The 3-2-1 Column: Peaking, the four factors, new hires and more

In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're talking about Pitt hoops peaking, the four factors of production, Pat Narduzzi's newest hires and a lot more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

The right time to peak
I mean, there’s never a bad time to peak, right?

All jokes aside, if you were going to pick one point in the basketball schedule during which you hit your stride and start peaking, it would probably be where Pitt is right now:

Mid-February in the stretch run to the postseason.

And if the Panthers keep playing like they did Tuesday night, they’re going to have plenty of opportunities to keep peaking in the aforementioned postseason.

I probably don’t need to spend too much time recapping Pitt’s 74-63 win at No. 21 Virginia, so let’s hit the key elements:

Blake Hinson scored 27 points, Pitt made 14 three-pointers and the Panthers out-rebounded the Cavaliers by 11 in the second half to post a double-digit win that halted the nation’s longest home winning streak.

And while the takes after the game hit quite a few extremes, I don’t think any of them really overstated it:

That was a gigantic win for a team that needs to stack wins and get as many quality wins as possible.

It sure seems like that’s what Pitt is doing right now.

After opening the main portion of the ACC schedule by losing four out of five - and a 1-5 record when we include the orphan game against Clemson in December - the Panthers have been on fire. They’ve won six out of their last seven, including road wins at Duke, N.C. State and, of course, Virginia.

Last year’s team did something similar. Those Panthers were 8-4 when they got to the full ACC schedule and posted a 5-3 record through their first eight conference games (not counting the N.C. State game in early December).

Then they went on a run. From Jan. 25 through Feb. 25, Pitt won eight out of nine games to vault to the top of the conference heading into the final week of the regular season.

That last part - getting to the top of the ACC - probably won’t repeat, but the rest feels familiar. It’s a team getting hot in February and using that heater to get itself into the postseason. This year’s team has work to do to get there, but they’re doing what they need to do right now to keep themselves in the conversation.

Pitt is certifiably the hottest team in the ACC right now.

And right now is exactly when you want to be the hottest team.

The four factors
We’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating, because the key to Pitt’s hot streak and the key to the team’s overall success this season - the success it has already enjoyed and the success yet to come - all ride on the same factor.

The same four factors, in fact.

You know them by name:

Blake Hinson, Bub Carrington, Jaland Lowe and Ishmael Leggett

They’ve been absolutely huge over this stretch. Check out the numbers from the last seven games:

That’s some really impressive production, and those guys are leading the charge. They’re the main factors behind Pitt’s current hot streak. The four factors of the Panthers’ production.

In economic terms, the four factors of production are land, labor, capital and entrepreneurship.

You know I’m about to draw some parallels here.

Land is the essential factor. It’s the basic requirement of all production; without land, there is no production. It’s where everything starts.

Blake Hinson is the land.

Labor is the effort. Labor is the work that gets done. It comes from a variety of sources and takes on a lot of different forms, but in the end, it gets the job done.

Ishmael Leggett is the labor.

Capital is what puts everything in motion. Capital facilitates. It affects and impacts all of the other factors; it’s got a hand in everything. Whatever happens in production, capital is connected to it.

Bub Carrington is the capital.

And then there’s entrepreneurship. I’ve seen entrepreneurship described as the secret sauce of production. Entrepreneurship is that piece that puts all of it over the top. You have the land and you have the labor and you have the capital, but you need something extra, that magical element that truly makes it all happen. That extra something extra is entrepreneurship.

Jaland Lowe is the entrepreneurship.

I don’t think I’m putting too much on Lowe there; I think his development since the start of the ACC schedule has been the key ingredient that has truly elevated Pitt to the level it’s playing at right now.

Hinson has been Hinson. Carrington has been Carrington. Leggett (once he got healthy) has been Leggett.

But the single biggest change in how Pitt has been playing has been Lowe. His growth and maturation has taken this team to another level.

Now, the economists among us can quibble with a detail here or there, but I really like how that lines up. And here’s the overall point:

Pitt needs all four of those guys to be playing at a high level in order to win, and right now, that’s exactly what is happening.

Hashtag #FourFactors

Another departure
Pitt lost another assistant coach this week.

Well, “lost” doesn’t necessarily apply to every assistant coach who has departed the Pitt staff this offseason. Four of the six were fired. The other two left for the NFL.

So only two of the six departures were “lost;” the others were involuntarily dismissed.

Either way, six departures from a staff of 10 is a lot, and the latest was the last man standing from the 2023 offensive staff.

That was Tiquan Underwood, of course, who left Pitt to go to the New England Patriots.

It’s too bad to see Underwood go. He was a young, engaging assistant coach who seemed to connect well with the players and recruits.

I actually think that’s one of the biggest losses with Underwood’s departure:

After Pat Narduzzi removed every other coach on the offensive staff, Underwood was the only familiar face for Pitt’s offensive players. He was a small touch of continuity on that side of the ball, and I think it would have been good for the players to have at least a little bit of carryover.

Sure, everybody else is gone, but Coach ‘Wood is still here - he knows me and we’ve been working together for a year or two.

I think that would apply to all positions on offense - not just wide receiver - but now Underwood is gone, so the offensive players will be taking the field in spring camp with a whole new staff.

New offensive coordinator. New running backs coach. New tight ends coach. New offensive line coach. New receivers coach.

I guess Narduzzi is still a constant for those guys - at least during the 15% of his time that he spends with the offense.

Ultimately, I think most assistant coaches are replaceable. The biggest hire of this offseason, for Narduzzi and for Pitt, was made two months ago.

That was Kade Bell, the new offensive coordinator whose success or failure will directly impact the success or failure of the 2024 season and, quite likely, the Big Picture beyond the coming fall.

Underwood was a good recruiter and a pretty good coach, in my view. I think Bub Means’ growth and development is a credit to Underwood and quite possibly his greatest achievement at Pitt. But his departure won’t make or break the 2024 season. The fate of this season was sealed by the hire of Bell; everybody plays a part, of course, but the offensive coordinator is the most important piece.

It hurts to lose Underwood, just like it hurt to lose defensive line coach Charlie Partridge. But all of that is secondary to Bell.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

What would I do?
So, who should Pat Narduzzi hire to replace Underwood?

I don’t have a name and I’m not going to pretend to know the best candidate. But I can describe him.

And I can do it in one word.

Recruiter.

The best candidate for Narduzzi’s next hire on the offensive side of the ball is somebody who is a really, really good recruiter. There are a lot of ways to be a good recruiter, and I don’t really care which “kind” of recruiter Narduzzi hires. But I think whoever he hires has to be a good recruiter. A great recruiter, even.

To me, that’s the No. 1 priority in this hire. It’s more important than anything else.

And I don’t even think you are limited to looking at guys who have experience coaching receivers.

From the way I see it, Lindsey Lamar gives Narduzzi a lot of flexibility with this hire. Lamar was hired to coach Pitt’s running backs, but his background is with receivers. Granted, he was a running back during his college career at USF, but he made more of an impact on special teams than any offensive skill position. And he spent the last four years coaching receivers at Howard.

So if Narduzzi looks at candidates and finds a great recruiter who happens to coach running backs, that’s fine: hire him and move Lamar to receivers.

And truthfully, I think Narduzzi could look at offensive coaches from pretty much any background. Is there an offensive line coach or a tight ends coach who can recruit really well? Great. Hire him, put him on the running backs and move Lamar to receivers. I think running back might be the lowest barrier-to-entry position on an offensive coaching staff; not that it’s an easy position to coach, but I think you can probably take anybody with offensive coaching experience and give them the running backs.

As such, Narduzzi really can bring anybody he wants to coach the running backs - as long as they’re a great recruiter.

I don’t think I can stress that enough. It really does need to drive Narduzzi’s search process here. Because when it comes down to it, as we all know, it’s about the players. You have to have the players.

Take Charlie Partridge, for instance. He’s a great coach; I don’t think anyone would dispute that. But what happened to the defensive line in 2023? Partridge didn’t forget how to coach. He just didn’t have players that were as good as the ones he had in previous years.

Or somebody like Andre Powell. He looked much better when he had James Conner in 2016 and Qadree Ollison and Darrin Hall in 2018 and Israel Abanikanda in 2022. I like Rodney Hammond and certainly some of Powell’s personnel decisions were a bigger issue than anything production-related, but Powell’s reputation was much stronger when he had a few future NFL players at his position.

The players almost always make the coach; it’s usually not the other way around.

I think Pitt’s got a really sound evaluation process. I think the coaches - particularly on defense - are really good at finding players who fit the scheme and recruiting to it. They’ve done a great job of that over the years, and I think Narduzzi and company get a lot of credit for it.

But this staff needs some real studs when it comes to recruiting, especially on the offensive side. I don’t want to summarily dismiss the possibility that some of the new hires might have skills in that regard. Kade Bell strikes me as the type who will be relentless on the recruiting trail, and we’ll see what Lamar, Jacob Bronowski and Jeremy Darveau do.

With one more opening, though, I think Narduzzi has to make recruiting the priority.

Is it going to work?
I’ll say this right off the bat:

I was impressed with Kade Bell last Wednesday.

Probably more than I expected to be.

Like everybody else, I watched a few YouTube clips after Bell got hired, so I had some sense of how he carries himself and how he speaks.

But hearing him in person, hearing him take questions, hearing him talk about his offense and his background and his plans and what he wants to do at Pitt, I was impressed.

Bell is very confident. That was one of the main things that stood out - both in how I perceived his comments and, you know, what he said directly.

“What do I bring? I think confidence. I’m a confident guy. I believe in myself. I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder. It’s just who I am. I played small-school ball - wanted to be the best quarterback in the country when I played. I want to be the best offensive coordinator and coach and mentor I can be in the country. That’s my goal every day. So I think I’m going to bring confidence and bring an understanding of kids and relationships.

“I believe that if I can get a kid to believe in himself first and what they do, we can find a way to use them and get them in position to be successful. Those are two things I think I’ll bring here to Pitt.”

That’s probably more of the quote than I needed to include here, but I think the whole thing is pretty good.

The key is the first part, though. The confidence. Bell believes in himself and he believes in his system. Ideally, it’s not in the sense of, “I’m going to force my system and you square pegs can either round off or step off.” I don’t think that’s what he was saying.

But I do think he believes in the foundation of his offensive system and I think he believes in his own personal ability to adapt it, design it and call it.

That’s good. Confidence is good. If you don’t believe in yourself, who will? Right?

Now, we all wait to see if it works.

Look, I think the confidence is a great quality. You need to believe your stuff will be effective.

But I also can’t fault anybody who looks at the situation and says, “Well, Narduzzi definitely went off the reservation - his reservation - with this hire. He brought in an FCS coordinator who has never called plays at the FBS level, running an offense that could certainly blow up if it isn’t executed properly, and that’s the guy Narduzzi is hitching his future to. I’m going to wait and see what happens.”

Nothing wrong with that logic. It’s actually pretty logical, because while I might be getting a little too extreme with this, it seems to me that it’s most likely this will end one of two ways:

Bell succeeds and Narduzzi is a genius for a major change in direction after nearly a decade of doing things a certain way.

Or it blows up.

There’s a middle ground in there, of course, the soft, welcoming comfort of mediocrity where it never really clicks but they manage to win six or seven games and there’s no real specific blame - just the generality of disinterest.

That’s always a possibility, and things often end up in that space.

But I feel like it’s far more likely to be one of the two extremes. I can’t shake the feeling that we’re arriving at an inflection point for Narduzzi, and it’s going to go one of two ways.

I think Bell’s offense is going to point the ship one way or the other.

As such, there’s a whole lot riding on that question:

Will it work?

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt’s going to stay in the bracket conversation
Slowly but surely, Pitt is inching its way into The Conversation.

No, I’m not talking about the Francis Ford Coppola classic 1974 film that stands as one-fifth of the incredible legacy of John Cazale.

(I never miss an opportunity to name-drop John Cazale.)

I’m talking about The Conversation that happens at this time of year in college sports.

Who is in and who is out?

Even though we’re still a month away from the conference tournaments, the end of the season is getting closer and closer, and that means we’re getting closer and closer to Selection Sunday on March 17.

Which means we have four weeks of Bracketology and scoreboard-watching to see who’s making the NCAA Tournament and who’s getting left out of it.

My prediction today, which is vague and not exactly going out on a limb, is that Pitt is going to be part of that conversation all the way through.

I won’t predict that the Panthers will or won’t make the Tournament; only that they’re going to be a team worthy of discussion.

And that’s great. It really is. It’s great to be in that conversation. It’s great to be in a position where we’re talking every day about NET rankings and KenPom and how Pitt’s opponents do.

It’s great to go into every game feeling like it has major implications for the fate of the program and the overall direction of the ACC and the postseason.

It’s great to have games that matter.

The game at Virginia on Tuesday night was a great example. It felt like an ACC Tournament game: two teams who are very familiar with each other slugging it out, blow-for-blow, with some high-level basketball.

There was a lot at stake for both teams. Virginia wanted to keep itself in the hunt for a double-bye in the aforementioned conference tournament; Pitt wanted to keep itself in the hunt for a spot in the NCAA Tournament.

It was great stuff, and it would have been a little less engaging if Pitt wasn’t in the position it’s in.

It’s not that hard to remember what that was like. Just two years ago, Pitt was in a very different spot at this time of year. The Panthers were 3-10 in the ACC entering mid-February after a four-game losing streak, and while they inspired a little bit of optimism by winning three in a row - including a 76-67 game against UNC in Chapel Hill - they followed that brief success by losing the final four regular-season games and going one-and-done in the ACC Tournament.

That team was never in The Conversation, and even the three-game winning streak didn’t get them there because they were still 6-10 in conference play and 11-16 overall. They were never going to win enough to get into the NCAA Tournament.

This team is very much in the hunt. This team is very much in The Conversation.

So we’ll keep watching the scoreboard (root for N.C. State; the Wolfpack can help Pitt out by winning a few games). And we’ll keep reading Bracketology (but don’t stress yourself out too much over it). And we’ll all try to make whatever sense we can of resume metrics and predictive metrics and NET rankings and strength of record and everything else there is to consume.

Because right now, Pitt’s in The Conversation. And I think the Panthers will stay there for awhile.