The 3-2-1 Column: Meaningful games, hoops improvements and a lot more

In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about meaningful games, Kenny Pickett’s skills, Xavier Johnson’s resurgence and a lot more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

It’s nice to be meaningful
I know how you’re feeling right now. I really do.

I know that you look at the schedule and the record and the ACC Coastal standings and you see the huge opportunity that sits in front of Pitt. It’s all there for the taking (with a little help), and even if the cards don’t fall exactly right for a second consecutive Coastal championship, there’s still a great chance for a really nice regular season.

And that makes you nervous. Great expectations are riding shotgun with great opportunity behind the wheel, but anxiety is sitting next to you in the back seat.

For a lot of Pitt fans, that’s the current situation. And I know this because I saw it last year, too. When opportunity for real, tangible success presented itself, there was excitement, but it came with a touch - or more than a touch - of dread.

It wasn't the Friday night game at Virginia, but once the Panthers won that one, the dread crept in, because that win meant Pitt controlled its own destiny. It put a ton of weight on the next week's game against Virginia Tech and even more on the trip to Wake Forest that followed.

Now, a year later, Pitt is doing it again: playing games of consequence, meaningful games, in the month of November. That's a good thing - but it's also something we're not really used to around here.

In a lot of ways, last year was the first time in nearly a decade that the Panthers had something to play for in November.

By the time Pitt beat Clemson in the second week of November 2016, the Panthers were already two games behind Virginia Tech on top of losing to the Hokies head-to-head, so that one was out of reach. In 2015, Pitt ended October by losing to North Carolina; that was the Panthers’ first ACC loss, but the Tar Heels were undefeated and would stay that way for the rest of the regular season.

For both of those seasons, Pitt spent most of November angling for bowl prospects, which is better than the four previous seasons (2011-14) when the Panthers were simply battling to get bowl-eligible in the final month of the season.

That’s meaningful, I suppose, but it’s not quite the same as what we saw last year or what is unfolding this season.

Last year, Pitt went into November with a 4-4 overall record but a 3-1 mark in the ACC, putting the Panthers squarely in the middle of the race for the Coastal Division. Opening the final month of the season with a win over Virginia heightened the anticipation, and a blowout win over Virginia Tech turned the penultimate game of the regular season, a road trip to Wake Forest, into a chance to clinch the division.

This year, the Panthers ended October with a loss, but after back-to-back wins, they’ve got a pair of huge games left on the schedule. And thanks to a couple stumbles by Virginia, the Coastal Division is right there for the taking. Pitt can’t do it without help, but the Panthers have put themselves in the mix. They’ve played their way into the conversation, and even if they don’t end up scoring a trip to Charlotte, one thing is undeniable:

They’re playing meaningful football in November.

Again.

That seems like a good trend.

There’s something to be said for that
Turning back the clock to last Thursday night for a minute…

There we were again, watching Pitt battle for its life late in a game. We’ve all seen that story play out multiple times this season. And while there were games like Penn State and Miami when the Panthers couldn’t make the crucial plays in the fourth quarter to secure a win, more often than not, Pitt has come through.

They came through in spectacular fashion to beat UCF. They came through in non-spectacular fashion to beat Delaware. They came back from a blown lead to beat Duke. They held on after a semi-blown lead to beat Syracuse. And last Thursday night, they did it again:

They came back in the fourth quarter and overtime to get a big win.

Of course, the downside of that is how Pitt got itself into those situations against UCF, Duke and North Carolina. The Panthers had multiple-touchdown leads in the second half of each of those games only to see those leads turn into deficits before winning via fourth-quarter heroics.

That’s the downside. But the upside is just as apparent: in each of those situations, Pitt dug in, made plays late in the game and came out victorious.

I get wary of talking about intangible things like “finding a way to win” or “resiliency;” if teams truly did have a knack for finding a way to win, how do they ever lose? Why don’t they find a way to win every game? The same goes for resiliency: if you’re so resilient, where was it when you lost that game earlier in the season?

A lot of times, I think that we - those of us who talk about sports and write about sports - fall back on those themes when we’re not sure how else to discuss what a team has done. We drift into vague, nebulous concepts rather than focusing on the small scale: the defense made a key stop, the running back made the right read on a crucial play, the quarterback looked off the safety, the linebacker timed his blitz.

Those things are what determine a game. Charlie Partridge calls a certain defensive line attack and Jaylen Twyman gets free for a sack on third-and-11 in overtime. That’s why Pitt won. That’s the nuts and bolts of it.

But…

There’s something about this team. Or, at least, there has been something about this team through the first 10 games. They haven’t been perfect; the Penn State and Miami games - especially that second one - are evidence of that. But there’s also plenty of evidence that the players on this team just might have a knack for playing in those tight late-game situations.

Maybe it’s a product of being there. They’ve been through these situations a lot this season. They’ve had to win games in the fourth quarter, either via comeback or protecting a one-score lead, in each of their last six victories (UCF, Delaware, Duke, Syracuse, Georgia Tech and North Carolina). The more times you survive those situations, the more your confidence grows for the next time you encounter those situations.

Some teams could or would panic when they blow a two-touchdown lead in the fourth quarter against North Carolina or turn a 23-point lead over Duke into a four-point deficit or go from leading UCF by 21 to trailing by 10.

Teams panic. They get nervous. They say, ‘Uh oh.’ And when those things happen, they wilt. We’ve seen it happen, haven’t we? But this team…I don’t know. They have a different approach. They have a belief that they will make the plays they have to make to take a lead back or hold off a team that is surging.

It’s not always going to work. They could go to Virginia Tech, play a close game into the fourth quarter and fail to make the crucial play. That happened against Miami and it could happen again, because it’s not a flawless approach. Ideally, Pitt will play itself into a comfortable position and hold that position through the fourth quarter.

But if things are close, if things get tight in the final minutes, if Virginia Tech is threatening, there’s at least some history of these Panthers pulling it off. It’s kind of what they do.

Saying without saying
There’s been an interesting theme developing through the early portion of the Pitt hoops season. As Xavier Johnson struggled through the first four and a half games of the schedule, many people wondered why.

What was different about Johnson, who had such a sensational freshman season but looked lost in the early portion of his sophomore year?

I asked Jeff Capel something along those lines last Thursday afternoon when he met the media for a preview of the Friday night game against Monmouth. Capel answered a few questions about Johnson that day, and at one point, he offered this comment:

“Sometimes with young people, especially, if you have some success and people are saying things about you, you have something, you know, some form of success, then maybe it can make you soft. I’m not saying that’s happened with him but I’ve seen it happen before, and it’s our job to make sure that that doesn’t happen with any of our guys.”

Capel was careful to put that part about “I’m not saying that’s happened with him” in there, and I mostly took it at face value. But that idea, the notion that a player gets a little too high on himself and lightens up a bit - that kept emerging during Capel’s press briefings. Usually it was in general terms as a reference to his whole team, but on a few occasions, it came up directly as a response to questions about Johnson.

So I went back and forth on it: was Capel really saying that Johnson had gone soft? Did his breakout freshman performance and the offseason NBA talk go to his head and cost him some of the fighter’s mentality that was key to his play last year?

Was that really what Capel was suggesting?

I wasn’t sure until I heard the head coach’s comments after the win over Monmouth.

“We had a long talk after the West Virginia game before I came up and did media. One of the things I shared with him is that with him, he was a guy last year like I equated it to Rocky III. In Rocky I and II, he’s this guy from Philly, the street guy and he hadn’t done anything. You think in Rocky II, he’s trying to do a commercial and he can’t talk and he’s just this hungry dude from Philly and he’s fighting Apollo. In the second one, he’s got a mission and his wife just had a baby - just all these different things, but he’s just this hungry guy and he wins the title. And then as Rocky III starts, like he’s the man. He’s doing commercials and he’s in all these things and he’s getting ready to fight Clubber Lang and that’s who he was and he’s not that anymore, he’s big time and whatever and he’s got his butt beat, because he’s lost his edge. Sometimes when you have success, it can make you lose your edge or what you perceive as success. He broke the freshman scoring record. He was a guy last year that was incredibly hungry, because nobody knew who the heck he was, there was no expectation for him. All of the sudden, you have a good year individually and so there’s an expectation of, ‘Well I could be a pro, something I’ve dreamed about and maybe it’s close.’ Success can make you soft sometimes and so we talked about that. We talked about reading all of these things and you can believer them, either way, and that’s how this stuff can influence you. I didn’t know that he deactivated, I had no idea. I just told him that you’ve got to get away from it and you have to get your edge back, you have to get back what made you really good and so I’m glad to hear that he did that. That’s not something I’ve said in here. I don’t tell guys to get off, that’s their right to have that, but they have to handle that responsibly.”

Yeah, I don’t think there’s any question about that one. When you’re dropping Rocky III references, you’re putting a pretty fine point on it. Capel was clearly saying that Johnson lost some of his edge due to his success, and he needed to get it back.

Well, maybe he’s getting it back. After a miserable performance against West Virginia when Johnson had more turnovers (5) than points (4) and a first half against Monmouth that saw him get benched for a walk-on, Johnson has been looking more like himself. He had 12 points, seven assists and no turnovers in the second half against Monmouth and then scored 13 points with six assists and no turnovers in the win over Pine Bluff.

He hasn’t committed a turnover in the last 61 minutes he has played. That’s the way he needs to be as this team’s point guard and floor general and quarterback and whatever other cliché you want to use.

The key is, Johnson is doing more of the things this team needs from him. Maybe it took Capel dropping some Rocky knowledge on him to get the point across.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Is there a concern about the ceiling?
So, we’ve seen the 2019-20 Pitt basketball team in action for six games now. That’s far from being a sample size that would be considered ample - it’s not an ample sample, so to speak - but it’s a half-dozen games, and from those games, we can draw some observations.

Clearly, there have been some concerns about Johnson, but as I said earlier, he’s playing much more like the player Pitt needs him to be in the last three halves of basketball, so that’s a definite step in the right direction.

There’s the continued question of development in the post. After Terrell Brown started the season looking like he was going to take a big leap forward this year and become the assertive force in the paint that he has always been capable of being, he instead has looked more and more like, well, Terrell Brown in the last few games.

Fortunately for Pitt, there are options. Eric Hamilton has shown flashes and then had a sparkling game against Pine Bluff, scoring 12 points in just 17 minutes on 5-of-7 shooting. Karim Coulibaly also continues to make the case for more playing time.

And then there’s Ryan Murphy, who started the season looking like Pitt’s best offensive player but has made exactly two field goals in the last two games, has shot 5-of-23 over the last three and is shooting 27.3% from the floor (9/33) since leading Pitt with 28 points on 10-of-17 shooting in the loss to Nicholls State. That’s not a positive development.

But the biggest thing I’ve taken away from the first six games is this: are we getting a glimpse of this team’s ceiling? It’s awfully early in the season to even suggest that, but consider that, after beating Florida State to open the season, they struggled to get a convincing win over three beatable opponents. They straight up lost to Nicholls State and then put in a pair of less-than-impressive first-half efforts against Robert Morris and Monmouth.

No matter the state of the roster, the Panthers should be able to rise up and beat Nicholls State and then handle RMU and Monmouth more comfortably than they did. West Virginia - fine, that’s a good team that presents considerable matchup problems for a squad like Pitt, particularly in the front court. It would have been nice to be at least a little competitive, but that one felt like trouble from before the ball was tipped.

Last night Pitt finally got the kind of win we had all been waiting to see when the Panthers more or less dominated Arkansas Pine Bluff. Johnson had it going, as we said, Hamilton had his biggest game since joining the team and Justin Champagnie backed up his first career double-double against Monmouth with an 18-and-6 stat line to lead all Pitt scorers in the Pine Bluff game.

So that was a step in the right direction, and that’s what this team needs: steps in the right direction. The problem is, the schedule isn’t lightening up at all. Pitt could potentially be looking at Power Five opponents in each of the next four games (at least three will be Power Five; the other opponent will be Northwestern or Bradley).

That’s going to be a challenging path - it also includes Louisville in a mid-December ACC game - but after that the Panthers get Northern Illinois, Binghamton and Canisius before diving headlong into the ACC schedule. Lots of basketball to be played between now and then, and this team will probably look a lot different then than it does now.

But I wonder about how good they can get. The improvement in Johnson’s play and the continued emergence of Champagnie are positive signs, but Trey McGowens’ inconsistency, Murphy’s cold streak and the uncertainty in the post are all concerning.

So I guess I’m a little worried about the ceiling for this group. There’s talent on the roster; no question about that. I just don’t know how it’s going to come together over the next few months.

Is this the real Pickett?
Wow. We got all the way to the fifth item in this column before talking about the quarterback who was the catalyst for Pitt’s most recent win. That’s got to be some kind of record. Either way, I had to spend at least a little time on Kenny Pickett, because he deserves some praise for that game last Thursday.

Actually, he deserves a lot of praise. Pickett was really good against UNC, and he was good on a lot of levels.

You want a game with no interceptions? He did it.

You want the ball pushed down the field on vertical throws? He did it.

You want the quarterback to take over and make plays? He did it.

And every one of those three things was key to the win. Pitt couldn’t afford to turn the ball over against UNC the way the Panthers had against Miami and Georgia Tech. Doing that would have cost the game, but they protected the ball and, in my opinion, that was just maybe the biggest reason they won.

Pitt also had to present some threat of a downfield passing attack. In the last few weeks - basically the three-game span of Syracuse, Miami and Georgia Tech when Taysir Mack was quiet - teams haven’t had to respect any possibility of the Panthers attacking vertically. But they did it last Thursday with Mack and Shocky Jacques-Louis, and it affected how the Tar Heels defended Pitt later in the game.

And then there’s the matter of the quarterback taking over. Because Pickett didn’t just throw the ball well - 359 yards and a score on 25-of-41 passing - but he also ran more and ran better than he has in quite some time. Pickett finished with 53 yards and two rushing touchdowns, and he showed exactly what makes him such a dangerous quarterback when he’s playing at a high level.

Three times in the first half, Pickett tucked the ball and scrambled for a first down. He also ran a quarterback sneak to convert fourth-and-1 on Pitt’s first drive. And, of course, he scored the Panthers’ first and last touchdowns.

That was the fifth time Pickett has had at least one rushing touchdown in a game, and Pitt is 4-1 in those five games dating back to the win over Miami in the 2017 regular-season finale. Even more interesting is that the Panthers are 6-0 when Pickett has at least 40 rushing yards in a game.

Obviously, there are a lot of factors that went into those games, and Pickett rushing for 40 yards wasn’t necessarily the dominant element. But I don’t think you can overlook the impact a quarterback can have when he’s got the ability to make plays with his legs. Between the touchdowns, the sneak and the scrambles, Pickett accounted for six first downs - without throwing a pass.

If you have a quarterback who can do that, the game changes considerably. Virginia Tech’s defense has to be aware of it now, and if the Panthers’ game plan on offense this Saturday is similar to what it was last Thursday, with an emphasis on pushing the ball down the field complemented by a quarterback with a good feel for when to run, the Hokies are going to have a lot to account for.

ONE PREDICTION

I did it: I got a prediction right.

There was no 3-2-1 Column last week due to the UNC game being Thursday night, but the previous week, I predicted a Pitt win over the Tar Heels. Sure, I had done that in 2017 and 2018 too and it didn’t work out so hot those years. But put 2019 in the record books as the year where I finally called the game and, less significantly, Pitt finally beat UNC.

So what do Pitt and I do for a follow-up? Obviously, the team is going to be looking to build on that win with another victory in Blacksburg. For me, I’m going to make a prediction about something that would help the Panthers achieve that goal if it comes to pass.

I was going to predict that Pitt would win if Pickett ran for 40+ rushing yards, but I just discussed that topic, so I don’t want to overdo it on that one. Instead, I’ll look at somebody else on the offense.

Like Taysir Mack. The redshirt junior receiver looked like he was hitting a hot streak when he caught 32 passes for 421 yards and two touchdowns in a four-game span against Penn State, UCF, Delaware and Duke.

But then he went quiet. Due to injury or changing defensive approaches, Mack caught four passes for 32 yards at Syracuse, three for 18 against Miami and five for 47 at Georgia Tech.

Then he broke out again last Thursday night. From his 48-yard catch on Pitt’s second possession to his play-of-the-game-candidate 15-yard catch to convert third-and-14 in overtime, Mack made some huge plays in the win over UNC. He finished with 83 yards on six receptions, and it looked like his rapport with Pickett was returning.

I think Mack can be key in this game against Virginia Tech. The Hokies get after the quarterback - they’re No. 11 in the nation in sacks per game - so protection could be an issue for Pitt. But there will be plays when Pickett has time in the pocket to set up a deep pass, and on those occasions, Mack has to come down with it.

Certainly, Pickett has a part in that, too; he’s got to make those throws like he did against UNC. But when the ball is there, Mack has to make the play. He has been pretty good at that over the last two seasons, and I’m thinking Pitt will need him to do it a few more times before this season is over.

So my prediction is that Mack gets back in the scoring column this week. Maybe it will be a deep pass, maybe it will be a short one - either way, I think Pickett and Mack hook up for a touchdown for the first time since the Duke game.