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The 3-2-1 Column: Inconsistency, Xavier Johnson, the dead period and more

In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about the predictable inconsistency of Pitt hoops, the Xavier Johnson problem, the dead period, coaching hires and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

We’ve seen enough to know better
Before each Pitt game, the staff here at Panther-Lair.com puts in our picks.

Jim Hammett, Houston Wilson, Matt Steinbrink, Stephen Gertz and I announce our predictions for what will happen when the Panthers step on the court and we publish those predictions for the world to see.

Or, put another way, we pretend that we have even the slightest, the faintest, the foggiest idea of what the heck the 2020-21 Pitt team will do on any given occasion. Because, just like you, we don’t have a damn clue.

I played off of that on Wednesday with the picks for the Panthers’ afternoon a-lot-of-things-but-not-a-delight against N.C. State. Jim, Houston, Matt and Steve all said Pitt would win. Me? I’ve seen enough. I’ve seen this team do virtually the exact opposite on so many occasions this season that even pretending to think I know what will happen is the acme of foolhardy prognostication.

So for my pick in that game, I simply went against the grain. I picked Pitt to lose and I was the only one to do so. All four of those guys picked Pitt to win, and that made a lot of sense: the Panthers should have beaten the Wolfpack.

Just like they should have beaten Georgia Tech. And Notre Dame. And Wake Forest. And St. Francis.

Should. Should. Should.

I’ve spent way too much time talking about what Pitt should be doing; now, the reality is what the Panthers actually have been doing, and what they have been doing can be summed up in one word:

Losing.

That’s what Pitt has done since beating Duke on Jan. 19. Loss, loss, loss, win, loss, loss, loss. One win in the last seven games. And with the exception of the game at Virginia, they’ve all been on the spectrum of bad losses.

I’d like to sit here and proclaim something like, “They are who they are! After 17 games, they’ve shown us who they are!” But that doesn’t really offer any clarity, because what they’ve shown us is that they are very inconsistent and almost completely unpredictable.

Of course, that can manifest as an upset win. It happened against Virginia Tech, and to be honest, I could see it happening on Saturday against Florida State. That's how inconsistent this team is.

Then again, maybe inconsistency is a good thing for this team, because in six of the last seven games, there's been some consistency and predictability brewing in the way the Panthers have been remarkably consistent at blowing games.

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The Johnson problem
This could probably go in the “Two Questions We Have” section, but I want to continue the hoops discussion here so we’ll make it an observation:

Pitt has an Xavier Johnson problem.

When it comes to the Panthers’ junior point guard, I’m honestly out of answers, and I think Jeff Capel might be, too. He said as much after Wednesday’s loss to N.C. State when Johnson picked up yet another technical foul.

“Nothing I’ve said has worked,” Capel told the press. “We’ve been telling him for three years, two and a half years now: stop talking to the refs, stop being demonstrative. So nothing we’ve said has worked.”

That’s not quite throwing your hands up, but it’s close, and you can sense Capel’s frustration. His junior point guard, ostensibly the leader of the team who has been a starter for three seasons, has taken three technical fouls in the last five games.

Plus, Johnson has fouled out three times this season - tied for the most on the team. That seems like a wild stat for a point guard, no matter how many minutes he’s playing.

Now, I’ll never accuse Johnson of giving anything less than 100%. I don’t think his desire to win has ever been in question, and nor should it be: he goes hard when he’s on the court, he’s fearless and he’ll do anything to help the team win. The problem is, when he lets his emotions get the better of him, he’s hurting the team’s chances of winning.

Maybe that’s two sides of the same coin. Maybe the same intensity and drive that make him great also make him susceptible to “being demonstrative,” in Capel’s words. But it seems to me there has to be a better way, there has to be some solution to getting him to play with the same fire and energy but also understanding how to control it.

I don’t know what the answer is there. I don’t know if Capel does either. After Johnson got a technical foul against Notre Dame, he came off the bench in the next game, and Capel did the same thing after Johnson’s technical foul against Georgia Tech, so I would assume that he will be a bench player in Saturday’s game against Florida State since he got a T against N.C. State.

But benching Johnson doesn’t seem to have worked, so I don’t know what the next option is. Bench him for longer? At what point do you go so far to get the point across to Johnson that you start negatively impacting the team?

That’s a tough problem that Capel has to solve. If it’s even capable of being solved.

Staying dead for a little longer
Switching to football and, more specifically, football recruiting for a moment…

The NCAA announced on Thursday that the recruiting dead period will live on. The dead period was supposed to end in April, but it has now been extended until the end of May.

What does that mean? It means that recruits will not be permitted to visit schools as guests of the coaching staff until, at the very earliest, June 1. This extended dead period began last March when the COVID-19 pandemic really took hold, and the NCAA has continued to push its end date back, first to the summer, then to December, then the spring and now to the end of May.

Quite frankly, it sucks for the recruits who want to visit schools and get the full experience, and it sucks for coaches who want to go on the road and do evaluations, not to mention actually, you know, meeting the recruits in person (which didn’t happen for a fair number of players in the 2021 recruiting class).

Enough ink - or its online equivalent - has been spent on the unfortunate impact on the recruiting process. My main takeaway from the latest extension of the dead period is the NCAA’s statement on the decision, which included some key words on what will happen between now and May 31.

“As part of the vote, members also committed to providing clarity on plans for the transition back to recruiting calendars, including potential modifications for the return to in-person recruiting activity, no later than April 15.”

In other words, they’re going to try really hard to hammer something out over the next two months. I know we’re all skeptical of the NCAA’s ability to do anything reasonable or logical, but putting it on paper that efforts will be made to get back into some semblance of normalcy in recruiting is a step in the right direction, if you ask me.

Look, I am a big proponent of safety in these times. My family and I have tried to follow all the guidelines and suggestions and recommendations as much as we can over the last 11 months. It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve tried.

At this point, though, it feels to me like some things can be done safely, and I think recruiting visits are among them. We’ve all spent the last 11 months figuring out safe ways to maneuver the daily tasks of life. That has meant adjustments in everything from going to the grocery store to picking up kids from school. But we’ve figured out ways to do it, and I think the NCAA and the FBS conferences can figure it out, too.

So it’s encouraging to me that the organization seems committed to figuring it out - and committed to telling everyone what the plan is by a certain date. There have definitely been many points over the last 11 months when all anyone wanted was a clear idea of what the plan is. Good or bad, permissive or restrictive, whatever it is - just let people know the plan.

Now the NCAA has said, “We are going to have a plan.” And in two months, it should be even more clear that visits can happen.

I don’t know if the NCAA will approve prospect camps and that kind of thing, but at the very least, visits - even if they happen with limits on how many recruits can visit at once - should be viable.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

How did Narduzzi do on his most recent hires?
There was news on the football front this week, as Pat Narduzzi completed his coaching staff with the hire of receivers coach Brennan Marion.

You know the backstory by now: Marion comes to Pitt from Hawaii, where he was Todd Graham’s receivers coach for a year. Before that, he was the offensive coordinator at William & Mary and Howard, where he added “innovative offensive mind” to his reputation as a young, energetic, driven coach. Plus, Marion is from here, having gone to Greensburg Salem for high school.

Overall, it looks like a very strong hire. Marion has big shoes to fill, given what Chris Beatty did during his two years at Pitt. But I think Marion makes a lot of sense.

Narduzzi’s other hire this offseason was Ryan Manalac, who will be Pitt’s linebackers coach after leaving Bucknell, where he was the defensive coordinator.

So the two newest hires are both younger coaches who have multiple years of experience as coordinators at a lower level. I like that combination.

You know what else I like? The last 10 or so hires that Narduzzi has made. Counting backward:

Brennan Marion
Ryan Manalac
Chris Beatty
Mark Whipple
Randy Bates
Dave Borbely
Archie Collins
Cory Sanders
Shawn Watson
Charlie Partridge

Okay, I know you’re not real keen on the offensive coordinators. But does anybody have any complaints about the other eight guys on that list? I don’t. In fact, I think it’s pretty impressive. We’ll see how the two newest hires work out, but Beatty, Bates, Collins, Sanders and Partridge were all really good moves by Narduzzi.

Given how much oxygen gets used discussing the offensive coordinator hires - and rightfully so - I wonder if we give Narduzzi enough credit for the other hires he has made, especially in the last four offseasons.

Who are the top five hires Narduzzi has made?
Let’s go a step further on that front:

Looking at Narduzzi’s entirety of coaching hires, how would we rank the top five? Here’s my rundown:

5. Archie Collins
Collins was hired to replace Renaldo Hill, and while I don’t know if he’ll become an NFL defensive coordinator like his predecessor (Hill was named DC of the Chargers this offseason), he looks like a really good hire. A grad assistant for Narduzzi at Michigan State, Collins spent five seasons at Central Michigan before joining Pitt’s staff in 2018, and I think he has been an asset. Cornerback is not an easy position to man in Pitt’s defense, but the play there has improved over the last three seasons. And I think Collins has been pretty good on the recruiting trail, continuing to chip away in Michigan and also helping establish Pitt in Georgia.

4. Cory Sanders
Sanders was Pitt’s other new hire prior to the 2018 season, and he has been one of the low-key impressive hires Narduzzi made. A rising star in the coaching profession, Sanders was hired to coach Pitt’s safeties after spending one year at the FBS level (he was the defensive backs coach at Western Michigan in 2017). That might sound risky, but it has more than paid off. Sanders has done some really strong work with Pitt’s safeties in the last three seasons and he has been steadily building his recruiting profile, putting in yeoman’s work to develop connections in Philadelphia and doing well enough to add some significant local recruiting responsibilities as well. Sanders has been the main point of contact for some of Pitt’s big western Pa. signings in the last two classes, and the arrow continues to point up for him - which is probably why he has been targeted by a few other schools over the last two years.

3. Chris Beatty
Beatty came to Pitt with the reputation of being a strong recruiter, and he lived up to it, pretty much right from the start. Two months after he was hired, he had some of Virginia’s best underclassmen on campus for spring visits; 18 months after that, he signed four of those recruits. It was quite a haul for the Pitt coaching staff, who had been working to get a foothold in Virginia for some time. While Pitt’s receivers could have done a little better over the last two seasons, Beatty got good reviews from the players, and I think his overall performance gets high marks.

2. Matt Canada
Canada is kind of the John Cazale of recent Pitt assistants. He burned bright and set records but made his exit before he could tarnish his legacy with any duds. This is an extreme - and extremely poor - comparison, but I can’t really pass up any chance I get to name-drop Cazale. Anyway, Canada did a brilliant job with Pitt’s offense in 2016, from his game plans and play design to his in-game work as a play-caller. And before he had to work with first-year starters at quarterback, running back, tight end and various key spots on the offensive line, he took off for big money at LSU. It didn’t work out there, of course, but that doesn’t take away from what he did at Pitt. If he had stayed longer and kept up the success, he would be No. 1 on this list. Instead, he’ll have to settle for runner-up.

1. Charlie Partridge
This one seems pretty obvious to me. In hiring Partridge to replace Tom Sims, Narduzzi tapped a former Pitt assistant (knowledge of the program and the WPIAL) with strong connections in a fertile recruiting area (south Florida) and experience as a head coach (a helpful source of input and insight). And it has paid off in virtually every area: Partridge has delivered on strong recruiting in Florida and he has produced on the field in a big way. Case in point: two consensus first-team All-Americans on the defensive line this past season. That’s a credit to Partridge, who has quickly outgrown his reputation as a great recruiter and simply become a great coach.

ONE PREDICTION

The numbers will work out
Consider this your annual PSA:

The numbers will be fine.

I was inspired to write this section of the column after publishing the latest updated 2021 Scholarship Board earlier this week. There’s a lot going on with the board, primarily in the senior class where Pitt has two numbers to consider: the seniors and the super seniors.

The super seniors are the guys who technically finished their eligibility last year but opted to take advantage of the NCAA’s offer for an extra year due to the pandemic in 2020. Pitt has 12 of them - Kenny Pickett, A.J. Davis, Taysir Mack, Tre Tipton, Lucas Krull, Jake Zilinskas, Keldrick Wilson, Keyshon Camp, Phil Campbell, John Petrishen, Chase Pine and Cal Adomitis - and a big point to keep in mind with those guys is that they don’t count against the 85-man scholarship limit.

That’s important because, as of right now, Pitt doesn’t have many scholarship spots to spare. Actually, the Panthers don’t have any spots to spare. As it stands, they are actually projected to be over the limit by two.

When we put together the Scholarship Board, we included every potential returning player and every incoming freshman, and the number worked out to 99.

99 scholarship players. But 12 of them don’t count - you know, the super seniors. So that leaves 87, which is still two over the limit.

Naturally, these things lead to long discussions of how Pitt will get down to 85 by the time it has to get down to 85 (I think that deadline is whenever the remaining freshmen arrive on campus). The necessary attrition is only two scholarships, but that means two of the players on the board right now aren’t going to be on the team this fall.

We can all speculate about who might not be back and how that might come to pass; we can all probably make educated guesses about which players might look at the situation in spring camp and decide to pursue their fortunes elsewhere. I don’t know who it will be, but I know this:

The numbers will work out. They always do.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Pitt add another transfer this summer. It’s only natural that players at Pitt and at other schools get through spring camp, see where they stack up on the depth chart and choose to look elsewhere. The Panthers will probably lose a couple players that way, and I think there’s probably a decent chance they add one or two like that as well.

Like I said, I don’t know who it will be. I don’t know when they’ll go or where they’ll go. But the spots will come open. So don’t sweat it.

If you want to trouble yourself over numbers, try to figure out what’s going to happen in 2022 and 2023, when those classes of guys who were sophomores and juniors in 2020 decide to come back and count against the scholarship limit. That’s going to have a massive effect on everything, from roster makeup to recruiting, and the NCAA needs to find a solution.

But that’s a headache for another day.

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