The 3-2-1 Column: Pitt basketball is on a roll

In this week’s 3-2-1 column, we are talking all about the Pitt basketball team and their recent surge to the top of the ACC standings. The Panthers had a dominant win over Louisville earlier this week and they have a key game tomorrow in Tallahassee against Florida State.

There are less than 30 days until Selection Sunday, and the Pitt Panthers are firmly in a race to win a conference championship and make a push to the NCAA Tournament and there is plenty to discuss with this team right now.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Swish by Swish
When Jeff Capel took the head coaching job at Pitt ahead of the 2018-19 season, the metaphor he came up with for rebuilding the program was dubbed ‘Brick by brick’, but after four straight losing seasons to open his tenure, that line took on a much more literal sense.

The meaning behind 'brick by brick' was in good nature, of course. Capel's idea was that it takes a lot of work to build a good college basketball program. When former players come to visit, they would sign a brick and its displayed near the Pitt locker room. Pitt is building a strong house, or program, and it would take a brick by brick approach. College coaches love real, tangible objects for the metaphors they try to instill for their programs.

Overall, I think this Pitt basketball program still needs to layer a few more bricks (figuratively speaking of course), to get this program back to where it once was, but in the case of the 2023 team, however, the foundation is being built with swishes, not bricks.

This Pitt team can shoot the light out of the basketball, and it has been on full display especially over the last two weeks. The Panthers have made a whopping 51 3-point field goals over a four-game stretch. They previous team record for made three-pointers in a single game coming into this season was 16, and Pitt has toppled that number twice in the past two weeks alone.

Pitt set a school record with 18 three-pointers in a win over Wake Forest, and nearly matched it with 17 made in a 91-57 thrashing over Louisville on Tuesday night. The Panthers have four players shooting over 45% from deep over these four contests, all wins might I add, and it’s a shooting display unlike anything this program has ever really seen.

The three-point success is not because the team is just firing them up at will, but these outside shots are coming within the context of the offense. Pitt had 22 assists in the win over Wake Forest, and 23 against Louisville earlier this week. The Panthers have two guards, Jamarius Burton and Nelly Cummings, that can penetrate and find open shooters, with the ability to knock down shots themselves.

While the three-point shot has been a catalyst of late, Pitt is not totally dependent on the long ball either. Burton has easily been Pitt’s best player all season and the senior guard only has 15 makes from three-point land this year. It’s just not his style and he is at his best playing a mid-range game and getting into the paint.

If teams run Pitt's shooters off of the three-point line, then they have the option to run everything through Burton. If they take away his drives, Burton is a more than willing passer to find the open shooter. He averages 4.5 assists a game, good for sixth in the ACC heading into Saturday.

Pitt is hard to guard right now.

Louisville head coach Kenny Payne was effusive in his praise of Pitt after they handed his squad a season-worst 34-point loss on Tuesday night. He talked about how Pitt ‘can score in a multitude of ways’ and he got a firsthand look at that earlier this week.

Pitt’s best quality this season is that they have multiple offensive weapons that can carry the team on a given night. Burton, Cummings, Blake Hinson, Greg Elliott, and Nike Sibande are all capable of scoring 20 points in a game. In Pitt’s last six games, all five of those players have led the team in scoring at least once.

Can Pitt shoot the lights out every night? Of course not, they have had down games from the outside, but have also adjusted when it happens. Even in the team’s recent win over North Carolina, they had to be more effective inside and the 26 points in the paint that game shows that they are capable.

The Panthers have a really good thing going on offense right now. They won’t make 17 threes a night moving forward, but some nights it will happen, and when it does they can play with anybody in the country.

Looking for revenge in Tallahassee
Pitt has won six of its last seven games. The offense has been clicking throughout this stretch, but we cannot forget about the one blemish during this current run. The Panthers dropped a home game to lowly Florida State back on January 21st at the Petersen Events Center by a score of 71-64, which accounted for one of the seven wins the Seminoles have this entire season.

Speaking of hot shooting, Florida State had it going on that day. The ‘Noles shot 50% from three-point range and were led by Darin Green Jr., who finished with a game-high 24 points on the strength of five made threes. Green is one of the most deadly outside shooters in the conference and he gave it to Pitt a few weeks ago.

While Pitt has been shooting at an unreal clip since the Florida State loss, it’s worth mentioning how the shots were not falling in that game. Pitt was just 7-of-28 from long range. Nelly Cummings was 2-of-12 from the field, while Nike Sibande was 1-of-6. It was ugly at times, and we saw what happened when Pitt’s shooting went away for a night.

It was a poor performance for Pitt, but it seems to be more of an aberration than a trend. The Panthers have been playing very good basketball aside from that one mishap, but unfortunately for this team, it is a loss that has loomed large.

Pitt is in a three-way tie for first place in the ACC with a 10-3 conference record. Since a 1-3 start to this season, Pitt has gone 16-4 over the last 20 games with wins over three teams currently ranked and six road victories. It’s a resume you would think would place Pitt firmly comfortable in the NCAA Tournament bubble, but right now there is still work for the Panthers to do to enhance their case.

Pitt’s setback to Florida State is deemed as a ‘Quad 4’ defeat, meaning the Seminoles are ranked so low that the loss is really hurting Pitt in all the metric rankings. The Panthers have been hovering anywhere from 60-50 in the NET rankings for a few weeks. Pitt has more quality ‘Quad 1’ wins than multiple teams ranked ahead of them. They have more road wins as well, but a loss to a Florida State team ranked in the 200s has not be kind to Pitt’s tournament odds despite seemingly more good on the resume than bad.

Having said all of that, you can make yourself crazy if you check NET or KenPom.com every morning and trying to decipher how the computers arrive at some of these rankings. There is nuance to the NCAA Tournament selection committee and it is not completely based off of these rankings, but still Pitt can’t afford to lose to Florida State again.

It wouldn’t be a deathblow, but they would be sweating a lot more on Selection Sunday than they probably would like. Since defeating Pitt on January 21st, Florida State has followed that up with a 1-4 record. The lone win was over Louisville by three points, the same Cardinals team Pitt just walloped earlier this week.

The numbers and rankings are what they are. Pitt simply needs to keep winning above all else, but avoiding bad losses seems to be the trick, and Pitt can’t have one of those tomorrow.

Pitt players at the NFL Combine
The NFL announced this week the list of prospects who were invited to the NFL Combine in Indianapolis and six former Pitt stars were among them. Israel Abanikanda, Habakkuk Bladonado, SirVocea Dennis, Brandon Hill, Calijah Kancey, and Carter Warren will all be in Indianapolis in early March to showcase themselves to all 32 NFL teams with the hopes of being selected in the NFL Draft in April.

Pitt has had a player selected in nine consecutive NFL Drafts. Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi took over the program ahead of the 2015 season, and since then 19 players who have played under him have had their name called. This group will almost certainly extend the streak to 10 straight years a Pitt player has been drafted.

The headliner of the Pitt contingent invited to Indianapolis is of course Calijah Kancey. Kancey had an All-American season in 2022 and was the ACC Defensive Player of the Year. The knock on Kancey has always been his size, but he has generated plenty of first round buzz of late. Kancey is a relentless pass rusher, but he is undersized for an interior player. The combine will be a good showcase to display his quickness and athleticism.

Israel Abanikanda has a chance to really perform well in a combine-type setting. After a moderately successful 2021 season, Abanikanda burst onto the scene in 2022. He scored 21 touchdowns as a junior, which tied for the national lead. Abanikanda’s sturdy 5’11" and 215-pound frame to go along with his blazing speed should equate quite well in front of scouts.

A trio of defenders, Haba Baldonado, SirVocea Dennis, and Brandon Hill all had the option to return to school for one more season, but after a successful run at Pitt they made the choice to try their hand in the pros. Dennis is coming off a good showing in the Senior Bowl and has been Pitt’s most reliable linebacker in over a decade.

Baldonado was a force in 2021, but injuries slowed him down some in 2022. Still, it’s hard not to see he has similar traits to Patrick Jones and Rashad Weaver, two Pitt defensive ends who were recently drafted. Brandon Hill is in the 4.4 range for a safety and is not afraid to hit. Given Pitt’s recent success of having defensive backs drafted, he has a chance to follow in those footsteps.

Carter Warren’s case is unique. He opted to come back this season, but his super senior year was derailed by an injury. Warren was a candidate to be drafted last year, but chose one more year at Pitt. He may be a rare case where he can overcome an injury in his last college season and still make it into the league anyway.

I am not sure if all six of those guys will get drafted, but there is a good chance it can happen if they were invited to the combine. Pitt last had six players drafted in 2021 and this year’s group has a chance to match that total. Aside from the combine invites, players like Jared Wayne or Erick Hallett could sneak into the late end of the draft as well. We saw a few years ago Jason Pinnock be selected after a combine snub, so it certainly can happen, but the odds are stacked against them.

Pitt’s production to the NFL has been solid of late. Prior to Narduzzi's arrival, Pitt had back-to-back years without a player getting picked in 2012 and 2013. Ever since then the NFL pipeline has been going strong and the likelihood of that continuing in April received a boost with these six combine invites.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Should Jeff Capel be ACC Coach of the Year?
Pitt ended last season in the opening round of the ACC Tournament with a 66-46 loss to Boston College. It was Pitt’s fifth straight loss to end the year to cap off a listless 11-21 season. Jeff Capel’s record stood at 51-69 through four years on the job. In his final postgame press conference of the year, Capel offered up the line, ‘We have to get better players.’

I was not exactly sure he would even get the chance to go after better players...

Pitt was likely not in the position to make a coaching change last offseason, but if it had happened I do not think anyone would have second guessed it. The Capel hire was not working out and there were little signs of progress on the court. The program was certainly down when Capel took on the job, but through four years on job it did not look much different in the win/loss column.

I understood the fan frustrations with the lack of progress through four years. Pitt released a statement on a Friday evening after the season ended from Athletic Director Heather Lyke showing a vote of confidence for Capel to return for this season.

It wasn’t exactly an inspiring moment.

“Coach Capel and I met this afternoon and there is no question we both have great expectations for our men’s basketball program. We discussed the path forward for success for this program. We share the disappointment of this past season and expected to be further along in building this program back to a great source of pride for Pitt. We are committed to Jeff Capel as our head coach and leader of our team. I am confident Jeff will continue to assess and evaluate every aspect of our program and work tirelessly to continue building it the right way. He and our staff are committed to helping our student-athletes develop the consistency and habits to reach their full potential on and off the court.”

Fast forward 11 months and the Panthers, under Capel, are on the cusp of ending a six-season NCAA Tournament drought. Pitt is tied for first place in the ACC and is on the doorstep of cracking the Top-25 for the first time since January 2016.

Huh? How did this all happen?

If you take into consideration everything from the moment Lyke gave her vote of confidence to right now, it still does not make much sense. The odds have been stacked against this team almost every step of the way.

Pitt was coming off an 11-win season and they needed a complete roster overhaul in the offseason. The roster that was assembled was picked to finish 14th in the ACC in the preseason. Star recruit, Dior Johnson, was suspended before the season even started. The returning leading scorer, John Hugley, has only played in eight games this year.

Not to mention, Pitt started the year 1-3 with two blowout losses to West Virginia and Michigan…and yet, Pitt is still right at the top of the conference standings in February.

The race for ACC Coach of the Year is not finished and a lot can happen between now and March. Pitt still needs to finish what they have started and there are other worthy candidates in the running like Jim Larrañaga, Brad Brownell, Kevin Keatts, and Tony Bennett. Those coaches are all having quality seasons, I get that, but what Capel is doing just feels different.

He was fighting, recruiting, and coaching for his job this season…and he is delivering. Given where the program was 11 months ago, where it was picked in the preseason, and the adversity it was dealt throughout the year, it’s tough for me to see a better coaching job in the ACC this season than the one Jeff Capel is doing.

Where would Pitt be without Federiko?
Pitt has six players who log most of the minutes on this year’s team. Five of those six players do the bulk of the scoring. On a given night Burton, Cummings, Elliott, Hinson, or Sibande can go off and lead the team in scoring. In recent games, Pitt has had a balanced scoring attack from those five players, and as we all know offense draws the headlines.

The unsung player that has made this perimeter-oriented offense thrive is Federiko Federiko, the 6’11’ junior college transfer from Finland. His playing style fits perfectly, and his unlikely emergence has been perhaps the biggest surprise on a team filled with them.

The expectations weren’t high for Federiko entering this season. He was originally committed to West Virginia, but the Mountaineers opted to go in another direction. Pitt has had some misses on big guys from the junior college ranks in recent years, so his recruitment did not seem all that exciting other than he was filling a roster spot. His size was intriguing, but in the sense he may play a few minutes here and there and hopefully be more of a contributor next season.

Federiko was not afforded the opportunity to ease into the season and maybe that has been a blessing in disguise for this Pitt team. Federiko had to fill in for John Hugley with his early season knee injury and subsequent leave of absence, and has done so in a big way.

The big man from Finland is not much of a scoring threat in this stage of his career, but he has contributed in other ways. He gives Pitt a pick and roll option on offense, a shot blocker on defense, and a high energy player who can keep up with Pitt’s guards.

Federiko has not recorded a double figure scoring game since conference play started, but he had produced nine games with two or more blocks. His 45 blocks are third most in the ACC, and he has produced seven in his last three games. Federiko helped spearhead an effort of 13 blocks on Tuesday against Louisville, which tied a school record for a single game.

Pitt’s success the remainder of the season will largely hinge on outside shooting and Jamarius Burton being Jamarius Burton. Federiko’s name likely won’t be in the headlines, but if he can continue to provide what he has, then that’s all this team really needs from him.

There have been a lot of little details that have helped make this Pitt team successful, and some of them have been, well, lucky. Federiko turning into an ACC-caliber big man in his first season as an unexpected starter would rank right up there, because it’s hard to imagine this team being successful without him.

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt will be ranked on Monday
The Pitt basketball program has not cracked the AP Top 25 since January 11, 2016 back when Jamie Dixon was still the coach. Alabama defeated Clemson for its 10th national title later that evening. The number one song on the Billboard top charts was ‘Hello’ by Adele, and gas prices were around $2.16 in Pennsylvania at the time.

OK, I guess it wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly has felt that way..

Pitt basketball met that ranking in January 2016 with a prompt 59-41 loss to Louisville to drop out of the rankings and the Panthers have been unable to climb back in ever since. I think when the poll is released on Monday that will finally change.

Pitt is currently on the cusp of the national rankings after receiving the fifth most votes outside the top-25 this past Monday. I believe the Panthers won’t lose to the same bad Florida State team again and if that is indeed the case, then Pitt’s six-game winning streak should be enough to slip into the rankings.

Pitt also has a chance to be in sole possession of first place in the ACC by Saturday evening, but they would need some help. The Panthers need to win of course, and also a Clemson loss to North Carolina and a Virginia loss to Duke. First place in the ACC would have a nice ring to it, because that is one set of rankings where the computers have no say.