The 3-2-1 Column: Hoops momentum, football schedules and more

In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about the NCAA Tournament, recruiting in Philadelphia, schedules, scholarships and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Still figuring it out
Say what you will about the 2019-20 Pitt basketball team, but they sure do make it interesting.

Open the season with a win over Florida State? Turn around and lose to Nicholls State.

Blow a lead and lose a winnable game at home to Wake Forest? Turn around and knock off a blue blood on the road.

Beat North Carolina in Chapel Hill? Turn around and fall behind 22-6 right off the bat en route to a loss at Miami four days later.

Beat North Carolina again with a nice win at home? Turn around and…well, not lose to Boston College four days later despite spotting the Eagles a 14-point lead in the first half. So that’s a step in the right direction.

Wednesday night’s game at the Petersen Events Center sure looked like it was going to repeat the pattern. Instead, it decidedly broke the pattern - more than one pattern actually; not only did Pitt follow a nice conference win with another victory instead of continuing to ride the roller coaster that this season has been, but the Panthers also won back-to-back ACC regular-season games for the first time in three years.

No matter how interesting Pitt made Wednesday’s game, from falling behind by double digits in the first half to blowing a double-digit lead in the second half, the important point was that they came out with a win. And they accomplished that by doing something they haven’t done in their other conference games this season:

They made shots in the final three minutes.

Look, I’ll readily admit that I get hung up on certain stat trends. I see something happen once or twice and then I start looking for it all time. In a lot of cases, the trends don’t amount to anything. But sometimes you find that trend that really does merit repeated discussion because it seems to keep popping up.

During the football season, I wrote - a lot - about correctable mistakes, particularly regarding Pitt’s offense, which had a bad habit of dropping passes, fumbling and taking procedure penalties. That trend played out often enough over 13 games to become a defining characteristic of the 2019 Pitt football team, and it remains one of the key points of emphasis heading into 2020.

Through the hoops season thus far, the one that sticks out to me is what happens in the final three minutes. I wrote about this in last week’s 3-2-1 Column and I’ve talked about it on the Panther-Lair Podcast as well as the Panthers Insider Show on 93.7 The Fan (Saturday mornings, 8-9 a.m.). So yes, I’ve been hammering this point for awhile, but as long as it remains relevant, I’ll keep talking about it.

Consider the numbers:

In Pitt’s four ACC losses, the Panthers have shot 3-of-19 (15.8%) from the floor in the final three minutes. In the four wins, they were 6-of-11 (54.5%). That’s not a lot of volume - six made baskets in four games - but Pitt also did well from the free throw line at the end of those wins, hitting 5-of-7 against Florida State and 4-of-5 at North Carolina. And in the rematch with UNC, the Panthers had another solution to the end-of-game issues: they built a bigger lead prior to the final three minutes, so even when the Tar Heels went on a little run, Pitt’s 14-point advantage from the first 37 minutes was strong enough to hold up.

Against Boston College, Pitt entered the final three minutes with an eight-point lead and had to fight for its life to hold on. The Eagles hit five of their six attempts from the floor in the final three minutes, and they got help from the Panthers, who committed three turnovers in that stretch.

But Pitt also hit some shots. Justin Champagnie, Trey McGowens and, of course, Ryan Murphy were all good from the field, and those three baskets plus Eric Hamilton’s free throw - he made one of two - were enough to secure the win.

We’ll see if the Panthers actually turn a corner in those late-game situations, but those three made field goals in the final three minutes were more than they made in any of their first seven ACC games, so I would say it’s a step in the right direction.

A glimpse at 2020
We got to see Pitt’s 2020 football schedule on Wednesday, putting dates to the names that have been known for quite some time.

We knew who Pitt would face in 2020. Now we know when Pitt will face those teams.

On first glance, the tough stretch is right in the middle, starting with Miami on the first weekend in October and extending through the second weekend in November when Pitt goes to Chapel Hill to face North Carolina. The six teams the Panthers face in that stretch - Miami, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, Florida State, Virginia Tech and North Carolina - are, with one exception, the most challenging opponents on the schedule.

Miami is almost always a problem for Pitt, no matter how bad the Hurricanes look in the rest of the season. Notre Dame is probably the best team on the schedule. Florida State may be down, but nobody knows what kind of impact Mike Norvell will make and the game is in Tallahassee, which is not an easy place to play. And VT and UNC are Pitt’s top competition for the Coastal title in 2020.

Other than Georgia Tech, that stretch is going to be a test for Pitt and likely determine what the Panthers’ season ends up being.

So with that in mind, what do we think this season should end up being? Part of your answer to that question is what you expect Pitt’s team to be in 2020. I think we all expect the defense to be really good, and we’ll operate on that assumption because if the defense goes in the dumps…well, let’s not consider that as a possibility.

No, it’s about the offense, of course. We’ll spend plenty of time over the next seven months talking about the offense and whether it will improve and whether it will improve enough and whether it will cost Pitt games again; the reality is, we don’t know the answers to those questions now and we won’t know until, I don’t know, mid-October? Maybe sooner?

But if we assume a little improvement - if we assume that Kenny Pickett is better in his second year working with Mark Whipple and we assume that the offensive line gets just a little better with a year of experience and we assume that the improvement of the OL helps everybody else - then I have to say, there should be a lot of wins on this schedule.

The first three games, of course, should be wins. Duke and Syracuse are always games that could go either way, but I don’t see any reason Pitt should lose to either of those teams. That’s five. Georgia Tech also could be better than it was a year ago, but not good enough just yet. That’s six. And I think Pitt should get back in the win column against Virginia with Bryce Perkins gone (and again, with some improvement from Pitt’s offense). That should be seven wins.

That leaves the meat of the schedule that I mentioned earlier: Miami, Notre Dame, Florida State, Virginia Tech and North Carolina. Miami and FSU weren’t very good last season, but on reputation (and, in the case of Miami, recent history), those games are going to be tough. Notre Dame is going to be a big challenge. And then the two games you have to circle:

Virginia Tech and North Carolina.

One beat Pitt in a 28-0 shutout that felt like an 82-0 game. The other lost to Pitt in an overtime game as the Panthers exorcised a few demons. Both teams have their quarterbacks returning, but of the two, I’m far more concerned about UNC’s Sam Howell; he’s really good and he showed it last season. I thought Pickett had one of his best games of 2019 against UNC, and Howell was still probably the better quarterback in that game.

So that’s going to be tough this year because Howell is going to be one year older and has most of his weapons back. Pitt can win, but the Panthers might have to score in the 40’s to pull it off.

What’s the prediction then? Or at least the expectation? There should be seven wins built into the schedule, and even if we assume that Pitt drops one of those seven (eventually Duke might get the better of one of these close games), that’s still a 6-1 record outside of that middle stretch. Can Pitt go 3-2 against Miami, Notre Dame, FSU, Virginia Tech and North Carolina to get to nine wins? That should be doable.

Should be.

Maybe the start of something
The strangest thing happened last weekend:

Pitt football got a commitment from Philadelphia. That doesn’t happen very often. Recruits from Philadelphia don’t usually pick the Panthers.

We can branch out from Philadelphia, though, because it’s not just about the City of Brotherly Love. The truth is, Pitt has struggled recruiting eastern Pennsylvania as a whole for a long time. And we can make that a broad region; let’s roughly define “eastern Pa.” as “anything east of Altoona.” For some reason, that feels like a dividing line in the middle of the state.

(Google tells me that the geographic center of Pennsylvania is a spot 2.5 miles south of Bellefonte, so I guess we could use that instead, but Altoona is the midpoint on the drive from Pittsburgh to my hometown of Bloomsburg, so I’m using that instead. Close enough.)

If we divide the state at Altoona, then, we can look at the guys Pitt has gotten from eastern Pa. Not counting Todd Graham’s 11 months in Pittsburgh, the two coaching staffs that preceded the current one each had some bouts of success.

Dave Wannstedt got six kids from east of Altoona in the 2007 class (as long as we include LeSean McCoy, who is from Harrisburg but came to Pitt from a prep school in New York). And Paul Chryst signed six in the 2013 class. Otherwise, you don’t see many Pitt classes with more than two kids - if that many - from the eastern part of the state.

As far as Pat Narduzzi goes, the 2019 class was his high-water mark: he got two guys (Bam Brima from Williamsport and Brandon George from Reading) out of that part of the state.

Overall, though, eastern Pa. just hasn’t been a reliable source of talent for the Panthers, and that’s for a few reasons. Primarily, there is stiff competition for those recruits. Look at the class of 2021: of the top four prospects in eastern Pa., three are committed - two to Ohio State and one to Clemson. And that’s before Penn State gets its guys, which always happens.

So it’s a competitive area where there really aren’t that many top prospects to go around. Western Pa. is the same way, but Pitt’s geographic location gives the Panthers a better chance with those guys, even when battling Ohio State and Penn State and Notre Dame and Michigan.

All of that said, I think Narduzzi has a good chance of getting more recruits out of Philadelphia - specifically Philadelphia, not just “east of Altoona” - in the upcoming classes. McIntyre has a couple teammates at Imhotep who also have Pitt offers, and while getting one player at a school doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get more, it certainly doesn’t hurt. Some of those teammates visited Pitt last weekend with McIntyre and certainly came away impressed. Plus, in the last week, we’ve seen the Panthers offer even more guys at Imhotep in the 2022 class.

Pitt is making inroads at the school and in the city. That’s a big credit to Cory Sanders, Pitt’s safeties coach who handles Philadelphia and south Jersey recruiting for the Panthers. He has put a lot of time and effort over the last two years into increasing Pitt’s presence and position in Philly, and it’s paying off - first with McIntyre’s commitment and then with, I think, a few more to come.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Can Pitt make the Tournament?
Regardless of how it happened, it’s hard to feel too bad about the win over Boston College. We’re well past the stage of giving Jeff Capel a pass for every game based on the roster and program he inherited, but even in Year Two, there’s still a feeling of playing with house money.

Capel has already won more ACC games this season than Pitt won in either of the last two seasons and he has tied the win total from three years ago. The Panthers’ best conference record since joining the ACC was 11-7 in 2013-14, the Panthers’ first year in the conference, and with 12 games left, it’s not crazy to think that Pitt could get close to that number.

And if the Panthers do approach .500 in the league, the bigger question looms:

Can they make the NCAA Tournament?

Sitting at 13-6 overall and 4-4 in the ACC, that talk has already begun (a two-game winning streak will do that for you). 20 wins is always kind of the target to shoot for, but it’s not impossible to get in with less. In fact, I did some research on that very thing.

Last year.

When we had a very similar conversation.

At the time, Pitt was 12-5 overall and 2-2 in the ACC after 17 games. The Panthers opened some eyes with a narrow loss at Iowa and then opened conference play by offsetting losses to North Carolina and N.C. State with a thrilling overtime win against Louisville and an impressive defeat of Florida State.

Pitt had five days off after the FSU win, and that gave us plenty of time to contemplate the possibility that Capel could get the Panthers into the Tournament in his first year. That FSU game was on a Monday; the following Friday, I asked the question - “Can Pitt make the Tournament?” - in this very column.

Hell, even Jerry Palm was talking about the Panthers; he had them as part of the “last four in,” projecting Pitt as a No. 11 seed in a play-in game. Spurred by Palm’s projection, I went in-depth looking at the recent history of teams getting at-large bids with less than 20 wins and played out the schedule to see how the Panthers could get to 18 or 19 victories.

We were all very caught up in the idea.

Then Pitt lost to Syracuse in the next game. And Duke the game after that. And Louisville and Clemson and Syracuse again and…you know how it went. The Panthers lost 13 games in a row after that FSU win, finally breaking the losing streak with a win over Notre Dame in the regular-season finale.

Now, I’m not saying this year’s team is going to go on a 13-game losing streak. I don’t believe they will. I think there is ample opportunity in the final 12 regular-season games to pick up four, five or maybe even six wins.

But this team isn’t that far along that we can make those assumptions. Yes, they beat North Carolina twice as well as Florida State. And they should have beaten Louisville. But they also lost to Wake Forest and Miami and nearly blew it against Boston College. They are very much a work-in-progress, and I suspect that will continue to be the case over the next 12 games.

This isn’t to rag on the current team. I think they are, on the whole, better than they were last year. That’s why I don’t see a double-digit losing streak coming. And they are absolutely capable of beating Miami, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech (twice) and Clemson. But they haven’t shown the consistency to make that a reliable bet. Not yet, at least.

If nothing else, it will be interesting to watch. I think this team does have a few more surprises - good and bad - left in it.

What’s the scholarship situation?
Certain topics have certain times of year when they are really at their peak, and the offseason is prime time for scholarship talk.

Every year, we all get caught up in numbers and wondering how the numbers will work out. In the really fun years, things progress through the spring to the point where it becomes a major question how the coaches will resolve a situation that looks like it will have Pitt 5-7 scholarships over the limit of 85. Sometimes we get into the summer and it’s still a mystery.

But it always works itself out. One way or another, things always get settled, because - let’s be honest, the coaches usually know what is going to happen and have a plan in place.

We don’t know the plan, though. We don’t get to see the recruiting board. We don’t have an idea of what the coaches expect to happen with the roster. We guess and predict, but we don’t really know.

So with the nature of our uncertainty understood, let’s talk about the scholarship situation.

This week saw a couple more transfer portal entrants, as sophomore running back V’Lique Carter and redshirt junior safety Bricen Garner put their names in, joining redshirt junior defensive back Therran Coleman and redshirt sophomore receiver Cam O’Neill. At this point, those are the only four we know of for this offseason.

Combine those four departures with Damar Hamlin’s return and the addition of Joey Yellen, and - by our count - Pitt is projected to be at 84 scholarships for the 2020 season. That assumes that every freshman qualifies and every player left on the roster returns; as we all know, there could be some movement in both of those areas.

In fact, it’s almost a lock that there will be some movement. I haven’t heard anything specific about freshmen who would have trouble qualifying, but Pat Narduzzi and his staff have a pretty good track record of bringing in guys who are in good academic standing. Really, the only instances I can think of when a guy didn’t qualify were Zack Williams in the 2016 class and Paris Ford in 2017; Williams pretty much blew off his schoolwork in the spring of his senior year of high school and never made it to Pitt, but Ford got there eventually after spending the summer catching up on a few credits.

So I think it’s probably safe to assume that the freshmen will arrive.

That leaves roster attrition as the other possible way to open up spots, and I think it’s equally as safe to assume that there will be some more attrition beyond the four guys who have already entered the portal. I would guess that we’ll see that happen after spring camp as players get a more concrete idea of where they stand on the depth chart. Carter, Coleman, Garner and O’Neill already made their decisions, but the guys who are still at Pitt might as well participate in spring drills and see how things are shaking out.

The question here is what the scholarship situation looks like, so let’s come back to that. Right now we have Pitt with one open spot; I’m guessing we could see two or three more go, which would open up quite a few scholarships.

What to do with those openings? I think you’ll see the staff (continue to) look for transfer help. We’ve already seen the coaches host one grad transfer offensive lineman for a visit, and I think they’ll probably try for a couple more in order to see if they can bring some immediate help at that position. A running back could be an interesting addition, too, and there’s always the “regular” - i.e., not graduate - transfer route to pursue, too.

Beyond all of that, it’s not the worst thing to carry an open spot into training camp in August. Every now and then, it’s good to give a scholarship to a walk-on; Pitt didn’t do that last year, but there could be some worthwhile candidates this year.

So I guess the answer to our question - “What’s the scholarship situation?” - is that it’s pretty good. Pitt is nearly full but has room to add quality pieces if opportunities present themselves.

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt won’t add any more 2020 recruits
This kind of prediction - a straight-up black-and-white guarantee - is sure to blow up in my face. But oh well; I’ll make it anyway.

There are less than two weeks until Signing Day on Feb. 5. In that time, coaches will work to finish their 2020 recruiting classes.

Kind of.

Because a lot of schools - probably the majority - are more or less done with 2020 recruiting. The “new” signing period in December has become the primary signing period, and most coaching staffs aim to lock up their classes then.

There are a few areas of impact from that shift. Coaches can obviously turn their attention more to the junior class; that’s one impact. But another is that the rush to sign guys in December doesn’t leave a whole lot in the way of available players.

When you look around the nation, it’s not like there’s a ton of top talent still floating out there. Of the Rivals100 for the class of 2020, three recruits are undecided and seven are committed but not signed. In the Rivals250, all but 24 prospects have already signed with their schools.

Work your way down through the three-stars and two-stars nationally, and you’ll find more recruits who are available, but the emphasis really is on getting signed Letters of Intent in December. The heavy lifting of recruiting isn’t done in January anymore; it’s done in June and December. Those were always big months for recruiting, but now they’re even more significant and they largely overshadow any January action.

Pitt is certainly among that group of schools that put the emphasis on December. The Panthers signed 17 kids last month, and that more or less filled their scholarship allotment (as we said earlier). There were a few targets who lingered into January, but we haven’t seen much of a push from the Pitt staff in that area. Things could develop over the next week and a half, but right now, it doesn’t seem like they are stressing it.

We saw something similar last year. Pitt hosted seven official visits in January and February, but four of those guys signed in December. Of the other three, Marlin Devonshire from Aliquippa went to Kentucky and Jeffrey Blake went to San Diego State. Only SirVocea Dennis, who was the lone visitor on the last visit weekend before Signing Day, ended up at Pitt.

Two years ago, Pitt got four commitments in the second recruiting period; one was a flip (Kaymar Mimes, from Rutgers) and two others were late offers (Erick Hallett and Habakkuk Baldonado). Only Mychale Salahuddin was a long-term target who took his recruitment to the second signing period.

So this is the trend and it’s what we should expect to see more often than not, I think. The Pitt staff seems to have settled into a pretty nice rhythm with the recruiting calendar - official visits and commitments in June, signings in December, work on juniors in January - and it has served them well thus far. This year will continue that pattern, and without too many senior prospects to think about, it looks like the coaches are making even more headway with underclassmen.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the staff is completely ignoring potential additions to the 2020 roster. There are always transfers to pursue…