The 3-2-1 Column: Hoops lessons, QB decisions and more

In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about what Pitt learned in Brooklyn, what Pat Narduzzi will do at quarterback and a lot more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

The first test
Well, we said Pitt’s game against Florida in Brooklyn on Wednesday night would be the Panthers’ first real test of the season.

It sure was that, and Pitt failed.

Sort of.

The Panthers lost, so that part goes down as a failure. But as game No. 5 of 31, I don’t think it was a failure. Not at all.

It was a lesson. A lot of lessons, actually. And for a fairly young team that hadn’t been tested through its first four games, lessons are a good thing.

Pitt certainly got plenty of lessons in the 86-71 loss to Florida. From the start, it was clear that the Panthers were in for a different kind of challenge than they got from North Carolina A&T, Binghamton, Florida Gulf Coast and Jacksonville.

Pitt led from the start and were ahead or tied until the final 35 seconds of the first half. But even in building and maintaining that lead, the leveling-up in competition was apparent. Pitt had to work harder for its baskets. The defense the Panthers faced was tougher. Little things that the Panthers were able to get away with in the first four games didn’t work against an opponent from the SEC. They couldn’t get away with those things, and you could almost see those moments of realization in the early going.

Florida brought the fight to Pitt, smothering Bub Carrington and blanketing Blake Hinson in a way that the first four opponents didn’t (or couldn’t). Ishmael Leggett found some success - he was Pitt’s lone bright spot for a giant stretch in the middle of the game - but he met his match and more in Walter Clayton Jr., the Florida guard who was the best player on the court. And the front court was pretty well out-played from the start, getting outscored in the paint 42-24 despite starting center Micah Handlogten missing basically the entire game. Forward Tyrese Samuel made up for Handlogten’s absence, though, scoring 20 points and grabbing nine rebounds.

Front to back, Pitt wasn’t up for the challenge against Florida - not necessarily because the Panthers aren’t talented enough to compete, but rather because they looked like a team that didn’t know what it takes to compete.

But I think they learned. I think they learned how hard you have to work. I think they learned how important every possession is. I think they learned how important every detail is. I think they learned how focused you have to be every time you come up the court on offense or go down the court on defense.

Those aren’t always easy lessons to learn when you’re able to run away from the opponent like Pitt did in the first four games. As a coach, I’m sure Jeff Capel would have liked his team to learn some of those lessons early on, but the opportunity didn’t present itself.

The opportunity presented itself on Wednesday night, and Pitt took it on the chin.

They’ll learn from it. I believe that. This is a team with talent and depth (we’ll talk more about the depth in a moment). But it’s also a team that clearly has a lot to learn. I think they did just that on Wednesday night, and I think they’ll be better for the experience, probably starting today.

Some positives from this season
It’s the holiday season, folks. Thanksgiving is in the rearview and we’re barreling toward the yuletide. So let’s be at least a little positive today with regards to the Pitt football program after one of the worst seasons in recent memory.

We’ve spent enough time - lots of time - over the last three months talking about the bad, and I’m sure we’re not done with that well-traveled path, but let’s shift gears, just for a moment, and look at the other side.

What good came from the 2023 season?

I think there are a few things.

Like Terrence Moore. He replaced Jake Kradel at center in Week Four and has started every game since, and I think he’s been pretty good in that role. Pro Football Focus says he has allowed four pressures in those eight games; that’s a pretty good number when you consider that Kradel was charged with five in his three starts to open the season (four of which came against Cincinnati’s very talented interior defensive line).

Cutting down on the pressure up the middle is a big help to the quarterbacks, and there’s probably some proof in the numbers: Pitt gave up seven sacks in the first three games and 12 over the next eight. That’s not all on Kradel and Moore in the center position, but it’s one factor to consider.

I also think the safety position has been a positive development. That was a big question mark heading into the season as Pitt looked to replace multi-year starters in Erick Hallett and Brandon Hill, but after 11 games, I have to believe the coaches feel good about heading into 2024 with Javon McIntyre, Donovan McMillon and P.J. O’Brien. After 11 games, McMillon has 99 tackles and is poised to be the first Pitt defender to get 100 in a season since Jordan Whitehead in 2015. O’Brien is tied for the team lead with three interceptions. And McIntyre has emerged as a leader in the secondary and on the defense.

That group has not been without its flaws, but overall, I think the Pitt staff is probably coming out of 2023 with more confidence about the safety room than it had going in.

I think the Pitt coaches are probably pretty encouraged by the young linebackers, too. Redshirt freshman Kyle Louis and true freshmen Jordan Bass and Braylan Lovelace all saw playing time on defense this season, while true freshman Rasheem Biles was also a mainstay on special teams. The playing time fluctuated for those guys, but what they showed on the field seemed promising for the future.

And I would mention the receivers here, too. I’ll be the first to point out that I was hard on that group this summer. I repeatedly talked about how receiver was the weakest position on the team, and I don’t think I was going against the evidence on that one. But now, after 11 games, I think that group is pretty good. Bub Means has been a legitimate No. 1 receiver over the last seven games. Konata Mumpfield is usefulness incarnate. Daejon Reynolds fit in nicely as a possession guy and No. 3 receiver. And Kenny Johnson looks like a future star. I’ve also heard nothing but good things about the other freshmen: Israel Polk, Zion Fowler-El and Lamar Seymore.

We’ll see how many of those guys return to the team next year; that’s going to be something to watch every offseason at every position. But if most of them come back - particularly the freshmen - then Pitt’s receiver room should be in good shape heading into 2024.

And that’s kind of a theme here, too: all of the guys I’m talking about, from Moore to the safeties to the young linebackers and the receivers, all of them have eligibility remaining. My guess is not every player I mentioned by name will return to Pitt in 2024, but if most of them do, it should give the Panthers a good foundation to build from.

The numbers tell the story
I once heard a fantasy football analyst say something along the lines of, we often fall into the trap of believing that a player who was efficient with a limited workload as a backup is destined to flourish once he moves into a lead role.

Sometimes it happens, but most of the time, the backup was the backup for a reason, and the expected increase in production that correlates with an increase in workload never materializes.

That makes sense to me, and it’s a line of thinking that I keep in the back of my mind when I start considering the curious case of Rodney Hammond.

But I can’t help it:

I believe that if Rodney Hammond got a proper workload of carries, he would produce at a high level.

The proof is already kind of there. I found this stat last weekend while putting together an article on Hammond, and it seems like a pretty decent sample size.

In Hammond’s career, he has recorded 15 or more carries eight times. In those eight games, he has rushed 147 times for 735 yards - an average of exactly five yards per carry - and scored 11 touchdowns.

Put that pace over a 12-game season and Hammond would be looking at 1,103 rushing yards and 17 touchdowns.

That’s a ridiculously good stat line, and it would be no worse than third in the ACC this season in rushing yards and no worse than second in rushing touchdowns.

Yeah, Rodney Hammond’s name would be mentioned alongside the likes of North Carolina’s Omarion Hampton and Louisville’s Jawhar Jordan.

If they would just give him the damn ball.

It’s probably not that simple. It’s probably not as easy as, “Give him the ball and he’ll get a bunch of yards.”

But…pretty much every time they’ve given him the ball, he has gotten a bunch of yards.

And here’s the best part. In those eight games where Hammond got at least 15 carries, Pitt is 8-0. Sure, that includes New Hampshire inn 2021, but it also includes the Coastal-clinching win over Virginia that year, too (15 carries, 66 yards, one touchdown).

And it includes the opener against West Virginia last year (16/74/2), the Sun Bowl (25/94/2) and, of course, the most recent game: an explosive 15/145/1 performance in Pitt’s win over Boston College last Thursday.

Granted, that stat - Pitt going 8-0 when Hammond gets 15+ carries - is probably more correlation than causation, but if you’re looking for ways to get some wins, giving the ball to Hammond seems like an avenue worth pursuing.

I suppose one possible explanation for his role this season could be injuries. Hammond was banged up in training camp and might have been limited to open the schedule. If that’s the case, fine.

But short of that, I really can’t justify it.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Should the Duke game decide Yarnell’s fate?
Really, the question here is even broader than that.

Should the regular-season finale at Duke tomorrow decide the coaching staff’s approach to the offseason with regards to the quarterback position?

Put another way, how much should the regular-season finale at Duke tomorrow impact the coaching staff’s approach to the offseason with regards to the quarterback position?

Pat Narduzzi and his staff will have some real decisions to make this offseason when it comes to the quarterback situation. Do they believe in Nate Yarnell as the starter for 2024? Do they believe in Christian Veilleux as a competitor for that job? Do they believe in Ty Dieffenbach as as No. 3 or even No. 2 if Yarnell or Veilleux decides to transfer?

Or, failing all of that, do they believe they need to go to the transfer portal to find an option for next season?

That’s the biggest question right there, and it’s one that demands rather immediate attention. The transfer portal for non-graduates will open on Monday, Dec. 4, and you need to hit the ground running in your pursuits, particularly if you plan to go after a quarterback. Time is not on your side, so to speak, and if you need a quarterback, you have to be ready to go get one. Or, at the very least, you have to be ready to visit one in two weeks and get him on campus for a visit the weekend after that.

It may not play out exactly according to that timeline, but the reality of the situation doesn’t afford much more time than that.

So Narduzzi and company have to decide whether or not they feel like they need a quarterback, and that brings me back to the question:

How much should the Duke game weigh on that decision?

It’s not just the Duke game, of course. It’s every game Pitt has played since Veilleux replaced Phil Jurkovec. Veilleux will be judged on his five games as a starter; Yarnell will be judged on his two (plus one from last year). Small sample size? Yes. But that’s a decent amount of real game action on which to draw some conclusions about Veilleux and Yarnell.

For starters, Veilleux has shown a propensity for turning the ball over, and that’s a big no-no for Narduzzi. It’s a big no-no for just about every coach, but defensive-minded head coaches like Narduzzi get especially ornery about turnovers.

Yarnell, in a handful of appearances throughout his career, has not committed any turnovers. That sample size is especially small, but as long as the number in the turnover column stays at zero, it will be a gold star next to his name.

Right now, I think Yarnell looks like the better option, but there’s some recency bias in there. Veilleux looked like the answer, too, after leading Pitt to an upset of Louisville that seems like it will be the game that keeps the Cardinals out of the College Football Playoffs.

Since that game, Veilleux threw six interceptions and fumbled a bunch of times. Hence the change to Yarnell.

Veilleux is probably more physically gifted - he throws a really nice ball - but carelessness with the ball isn’t going to get you anywhere, and he’s wearing that stigma right now.

Has Yarnell done enough to lock up the starter job for 2024, though? It’s tough for me to go that far. He completed 11-of-19 for 207 yards, one touchdown and one interception to beat Boston College. Not exactly eye-popping numbers.

So we come back to that question. How much will the Duke game weigh on the decision? How much should it weigh? If Yarnell throws for 300 yards and three touchdowns to beat the Blue Devils, should that assure him of the starting job?

That feels like it might be an overreaction, but that’s the spot Pitt is in right now. Somehow, Narduzzi and staff (whatever is left of it) will have to make a call on the step forward.

What happened to the quarterbacks in the ACC?
It wasn’t too long ago that the ACC was the conference of record when it comes to quarterbacks. In 2021, the league was led by the likes of Kenny Pickett and Sam Howell, Tyler Van Dyke and Brennan Armstrong, Sam Hartman and Devin Leary, Malik Cunningham and Jordan Travis.

What a crew. What talent. If you turned on just about any ACC game that season, you were almost guaranteed to see some high-level quarterback play. Not every team had a great one, but enough teams had really good ones that it was a blast to watch.

Two years later…not so much.

In fact, two years later, the ACC is down pretty bad when it comes to the most important position.

We see things through the prism of Pitt, of course, and we know all too well how bad the situation is here. But the Panthers are far from alone in that regard, and while you could make a case that Pitt’s quarterback situation is the worst in the conference, it’s not exactly inarguable.

There’s Wake Forest, where life after Hartman has been rough, to say the least. There’s Duke, Syracuse and now Florida State, where starting quarterbacks ranging from solid (Syracuse’s Garrett Shrader) to pretty good (Duke’s Riley Leonard) to outstanding (FSU’s Jordan Travis) have been lost to injury.

There’s N.C. State and Miami, where the starter was benched only to be called upon again after an injury to the replacement (in the case of Miami) or the replacement going 3-1 as a starter but deciding to sit out and redshirt the rest of the season (in the case of N.C. State).

Then there are schools like Boston College and Virginia Tech who, for one reason or another, changed starting quarterbacks and ended up with pretty good young options who should lead their teams for the next few years (both out of the transfer portal, incidentally).

And then there’s North Carolina and Louisville, who have had good starting quarterbacks since the beginning of the season. They’re in good shape there.

But the Tar Heels and Cardinals are the exception.

In fact, the projected starting quarterbacks for eight of the ACC’s 14 teams in this weekend’s regular-season finales are different from the quarterbacks who opened the season as those teams’ starters.

Throw in Miami and N.C. State, which are going with their season-opening starters despite trying to put them on the bench earlier this year, and you’ve basically got 10 out of 14 ACC teams having changed quarterbacks ahead of the finale.

Only North Carolina, Clemson, Georgia Tech and Louisville are entering this week having used the same starting quarterback all season. And while Drake Maye is one of the top quarterbacks in the country, Jack Plummer has been really good for a top-10 team and Haynes King looks like he will be a good option at GT, Cade Klubnik is still figuring things out, and on the whole, that group is a far cry from the likes of Pickett, Howell, Armstrong and Leary (not to mention all of the others two years ago).

College football is cyclical, of course. There is always transition and turnover, so a league full of great quarterbacks one year will likely find itself replacing those great quarterbacks in a couple years; that’s partly an explanation for this season’s mess in the ACC. But last Saturday's injury to Travis was the latest blow to the league’s quarterback reputation, following other injuries (like Leonard) or transfer portal defections (like Leary) or successful veterans struggling (like Armstrong or Van Dyke).

It’s not 2021 anymore.

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt will keep going nine-deep
One thing that’s really interesting to me about Pitt hoops this year is the depth of the team. Through five games, Jeff Capel has been working with a rotation of nine players, and while the minutes ebb and flow for players 7-9, which is natural, I think it’s clear that Capel and the staff view all nine as viable options.

You’ve got the starting five of Bub Carrington, Ishmael Leggett, Zack Austin, Blake Hinson and Federiko Federiko. Then you’ve got the backup point guard (Jaland Lowe), the backup center (Guillermo Diaz Graham) and the backup wings (Jorge Diaz Graham and Will Jeffress). That’s nine, and I really don’t see any of those nine falling out of the rotation.

Granted, there will be games like Wednesday night, when Lowe played nine minutes and Jorge Diaz Graham played seven. But I don’t think those numbers are going to be the norm for those two. Florida was a big challenge for Pitt’s young guards, and Lowe’s playing time suffered as a result. But the Panthers are going to need him to be in double-digit minutes most nights - really, 15+ would be ideal - and the coaches will keep bringing him along to get there.

I think Jorge is going to see more than seven minutes most nights, too. With Austin, Hinson and Jeffress, there’s a bit of a jam at the three and four, but I have to believe Capel wants a more even minutes distribution.

Put another way, Hinson can’t play 37 minutes every night. A more reasonable workload for him will mean more minutes for Jeffress, who played 13 against Florida, and Jorge.

Right now, Pitt actually has 10 players averaging double-digit minutes, but that includes Michael Hueitt, who averaged 10.3 minutes per game in his three appearances. I think the nine above him will all stay in the double-digit range, which would make this the deepest team of Capel’s time at Pitt.

Last season, eight Pitt players averaged double-digit minutes, but that included John Hugley averaging 18.3 in eight games played. Similarly, in 2021-22, nine players averaged double-digit minutes, but that included Dan Oladapo averaging 10.5 in 15 games. And the season before that - 2020-21 - Pitt had nine in double-digit minutes, but Hugley was one of them and he only played seven games (actually, in that disaster of a season, Pitt had nine players average double-digit minutes but only five or them played 20 games or more; Au’Diese Toney, Xavier Johnson, Nike Sibande, Jeffress and Hugley played 18 or fewer of the Panthers’ 22 games).

In Capel’s second season at Pitt, only seven Panthers averaged double-digit minutes.

You have to go all the way back to Capel’s first year at Pitt to find the last time the team had nine players average 10 or more minutes per game. That year’s starting lineups featured freshmen Xavier Johnson, Trey McGowens and Au’Diese Toney and a rotating case that included Jared Wilson-Frame (17 starts), Malik Ellison (16 starts), Terrell Brown (16 starts), Kent Chukka (17 starts) in addition to bench work from Sidy N’Dir (20.2 minutes per game). and Kameron Davis (13 mpg).

Sorry for that mostly-unpleasant trip down memory lane, but I’ll come back to the point:

I think this team can legitimately support a nine-man rotation throughout the season. Lowe and Jorge Diaz Graham will have to progress - Pitt needs them to - but I think that will happen and I think the depth will maintain. I’m not sure I would have predicted this prior to the season, but that’s how it looks right now.