In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about upward trajectories for the men’s basketball and football programs as well as recruiting and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

No moral victories
There was a nice mix of emotions on Tuesday night, both for Pitt fans and those within the program. Because while many were encouraged with a pretty strong effort against Duke, most also recognized that there aren’t any moral victories and a loss is a loss.

Both of those reactions to the defeat in Durham - the encouragement and the disappointment - are right, of course.

A loss is a loss; there’s no two ways around that. Whether you gave the No. 9 team in the country - a blue blood playing on its most-famous-college-basketball-court-in-America - a tough game or whether you got run out of the building, it’s still going as an L.

But at the same time, it’s hard to feel bad about the effort. Some might say that’s a loser’s mentality - “Hey, they tried hard!” - but there’s reality in the sentiment. Pitt went into Cameron Indoor Stadium, faced a team that had better talent at virtually every position, and gave Duke everything it could handle.

Sure, it went down as a 12-point loss. But the Panthers held the lead a few times in the first half and never really backed down when Duke stayed ahead in the second half. The Blue Devils had to play 40 minutes to beat the Panthers, and that’s a credit to Jeff Capel’s squad.

Not that Pitt’s head coach was having any praise for effort. He appreciated how his team worked, but to him - as to many of the rest of us - a loss is a loss.

Just like the Syracuse game was a loss. Just like the two Louisville games were losses. And Miami and Wake Forest and West Virginia and Nicholls State. But while every loss produces the same result, they’re not all created equal.

Nicholls State was a bad one. Blowing a big lead against Wake was, too, as was blowing a late lead against Louisville at home. But even when the Panthers did some bad things like digging early holes against Miami and Syracuse, they showed some encouraging signs in how they battled back and made those teams fight to hold on for a victory.

I guess that’s a positive step. I guess being a tough out on most nights is something you can hang your hat on in a transitional period as Capel builds the program into what he wants it to be. It’s a far cry from the dregs of two seasons ago when the Panthers lost every ACC game by an average of 19.2 points and had the same number of 30-point losses (3) and losses by single digits (3).

The Panthers simply weren’t a challenge for most teams that season, obviously, but they got a little more competitive last year. And in 2020, there isn’t a team in the league that should see Pitt as an easy out. Some of that is because the conference isn’t as strong as it has been in the past, but it’s also a testament to where the Panthers are.

They’re not the bottom of the ACC anymore. And if a team - any team - overlooks them or has an off night, that team can lose to this one.

Pitt isn’t where Capel wants it to be yet, but they’re getting closer. I’m guessing it won’t be long until those fight-to-the-finish efforts produce more wins (and they’ve already produced more wins than the last two seasons combined).

Capel’s perspective
Jeff Capel is, to me, one of the most interesting interview subjects I’ve covered at Pitt. That’s a timeframe that dates back to Dave Wannstedt’s first days, so there’s a mix of interesting characters in there, but I think Capel is at the top.

For starters, I think he’s really candid. He’s a coach, of course, so there are some things he won’t talk about (he really shies away from strategy talk and is often pretty cagey about personnel decisions). But for the most part, he’s generally pretty honest about things. I thought the way he addressed the team’s issues after the loss to Nicholls State was a great example, and his ongoing observations about Xavier Johnson and how he has approached his sophomore season have been honest, sincere and revealing.

There’s a recurring theme in Capel’s public comments, though, and it has always stuck with me whenever it comes up (which is often). From time to time - and probably more frequently than that phrase would imply - Capel reminds all of us just exactly where he has been in his career.

He has been at Duke, as a player and as a coach. And in his time at Duke, he has played for and worked for one of the best coaches in the history of college basketball. And also during that time, he has played with and worked with some of the best players in the game.

This comes up often. You don’t have to look far in Capel transcripts to find comments like, “I know because I played for one of the best and I worked with one of the best,” or, “I know what great players are because I’ve coached them,” or, “I know what a great program is because I’ve played at one and coached at one.”

I don’t know if Capel says things like that every time he meets the media, but he says them often enough that it’s a trend. He says those things for different reasons; sometimes it’s to temper the enthusiasm for an accomplishment, either individual or team, and sometimes it’s to remind everyone just where exactly the top level is.

Whatever the reason, it’s a common theme for Capel, and I often find myself reflecting on those comments, maybe even more than other things he says. At first, the words seemed to carry an air of pretense; Capel was at Duke and now he’s at Pitt, and the gulf between the two is so vast that he can’t help but point it out.

But I don’t think that’s it. I mean, I think he sees that separation - how couldn’t he? - but I don’t think he’s holding himself apart from it. Rather, I think he points out the gulf between Pitt and programs like Duke because he wants to cross it.

Sometimes you’ll hear coaches or players or fans in college football say “We want Bama” or “We want Clemson.” In hoops, it’s often “We want Duke.” For Capel, I think the perspective is different. I don’t think he just wants to beat Duke; he wants to be Duke. He wants Pitt to be at that level. He wants Pitt to be the team that everybody else “wants.”

That’s where he came from. That’s the mentality that he adopted in his formative years in college basketball. And that’s the mentality he’s bringing to Pitt.

So yeah, he’s not impressed when the team is close; he had a good quote after the Duke game about the players getting a pat on the back for being close. He’s not impressed by that. Call it a blue-blood mentality, if you will; that’s what Capel has and I think that’s what he wants Pitt to have.

I imagine a lot of coaches would probably say that, too. But because Capel came from the environment, because it’s a part of who he is, I think it carries a little more weight.

Stock up
Let’s see, we’re doing a “stock up” section in the column a few days after the Duke game. I wonder who will be talking about…

Obviously, we’re all pretty influenced in our thinking by what we saw on Tuesday night, and nobody’s stock is more “up” in the wake of that game than Au’Diese Toney. But it’s not just that game, is it? Since he missed the first two games of January due to injury, he has been really, really good.

In the last seven games, Toney has shot 57.1% from the floor and averaged 12.7 points and five rebounds per game. Of course, that includes his career-best game at Duke, when he scored 27 points on 11-of-19 shooting, but even if you take that game out - and why would you? - he still averaged 10.3 points on 56.8% shooting in the previous six games.

And all of that is a revelation for a player whose biggest strength was and still is defense. When Toney was out for the game against Wake Forest and the game at North Carolina, the biggest discussion was how the team missed his defense. But he has scored at least nine points in five of the seven games since his return, and he has also been active on the glass, grabbing three offensive boards in each of his first three games back and corralling 14 rebounds overall on the offensive end in the last seven games.

He’s been really good; there’s no question about that. And the funny thing is, he was “the other freshman” last year in the group that included Xavier Johnson and Trey McGowens. Coming into this season, the expectations were high for Pitt’s sophomores, but when we said that, we were almost exclusively talking about Johnson and McGowens.

Right now, though, Toney is showing as much promise as anyone on the team. He has carved out a role on both ends of the court, and lest there was any question about his value to the roster, we need look no further than the box score from Tuesday night:

No, not the points (27) or the shooting (11/19) or the rebounds (4) or the turnovers (0). Look at the minutes: 40:00. Jeff Capel played Toney every minute at Duke. That says a little something - or maybe a lot something - about his contributions.

And Toney wasn’t the only guy to get a full 40 at Cameron on Tuesday. Freshman Justin Champagnie, Pitt’s unquestioned breakout star and one of the top rookies in the ACC this season, also stayed on the court all game against Duke. Relying on Champagnie has become par for the course as the season has progressed, but perhaps the strongest endorsement of his value to the roster came when he wasn’t on the court - his absence in the first half at Syracuse was felt just as much as his presence in the second half.

Champagnie really stood out to me in the Duke game. I know we shouldn’t get caught up in jerseys or environments or any of those other things, but I couldn’t help noticing how comfortable Champagnie looked facing down Duke at Cameron. He wasn’t intimidated by the moment at all. He shouldn’t be intimidated by it, of course, but it’s one thing to say it and another to do it, and he looked quite natural in that setting. In fact, I would say he looked more comfortable than any of his teammates, Toney included, in the early going: he was strong at the rim and he had no hesitation firing up shots.

You know who else made an impression in that game? Abdoul Karim Coulibaly. He didn’t play at Syracuse and has only seen the court in four of Pitt’s eight games since the calendar changed to January, but he had to take the floor when Terrell Brown and Eric Hamilton got into foul trouble early on and I thought he did okay. He didn’t stop Vernon Carey but I didn’t expect him to; what he did - and what impressed me - was how he stared Carey down from the start.

Just like with Champagnie, the situation wasn’t too big for Coulibaly. The freshman center got on the court and immediately started getting physical with Carey - maybe more than the Duke star expected. Coulibaly finished with eight and four, which is a perfectly fine stat line for a rarely-used freshman who just played the most minutes of his career.

I wouldn’t say the stock is up for Coulibaly as much as it is for Toney and Champagnie, but it’s hard not to be encouraged by what he showed in Durham.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Will the guards see the weapons?
Trust is something we always hear coaches and athletes talk about.

In football, they talk about trusting your teammates to do their jobs. Every player has to do his job and trust his teammates to do their jobs, because when one player starts trying to do other guys’ jobs, the whole thing falls apart. So trust is key.

In basketball, there’s still an element of trust-the-other-guy-to-do-his-job on defense. But on offense, it’s a little different. On offense, you have to trust your teammates to score. You have to believe that, rather than taking a bad shot because you are the best scoring option on the team, your teammate is capable of knocking down a good shot. Then you have to give the ball to them.

You know where this is going.

21 games into the 2019-20 season and 54 games into their careers, I’m still not sure how much Xavier Johnson and Trey McGowens trust their teammates. Last year, I got it. Those two really were the best scoring options on the team, and while they did look for Jared Wilson-Frame with regularity, they still took a ton of shots (35.5% of Pitt’s field goal attempts came from the two freshmen) and they did so for good reason:

They were the best options. There wasn’t anyone else you would want taking those shots. They were No. 1 and No. 3 on the team in scoring and both had better shooting percentages than Wilson-Frame, who was the second-leading scorer behind Johnson. Either Johnson or McGowens was the leading scorer in 22 of Pitt’s 33 games, including all three of the team’s regular-season ACC wins as well as the victory in the ACC Tournament.

Those two carried the offense, and going into this year, most of us expected the formula to be the same. I know I expected Johnson and McGowens to be the straws that stirred the drink for the Panthers, and after 21 games, there’s still some truth to that, as McGowens leads the team at 12.5 points per game and Johnson is right behind him at 11.7.

As we’ve all seen, though, those guys are not alone. There are other players on the roster this year who can legitimately provide offense. You know the names I’m thinking of. Fresh off the Duke game, it’s Champagnie and Toney, who are really bolstering Pitt’s wing positions. And there’s Ryan Murphy, too; his contributions have really fallen off as he has faced more athletic guards in the ACC, but if he can get open looks, the shots will fall (provided he takes the shots when they are there).

All of those guys, plus some improved play from Terrell Brown, constitute an upgrade over last season, but despite having better weapons around them, Johnson and McGowens are still taking most of the shots. In fact, they’ve taken a higher percentage of the shots this season (39.6%) than they did last season (35.5%). If anything, I would have expected that number to go down with the addition of Murphy, the development of Toney and the emergence of Champagnie.

It has become common to criticize Johnson and McGowens for perceived selfishness, but as I’ve written here before and said on the Panther-Lair Podcast, I don’t think that’s fair. I think those guys are really doing what they think is the best for the team, and some of that may be baked into their mindsets from how the roster was constructed last season.

But they have to adjust. They have to make better decisions and those decisions have to include making the most of the guys around them. Those other players are legitimate options, and maximizing their contributions is only going to open more opportunities for Johnson and McGowens.

Everybody can win here - most of all, Pitt.

Where is the momentum coming from?
Switching over to football for a bit, I got a question on Twitter that I thought was interesting and merited a bit more discussion.

Someone asked, “What in your mind is resulting in early 2021 recruiting success?” I thought that was an interesting question and figured we could spend a section of the column discussing it, because the early success - and the momentum that is creating the success - is legitimate.

First, I would summarize the success and momentum as such: Pitt has three commitments for the 2021 class, has hosted a bunch of top recruits on consecutive weekends and seems to be in really good shape with plenty more. That’s a pretty good place to be when we haven’t even gotten to Feb. 1 yet.

So what’s behind it? Are all of these recruits really inspired by the Quick Lane Bowl? What’s behind this offseason surge?

I think there are a few things, and not all of them are connected to things that happened in 2019. In fact, I think you can draw a through-line that connects the current recruiting momentum to Pitt winning the Coastal Division in 2018.

Yes, I know we’ve all wrestled with balancing that accomplishment against posting a 7-7 season with multiple blowout losses, but the truth is - as I’ve said for nearly a year now - recruits didn’t have such misgivings. Recruits knew what the coaches were telling them, and what Pat Narduzzi and his staff were saying was this:

“We got to the ACC title game. We were Clemson’s last hurdle before the playoffs. We’ve been at that level and we’re going back again, and we think you can help us win when we get there.”

And recruits bought in. All of those guys who committed last June and made the 2018 Father’s Day Explosion look minor by comparison - they all bought in. The Coastal title wasn’t the only reason they committed, but it did create momentum for the staff and had a hand in the success they experienced on the recruiting trail.

Fast forward to the 2019 season. Sure, Pitt should have been better than 8-5, but that hasn’t cut into the momentum; it’s still there, and if anything, it has picked up speed.

That’s where the second part of this equation comes in (and quite frankly, this might be even more important). Pitt has a really good staff of recruiters right now. Charlie Partridge and Chris Beatty have more than earned their reputations as quality recruiters. Cory Sanders is emerging as a top coach in that regard, too. And say what you want about Tim Salem, but he is pretty good on the recruiting trail, too (despite the issues with recruiting tight ends).

On top of that, I don’t think Andre Powell or Archie Collins are slouches either. Pitt’s recruiting staff beyond the assistant coaches is really, really good, too. Oh, and the head coach is pretty solid himself.

There’s a good combination of things working in Pitt’s favor right now: the program has momentum and stability and really good recruiters on staff. That’s why the 2021 class is off to such a good start, and that’s why I expect things to only trend up from here.

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt will have a big class in 2021
Looking ahead a bit here…

It’s a game we always play, and it could go in the “Two questions we have” section of the 3-2-1 Column: how big will the recruiting class be?

Since I decided to put this write-up in the prediction section of the column, I’m going to answer it:

The 2021 class will be big for Pitt.

Some of this is easy math to figure out. With the known current departures and additions to the 2020 roster, we’ve got Pitt projected to sit at 84 scholarships for the coming season. The coaches will fill that last spot, of course, although it might be a circuitous path to get there since I imagine there will be attrition after spring camp and then perhaps some additions via transfer or walk-ons who get scholarships.

We’ll assume for the time being that the Panthers play this season with 85 on scholarship. Of those 85, we’ve got 17 currently projected with senior eligibility. That number could grow with a grad transfer or two, but let’s assume it sticks at 17.

That’s the starting point for the recruiting class of 2021. Then you have to think about Paris Ford and Jaylen Twyman; if those two guys were thinking about the NFL enough to put out statements that they were returning, then I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that they go pro after this coming season (barring something unforeseen).

If Ford and Twyman go, that’s two more to bring the number to 19. I don’t know if Pitt has any other underclassmen who would go to the NFL after 2021, but getting 3-5 instances of general attrition is pretty much par for the course, so you’re now over 20.

And if you have 20 open spots right off the bat, you can reasonably expect to see the coaches shoot the moon with a big class - probably approaching the limit of 25 recruits.

(Of course, schools can go over 25, but I don’t think Pitt will have that much room in 2021.)

Here’s the best part if you’re Pitt: not only do the Panthers have all of those spots available, but the coaches are also in on a lot of good targets for the 2021 class. There are already three commits in the class (Nahki Johnson, Rodney Hammond and Javon McIntyre). Plus there has been some serious talent visiting in the form of top prospects from Virginia and Philadelphia - just in the last two weekends. And the WPIAL happens to have a solid half-dozen or so prospects who are top targets for Pitt and have some pretty serious reciprocal interest.

So you could be looking at a perfect storm of having a lot of space in a class and some really good recruits who could fill all of those spots.

Like I said, the 2021 class will be big for Pitt - that means quality and quantity.