker who started three games last year. And another linebacker who had one start. And a cornerback who started three games.

Oh, and two guys who were supposed to be starters last season but got hurt.

That’s some serious talent and experience returning to a defense that just might be the best the ACC has to offer in 2020 (or right behind Clemson; they’re usually pretty good). The Panthers had one of the conference's best defenses in 2019, and there’s no reason they can’t be even better this coming season.

In a few months, we can start talking about what that will actually look like. And at some point, we’ll start acknowledging that even a really good Pitt defense is probably going to have a tough time containing Sam Howell and North Carolina’s offense; that will inevitably lead to a discussion - many discussions - about whether or not Pitt’s offense will be up to the task of improving just a little, lest it waste another year of good-to-great defense.

That’s all in the future. For now, I think it’s okay to sit back and consider that four players - not one, not two, not three but four players - all with NFL futures decided to put those futures off for one more year and return to Pitt.

It’s not all selfless love of the University, of course. Every one of those guys has a chance to improve his draft stock by returning to Pitt. But I don’t think you can completely ignore the notion that Hamlin and Ford and Jones and Twyman see a chance to build something at Pitt, to be part of a defense that could be special.

I think for Ford and Hamlin especially, the possibility of really creating a legacy is important. They want their names to ring out at Pitt like Aaron Donald’s does. And this season, they’ll have a chance to cement that legacy.

Making the most of a rule
When the NCAA makes a fairly major change, it’s always interesting to see how it works out over time. We all have instant reactions, of course, but you need a few years with most things to see what the implications really are.

I don’t have national data on how the NCAA’s two-year-old redshirt rule has played out, but I can look at Pitt and say the rule has benefited just about everyone involved.

In case you need a refresher: starting in 2018, players could appear in as many as four games and still redshirt, thus seeing some playing time and preserving a year of eligibility. In previous years, a player lost his redshirt the minute he stepped onto the field.

Sometimes there would be exceptions to the old rule, like if a player only saw a few snaps and got hurt; the NCAA would, on occasion, show mercy and grant a waiver for a redshirt. But more often than not, if you played in a game, you lost your redshirt.

So this was a good change by the NCAA, and since that organization seems more prone toward mistakes, we should give credit where credit is due.

And along those lines, I think credit is due to the Pitt staff in how they have handled the new rule. The immediate reaction to the NCAA’s rule change was that it would allow coaches to get more guys on the field, even if only for a handful of snaps, without worrying about wasting redshirts, and that's what has happened.

Say you have a freshman who has really excelled on the scout team throughout the fall and you want to reward him late in the season? In years past, maybe you would put him on the travel roster but never play him. Now you can throw him on the field for a bit and let him taste the real action.

That’s what happened for Habakkuk Baldonado, whose lone appearance as a freshman was in the ACC Championship Game, or Calijah Kancey, who played in the Quick Lane Bowl after sitting the previous 12 games. Those guys worked hard all season and got a little reward at the end while still preserving their redshirts. That’s how the system should work.

It doesn’t just have to be a late-season reward, either; it can also give coaches a bit of a proving ground for freshmen. In previous years, the coaches played guys like A.J. Davis and Tyler Sear and Amir Watts early in their freshman seasons expecting them to build on strong training camp performances and keep getting better. As the season wore on, though, they didn’t improve as expected, but since they had already burned their redshirts, the coaches tried to find opportunities for them to make the year worthwhile.

With the rule change, the coaches could take a chance on a freshman and pull the plug after a few games if things didn’t go in the right direction.

It’s a good system, and I think Pitt has made the most of it. 18 freshmen have seen the field in the last two seasons, but 11 of them took redshirts. That’s an average of 3.5 freshmen burning redshirts each year; compare that to the years of 2017, 2016 and 2015 when Pitt had five, six and four freshmen play, respectively.

The staff is judicious with the redshirts but also has given a lot of young players a chance to see the field. Pitt added 37 freshmen in the last two seasons; 18 of them got snaps on the field - a number that owes a lot to the rule change.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Was it worth it?
As we praise the staff for making the most of the rule change, we should probably also look at a different angle of the redshirts.

Because even though the coaches have, in my opinion, done a good job of preserving redshirts, we can also still consider the guys who didn’t redshirt and ask the question:

Was it worth it to burn the redshirts?

This past season, five freshmen appeared in more than four games and won’t be taking redshirts: receiver Jared Wayne (8 games), running back Vincent Davis (11 games), linebackers Brandon George (11 games) and SirVocea Dennis (8 games) and cornerback A.J. Woods (10 games).

Picking out who made the most of their opportunities is easy: it’s clearly Wayne and Davis. The former caught 18 passes for 261 yards and a touchdown, which may not sound like much other than the fact that 17 of his 18 catches came in the final four games, and he was Pitt’s No. 2 receiver over that stretch. And Davis finished as Pitt’s second-leading rusher in yards but No. 1 in touchdowns - no Panther got into the end zone more than he did in 2019.

Wayne and Davis also accounted for two of Pitt’s three touchdowns in the Quick Lane Bowl, and they figure to be key cogs in the Panthers’ offensive attack in 2020 and beyond.

So yeah, I’d say it worked out well to have those guys on the field.

As for Brandon George, SirVocea Dennis and A.J. Woods…I’m not so sure. Dennis was the only one of the three to see snaps on defense, and that happened for a very short time early in the season. Otherwise, they all played exclusively on special teams and generated a combined total of nine tackles. Woods also returned five kickoffs for 78 yards (15.6 yards per return).

I’m sure it was probably fun for those guys to get on the field, and I have no doubt that the rest of the freshmen would have loved to get that kind of playing time. But that doesn’t seem like enough to really merit the burning of a redshirt.

What’s done is done, though, and I don’t think it’s too much to get worked up about. There will be guys every year who burn a redshirt on special teams; it’s not the worst thing in the world. Perhaps the coaches envisioned more concrete playing time on defense for those three and it didn’t happen, for whatever reason. I still think that the way they used restraint with guys like Daniel Carter and Brandon Hill and Leslie Smith, who played a few games but not enough to burn a redshirt, so there’s a balancing act in there. I can’t imagine it’s easy. Plus, who knows - maybe the coaches really felt like Brandon George was the best option to fill his particular role on the coverage units?

Taking a quick look at the 2020 class, I think we’ll probably see another group of eight or nine players on the field this fall. I’ve said a bunch of times that I think the offensive skill guys - particularly Jordan Addison, Jaylon Barden and Israel Abanikanda - are almost locks to get into the action. They’re talented enough and I think there should be plenty of opportunities for them.

Linebackers and defensive backs are a good option, too; just like George and Dennis saw time on special teams, so too could AJ Roberts and Bangally Kamara and Hunter Sellers and Jahvante Royal. Solomon DeShields could play, too, whether he’s practicing with the receivers or the linebackers.

So there are plenty of options and it’s not tough to project nine of them seeing the field. How many will burn their redshirts? That’s a tougher question. Only two did in 2018 (V’Lique Carter and Shocky Jacques-Louis) while five did last year. If I had to pick somewhere in that range for 2020, I would say Addison, Abanikanda, Barden and two of those linebackers/defensive backs I mentioned.

Lots of time between now and then, of course.

How will Victory Heights work out?
No matter what you say about the current leadership of Pitt athletics, it’s pretty tough to criticize the ambition.

That much was clear on Tuesday, when Director of Athletics Heather Lyke - with Chancellor Patrick Gallagher on her wing - unveiled the plans for the Victory Heights project. This isn’t a new concept; Lyke had previously announced the project, but Tuesday was a bit more specific, with graphics and images and numbers and more details that laid out exactly what Victory Heights will look like.

And what it will look like is a much-needed revamping of upper campus that serves to address those other 16 Pitt athletics programs that Lyke talks about - you know, the ones not named “football” or “basketball.”

Of course, there’s some dark humor in the fact that programs like volleyball, gymnastics, track and field and wrestling are the ones that have fallen so far behind in facilities, since those are, without argument, the most successful programs Pitt has had for the last decade or so. To let their facilities fall into their current state is fairly shameful, and it’s a tremendous credit to the coaches and players in those sports that they’ve achieved what they have, despite the facilities.

So these improvements are very, very much needed and very, very much deserved for the programs that are getting them. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to suggest that Pitt has some of the worst non-football/basketball facilities in the ACC, and there’s just no reason for that. Baseball, softball and soccer got a big boost when the Petersen Sports Complex opened in 2011; now the rest of the Panthers are going to get their own boost.

And a big boost it will be. Lyke said the initial phase of the project will break ground in the summer of 2021 with an eye toward completion in the fall of 2023. She also put a general price tag of $250 million on the Victory Heights project (compared to $29 million for the Petersen Sports Complex).

That’s a huge number. And I have to be honest: it sounds a little risky. As with any college athletics endeavor, the goal is to raise as much money as possible from donations and pay for the project that way. But I think we all know that Pitt isn’t going to raise $250 million for Olympic sports (Lyke doesn’t prefer that term, but it’s the easiest nomenclature we have).

So the University is chipping in on this one. Gallagher said that the University would use debt financing to pay for whatever the Athletic Department can’t get in donations, and he even tried to nudge things a little during Tuesday’s press conference.

“If fundraising support isn’t there, that’s a tax on our future.”

In other words: don’t saddle the University with all of this debt, Pitt fans. Step up and chip in.

That makes me a little nervous for Pitt the university. You don’t want to see the school get underwater because of this project. But I also think there’s something else to acknowledge: Gallagher seems like a really smart guy, and Pitt the university seems to be doing pretty well. I know we all look at things through the prism of athletics, and if you say to someone, ‘Hey, Pitt’s doing pretty well right now,’ they’ll probably reply with some jab about the Boston College game or something.

But the University itself is booming, by all accounts. Take a drive through Oakland (walking would be easier, really). There’s construction everywhere, and some big projects are going to really improve the overall campus. Gallagher is leading all of that, and his mark on the University is going to be a lasting one, it seems.

So if he looks at the Victory Heights project and finds it to be a sound investment for the University to take on, then I’m willing to defer to him. And when it’s all completed, Pitt will have seriously upgraded its overall athletics program.

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt will fill the holes on defense
With Damar Hamlin coming back, Pitt’s defense is going to have a lot of starters returning. Like we mentioned earlier, there’s Patrick Jones and Jaylen Twyman on the defensive line, plus Deslin Alexandre, who started every game at defensive end in 2019. And Rashad Weaver will be back from injury, so there’s a surplus of starters there.

At linebacker, Phil Campbell started 10 games and Cam Bright started three, so that’s like having a starter back at one position. And then in the secondary, Hamlin and Ford will be joined by Damarri Mathis, who started most of the games at cornerback, and Jason Pinnock, who started the rest and played a lot.

Really, it’s easier to list the spots where Pitt has to replace a starter. There’s one open job at defensive tackle (replacing Amir Watts), two open jobs at linebacker (replacing Saleem Brightwell and Kylan Johnson) and one open job at cornerback (replacing Dane Jackson).

The last one is the easiest; Pinnock and Mathis will be the starters at cornerback. The key there will be developing the depth behind them, since the staff definitely seemed to like rotating there this past season.

Defensive tackle isn’t hard to project either. Keyshon Camp started the season opener this past season before he got hurt, and he should be the obvious candidate to start next to Twyman.

Linebacker is probably the trickiest of those spots to fill, but it might be easier than you’d think. Pitt needs a Money linebacker and a middle linebacker. For the Money spot (the boundary linebacker), the Panthers can turn to Campbell or Bright. They both have experience at the outside linebacker positions and they both played a lot in 2019 (Campbell started 10 games and Bright was Pitt’s third-leading tackler). That should cover the two outside spots.

As for the middle, I think the best candidate is probably Chase Pine. He’ll be a redshirt senior in 2020 and has played inside and outside linebacker, including one start at middle linebacker in 2018 and one start there this past season. He’s got experience and he’s got the right kind of build to play in the middle of the defense. I think he can hang there pretty well.

So let’s look at the potential starting lineup:

DE - Patrick Jones
DT - Jaylen Twyman
DT - Keyshon Camp
DE - Deslin Alexandre or Rashad Weaver
STAR - Phil Campbell
MIDDLE - Chase Pine
MONEY - Cam Bright
CB - Damarri Mathis
CB - Jason Pinnock
FS - Damar Hamlin
SS - Paris Ford

I don’t know about you, but that looks pretty darn solid. They’ll have to fill in the depth, of course. I think the second team and even third team on the defensive line will be good, but the backups at linebacker, cornerback and safety are pretty unproven, although there certainly seems to be some potential talent.

Keep everybody healthy - that’s always a big key - and develop some depth, and this defense should be even better than it was in 2019.